An Exploring Officer: a ghost story of the Peninsular War

I had the idea for this story while browsing through Goodreads, who were challenging authors to come up with a two sentence horror story for Halloween. I made an attempt, and found myself smiling at the fact that I’d written the longest two sentences in history and that even my ghost stories end up being set during the Peninsular War.

And then I thought — why wouldn’t they be? Traditional ghost stories tend to centre around tragedy and violence and sudden death and during the brutal years of the French occupation of the Iberian Peninsula in the early part of the nineteenth century there was plenty of all three.

I hope you enjoy An Exploring Officer. I wrote it for fun and it’s free so post it and share it as much as you like. For a bit of trivia, the hero, Giles Fenwick, features in a number of my historical novels.

An Exploring Officer

It was late afternoon when the storm hit, sudden and violent with a warm wind whipping up dust and sand in choking swirls and the sky becoming leaden and menacing as Giles Fenwick rode south towards Salamanca. His horse, a big rawboned grey was accustomed to long rides in the worst weather conditions, but even he seemed uncomfortable and restive under Giles’ hands. Looking up at the rapidly blackening skies, Giles made the decision to…