In article ,
(Carl Fogel) writes:

....

Nor can I think of any John Collier stories with cyclists.
Of course, he preferred demons, devils, genies, and witches.

None of Robertson Davies' gaudy-night ghost-stories
featured bicycles that I can remember.

All very well & good; I'm looking for "true" stories.

Perhaps Stephen King has done something?

I recall some cycling-involved scenes in The Stand, and
Maximum Overdrive.

With ghosts, vampires, and werewolves, the basic problem
is likely the need for a dark or moonlit ride, something
that few of us indulge in. Possibly a mysterious lamp
failure could be a starting point?

There's the urban legend of The Headless Motorcyclist.
A fellow becomes enamoured with a woman, and pays occasional
nocturnal visits to her. Her father doesn't like the
motorcyclist, and strings (baling?) wire across the road to
clothesline him. It works so well, the motorcyclist is
decapitated. In some versions of the story, the head rolls
down an embankment, to the footing of a nearby bridge. In
other versions, the head is never found. Subsequent passers-by
occasionally witness the ectoplasmic replaying of the event.

The best /bicycling/ story I've found so far, was about some
aerodrome support guy who rides across a runway, under a parked
bomber, bashes his head against an open hatch on the aircraft,
and collapses in a permanently cold-cocked heap. He's eternally
doomed to repeat this mishap, night after night. I'd like to
find something more dignified and befitting of cyclists, than
this sort of slapstick tragedy.

I also found some British stories involving cyclists, and
lighthouses in foggy nights. Good mood & setting, but the
plots were rather thin.

Of course, you mustn't advertise your lurid and utterly
implausible literary interest in ghosts and murder mysteries,
lest anyone take you for the kind of low-brow clod who can't
enjoy great literature like, say, "Hamlet."

Aw, I don't care about appearances. All Art is storytelling
anyway. The story's the thing, even in hoity-toity stuff like
ballet or rodeo. The medium is just the substrate.

(I believe that a curious form of punctuation known as an
emoticon may be appropriate here to signal heavy-handed
irony, but I come from a much more long-winded background
and have never used such curious modern contrivances--could
a ghost story manage to infuse a smiley-face with some
horrifying meaning?)

Perhaps Victor Borge's "phonetic punctuation" might be extended
to the creation of emoticons.


cheers,
Tom

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