I’ve loved ghost stories since I was very young. Some of the older members of my family were very good at telling them, and one of my first memories is of listening with my mother to a story on the radio by the Edwardian master M.R. James. It was terrifying – I didn’t get a lot of sleep that night. But I was hooked. I loved the brooding, menacing atmosphere and the way James was able to give just enough detail to set my own imagination working overtime. It was the mental equivalent of a really scary theme park ride – terror followed by exhilaration.

Stephen Johnson. Photo © Australian Festival of Chamber Music

It was only years later, when I started to come to terms with the legacy of mental illness in my family – particularly painful and disturbing in my mother’s case, and in mine – that I realised ghost stories can also be a means to confront one’s own inner horrors [and achieve] catharsis – a purging of repressed fears and tensions, but at the same time damn good fun.

After the lovely response to my two ‘cat studies’, The Nimble...