Ghosts at the Old Library

An immersive literary event - four brand new ghost stories performed in Levenshulme Old Library by lantern light this Christmas.

This Christmas, Levenshulme Old Library has commissioned new ghost stories from six writers for a series of very special atmospheric winter events.

Ghost stories at Christmas have long been an oral storytelling tradition, from tales told around the winter fire through to Charles Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol'. This moved into the TV era with A Ghost Story for Christmas, a series of late night television movies broadcast on the BBC which continue to this day.

This Christmas, come and hear brand new ghost stories written by some of the North West's finest writers, each read in full at an atmospheric performance at Levenshulme Old Library, our historic former Carnegie library building in South Manchester.

The building will be dimly lit by lantern light and four separate spaces will each be allocated to one of the writers. The audience will be divided into four groups and led from one room to the next, hearing each story in full before moving onto the next space.

Marie Crook writes poetry, short fiction and creative non-fiction. Her work has been published in The Real Story, The Caterpillar and Confingo and she runs the creative writing workshop series Feed the Fox.

Gaynor Jones is the author of Among These Animals. She has won the Northern Writer’s Award, the Bath Flash Fiction Prize and the Mairtín Crawford Short Story Award, among others.

Jo Howard is a writer of children’s and young adult fiction and a poet, singer and scriptwriter. A regular on the Northern spoken word scene, Jo runs Book Jive Live, a Zoom open mic for kidlit and YA. Her work has been published in Confingo, The Writer’s Cafe and Funny Pearls magazines and in the 100 Voices anthology to celebrate 100 years of women’s suffrage. 

Lauren O'Donoghue is a writer from South Yorkshire. Her fiction has been published in ergot, and Mslexia among others. Her interactive fiction Ataraxia can be found here.

Dyani Sheppard is a writer based in Manchester.

Nicholas Royle is the author of five collections of short fiction, two works of nonfiction and seven novels, most recently First Novel. He edits an annual series of anthologies called Best British Short Stories and runs Nightjar Press which publishes original short stories.

Each event is different

There are six authors involved in this project, each of whom will perform their story in full at two of our three events. This means that each of the three ghost story events will have a unique line-up. At the moment these events are planned as follows:

• Saturday 2nd December: Marie Crook, Gaynor Jones, Jo Howard, Dyani Sheppard
• Saturday 9th December: Gaynor Jones, Jo Howard, Lauren O'Donoghue, Nicholas Royle
• Saturday 16th December: Marie Crook, Lauren O'Donoghue, Dyani Sheppard, Nicholas Royle

Please note: this is an 18+ event. This is also an event which features works of fiction centred around dark and potentially unsettling and upsetting themes. Attendees should be aware that the event will take place in a dimly lit environment, and we encourage all visitors to exercise caution and consider their own comfort and accessibility needs when attending. If you have any questions please email us as hello@levenshulmeoldlibrary.org.uk