A Split Second Decision – was it the right one?

I know the winding road into Bath very well as my daughter and her family live in Bath and we often take the A36 past Limpley Stoke and onto Bath. I have often wondered whether a car could crash through the trees and descend the steep slope beyond and, if it did, how long it […]

A Chancy Business – life imitating art?

Having run an art gallery in London with my wife and having met many art dealers, I can admit that there is an element of autobiography in the story called A Chancy Business in Where Reason Dreams. All art dealing is a bit ‘chancy’ – will the picture you have spotted at auction be recognised […]

Review of When Reason Dreams

I was delighted to receive this excellent review from Mark Pender from the Sherborne Times:   Do you believe in ghosts? Moreover, do you have to believe in ghosts to enjoy a ghost story? The answer to the second question from my reading of Julian Halsby’s enthralling collection of supernatural tales is emphatically not. This […]

Loggia dei Lanzi – happy memories to inspire a ghost story

Between school and university I spent a year in Florence, initially attending a course in Italian and then teaching English as a Foreign Language. It was a wonderful year – a new sense of liberty away from school and parents, many friends both English and Italian, my first job and the most wonderful surroundings. I […]

Dawson – a faithful servant

I have a passion for old photographs and often buy books of old postcards which I study intently. There are often photographs of stately homes and their staff – parlour maids, kitchen staff, butlers and garden workers. I sometimes reflect upon the life of gardeners in such an establishment. They usually spent their entire lives […]

The Maid – fact or fiction?

Some of my ghost stories in When Reason Dreams are pure invention prompted maybe by a place I have visited or an idea that has come to me while driving home from a lecture or sitting on a train. Others are developed from a ‘true’ ghost story which I have been told about. Of course […]