MORE INFO-GHOST STORY GENRE
Some more info about my books written in the ghost story genre
GAS STREET
Ernest Jones, a quiet, unassuming, and smartly dressed young man is a clerk in a gasworks by day, and a serial killer by night.
He lives in 16 Gas Street, Sands End, in Fulham with his mother, and works in the nearby Imperial Gas and Coke Company as a clerk.
His father returns from the First World War, shell-shocked and mentally deranged, and from an early age, Ernie is subjected to his father's bursts of angry verbal tirades against him.
These end when his father dies, but he is left psychologically damaged, which manifests itself later when he starts his murder spree in the late 1930's.
Ernest Jones is finally caught, and thirteen bodies, including his mother, are found buried in and about 16 Gas Street. He is charged, found guilty, and then hung, and the house of horrors is left empty and vacant until the late-1990's.
A young couple, Lucy and Wayne Earle, unaware of the property's grisly past, buy the derelict property and it is renovated and refurbished to a high standard. Things start to go wrong when the team of builders renovating the property report a series of strange events: the smell of gas, their tools disappearing, and the putrid smell of rotting flesh.
Lucy and Wayne finally move into 16 Gas Street with their two small children, and settle down to life in their beautiful new home, but Wayne is often away working long hours.
Lucy's life takes a downward spiral when she starts to smell gas, hear a constant hissing noise, and then sees an apparition of a man wearing old First World War gas mask. Lucy is pushed to breaking point and she agrees to go on medication and see a psychiatrist.
The Imperial Gas and Coke Company at Sands End, Fulham taken in the early 20th Century. Showing the 1830 gasholder.
Ariel view of Imperial Gasworks from the 1930's. Imperial Road is top right, and the fictional Gas Street is situated opposite.
Gasholders in Imperial Road seen from Fulmead Street. They're now demolished, but Lucy mentions them in the book.
Retort house in a gasworks
Pineapple Park adventure playground with William Parnell House in the background. The flats were demolished in the 1980's and replaced by William Parnell Park.
Lucy finally finds out about Ernest Jones and the murders and burials at 16 Gas Street. This pushes her over the edge and she suffers a nervous breakdown, spending eight months in a psychiatric unit.
She eventually returns to Wayne and the children, and after a year, her life starts to become contented and there are no more sightings of apparitions, or any smell of gas.
She starts to accept that Ernest Jones was a figment of her imagination.
Or was he?
Coal tar was a by-product of Town Gas production, and because of its antiseptic properties it was used in the famous Coal Tar Soap
Ariel view of Sands End in 1937. Fulham Power Station is in the foreground (the coal loading plant is now Sainsbury's). The Imperial Gasworks is at the top in the centre, and Lots Road Power Station, which once powered the Tube network, is in the top right of the picture. Only Lots Road is still standing and it's been converted into high-end flats.
Bulow Road, Sands End, Fulham in 1939.
It ran from what was Sands End Road, now Bagley's Lane. The gasholder in Imperial Road can be seen in the background. The road was demolished in the 1950's and William Parnell House was built on its site.
Typical of the housing in the area, each house would have housed two, sometimes three, families. Note there are no cars!
1898 map of Sands End, Fulham.
Sands End Road is now Bagley's Lane and the unmarked straight road by the gasworks is Imperial Road. Bulow Road leads from Sands End Road.