Writing in Rye
Q. What happens if you put seven writers together in Britain’s most haunted inn on Halloween?
A. A giant spark of supernatural creativity!
Rye’s Mermaid Inn, one of the most haunted hotels in the UK
On Friday 31st October 2025 I teamed up with the rather marvellous Sara Starbuck to present an all-day writing workshop at the Mermaid Inn in Rye, followed by a ghost-walk after dark to discover the town’s secret passages and terrible tales of murder and haunting. Rye in East Sussex boasts more than 70 ghosts, and the Mermaid Inn is home to several of them!
Our writers gathered in Dr Syn’s Chamber: named after the character created by novelist Russell Thorndike and based on the real Hawkhurst smuggling gang.
I’m always interested in the way place is able to have a profound impact on writing, so what would Halloween in such a location bring?
Our workshop took a playful approach to exploring the genre of ghost stories. We began with some ‘seeding’ exercises and prompts that used the artefacts in the inn itself as stimulus, as well as exploring private fears, before considering the structural conventions of the ghost story and experimenting with some provocations to help develop writing. It was designed to provide plenty of inspiration for writing a chilling tale.
As a child I remember vividly being scared to death by urban myths that we’d share late into the night on sleepovers with school friends. I was terrified as a teenager by the short stories in Stephen King’s Night Shift, and the novels of James Herbert. I spent the rest of the 80s avoiding video nasties and left horror well alone for many years.
But, in 2017, I went to see Strange Disturbances, an evening of Victorian ghost stories by Horsham theatre company Lights & Bushels, and my passion for the genre was reignited. I co-wrote Grave Encounters for Billingshurst Dramatic Society the following year, more ghost stories adapted for the stage and then performed in The Thinning Veil in 2022. I encountered one of literature’s most famous ghosts with my A-level students every year when I taught Hamlet and, of course, Ebeneezer Scrooge’s ghostly visitations with students lower down the school.
My partner in ghostly crime for the Rye workshop, Sara Starbuck, has a wealth of experience in publishing, having spent more than a quarter of a century working in the sector. Although she now works independently as a freelance editor and as a featured editor for Writers & Artists, she has been a commissioning editor and agent working for some of the biggest publishing houses and literary agencies in Britain including Hodder and Stoughton, Bloomsbury, Darley Anderson, Templar and Hothouse Fiction. On top of all that, she is the author of nine published works including children’s adventure novels, non-fiction books and memoir.
Together we brought different skills to the writing table for our workshop participants.
After a writer’s scavenger hunt, some listing exercises, a game of What if? a writing sprint and lots of freewriting, we moved to the more serious business of plotting and structuring a modern ghost story.
We looked closely at openings and endings and used a number of classic and contemporary texts and extracts throughout the day. All the participants went home with a wealth of resources to continue to feed their story-writing appetites.
The Victorians undoubtedly inhabited the golden age of the ghost story, but we looked at how to build on that rich heritage to craft a ghost story that resonates with contemporary audiences - finding that delicate balance of timeless eeriness and modern relevance. In this age of scientific fact people are more cynical about ghosts and hauntings.
So how exactly do we get in there and scare them? That was the challenge that our writers grappled with over the course of the day.
Oswald on the ghost-walk
As a special treat and more stimulus we were taken down to the Mermaid’s cellars and given a taste of the Mermaid Inn’s 600-hundred-year history by Judith Blincow, the charismatic landlady at the hotel, who regaled us with tales of smugglers, hauntings and buried treasure.
There was time for some more writing and then, after dark, we headed out for a ghost walk led by Oswald, a notorious Hawkhurst gang member (professional actor Oliver Bales), who carried a sack of plenty containing hag stones for protections, crystals for a writing spell and some generous shots of rum as fortification around the cobbled streets of Rye.
We returned to Dr Syn’s Chamber for a fireside sharing of some of the fantastic tales written during the day.
Perhaps there was supernatural energy in the room because one way or another, a powerful and productive writing spell was cast this Halloween!
Look out for more GoodStar writing workshops coming soon…