Mark ramps up the scares in Cloch Mór Lore ll Dark Matters

‘Cloch Mór Lore ll Dark Matters’, the second of Mark Gibbon’s series of five books, under the pen name O’Neill, is out now and, as the title suggests, it’s even darker than the first collection of ghostly tales, ‘Cloch Mór Lore Kilbroney’, which quite frankly would scare the life out of you.

“I was offered a publishing deal with book one, but I was advised that I had to tone down the horror and make the book more family friendly to sell more. I turned down the offer and published independently and I haven't looked back,” explained Mark when we spoke last week.

“I try to mix a little history and local folklore into the stories, so I'd definitely say that the overall theme of Cloch Mór Lore is folk-horror. Short, sharp stories of dread.

“The book series focuses on the rise and fall of Demon Brony as an overarching story, with his journey pulling in a raft of other characters. Some are good. Most are evil. All still exist.”

Since the first book came out a huge amount of people have contacted Mark with their own stories, which he has added to those he’s conjured up himself, including characters from the first book.

"I've broken it up into a Rostrevor section and a Warrenpoint section,” explained the Warrenpoint native about his second offering - with the next two already in the works.

And while he certainly is a busy man – working as an independent councillor on top of his job as a postman and active founder of Rostrevor Men’s Shed - Mark manages to find the time to sit down and write after his ‘two very good children’ Sophie and Lily are tucked up in bed.

“I have had an interest in ghost stories since I was a child and I've been writing for about 35 years, so this isn't something that is new to me, but I certainly don't see it as a job or a chore.”

Given his work in the community, Mark clearly loves interacting with people and it’s there on the ground where he hears some of the stories that end up on his pages.

“I have a phone and a wee notebook and I just say, hold on before you tell me your story, give me two seconds and I just write it down. You have people who have some fantastic ghost stories that run in the family, but they don't want to talk about it. They don't want to be, you know, laughed at. But they're fantastic stories.”

Mark also has tales to tell that have been passed down to him through his own family – including one of a terrifying experience his father had as a child which will be told in book three.

A love for the history of his hometown is also evident, which is the glue that binds the Cloch Mór Lore series.

“In school, I could never remember what I was learning, but if anybody tells me a good ghost story or something historic about the local area or whatever, it never leaves me. I always remember it for some strange reason.”

‘Cloch Mór Lore II Dark Matters’ opens with the reader re-familiarised with the Demon Brony who lies in wait deep in the bowels of the earth beneath the famous Cloch Mór Stone that oversees Carlingford Lough – this time for an unsuspecting visiting documentary-making crew. That sets the tone for what’s to come, as darkness and dread intensifies.

Lisa, paralysed and petrified, floats above her bed as the demon possesses her. A German toymaker is held as a prisoner of war in a World War II camp by the Fairy Glen where he whittles toys for the local children until a strange visitor arrives in the dead of night. Tortured soul, Jawbone, waits for those who dare summon him from the old oak tree by his rusty gate at the edge of Kilbroney Park. Éabha, who can’t save her beloved sons from the beast who torments her, haunts the place that bears her name – Ballynagelty (Place of the Crazed Woman) known these days as Kodak Corner. And the resentful Grey Woman treads barefoot nightly from her grave below her standing stone on Crotlieve Mountain to torment the dreams of those who abandoned her down the years.

Mark says a lot of the stories have a strong element of truth in them and draw heavily on historical facts from the landscape.

“I'm certainly not a historian, but it's trying to get people this generation and different generations interested again in the local folklore and local ghost stories. And yeah, there's a wee sprinkle of history added in there, especially with Dark Matters. The Bridle Loanan [in Warrenpoint], for example, is a fascinating place and people wouldn't know what's under their feet. The Bridle Loanan was the highest point in the area. So if you were being raided all the time by the Normans or the Vikings, that was the place you needed to be, to look down the lough to see what was coming. There was an ancient tunnel (souterrain) found there when they were building the foundations of the different housing estates, Lassara Heights and Rath Cuain. This is just one of the wee things we do know about. What about, the things we don't know about? That's what I was fascinated with.”

Warrenpoint has a rich and troubled history – a ripe townland for ghosts to roam.

The tragic tale of the Lassara Legend is included, with testimony from a few locals who claim to have seen the heartbroken Lassara who threw herself off the battlements of Narrow Water Keep to join her murdered lover in the water below.

“The Narrow Water Keep and Narrow Water Castle have plenty of ghost stories in there. But my favourite one is the lady who moved into a rental flat in the castle and, nearly from day one, there was a Victorian lady who walked up the hallway and into the kitchen between 12 and one o’clock every day, looked out the kitchen window, bowed her head and disappeared. The woman that moved into the house got that used to it she moved the kitchen table out of the way so the lady could pass. She actually got to a point after a year or two that she would have been worried if she didn't hear or didn't see her.

“It is vital, in this social media society that we live in now, that we keep the art of local Irish storytelling alive. If we lose our imagination, we are doomed to lose everything to the doom scrolling demon that we hold in our hands.

“I want to try and get inside the heads of the reader and genuinely creep them out.” ‘Cloch Mór Lore II Dark Matters’ turns that creepy dial up to max.

Books available ELK Books Warrenpoint, The Bookshelf Newry and Amazon. Ebook and audio books also available on Amazon.