This isn’t exactly a writing related piece. In fact, it’s not writing related at all; it is, as the title suggests, a light hearted post for the weekend.

One murky February night, back in the halcyon days of gainful employment, I was out for a few beers with friends Tom, Mark and Pete. Having beaten a hasty retreat from our pub of choice when the ugliest bloke ever decided that me commenting on the afternoon’s football match counted as an attempt to chat him up, we set off for the relative safety of Tom’s local.

There were two routes to Tom’s local pub: well lit paths, or spooky graveyard. Guess which route we chose!

Bravado is a wonderful thing, especially when fortified by copious amounts of alcohol. As we picked our way respectfully between the graves, mist rising around our ankles and trees reduced to skeletal silhouettes, three of us were handling the situation with admirable confidence.

Pete, however, was whimpering like a baby.

‘I’m scared of ghosts!’ he declared eventually.

Trying not to laugh, we coaxed him on towards the pub with promises of more beer and a bar snack of his choice. All he had to do was keep walking. Don’t look right, don’t look left, don’t worry about that strange cackling noise. Nobody here but we four; nobody alive, that is…

Then, without warning, Mark disappeared. The only sober one of the group, gone! In an instant. That was enough for Pete, who was last seen running, screaming, towards the reassuring lights of Tom’s local, leaving Tom and me to search the horror movie scene for our missing friend. Expecting a cloaked and fanged Christopher Lee to appear from the mist any moment, we croaked out a few calls of ‘Mark?’ before being shocked into silence. Terrified, we were frozen to the spot as an unearthly light rose from the ground. A spectre, it must be, getting closer and closer…

‘Tripped over a headstone,’ said Mark apologetically, switching off his phone light. ‘Did I scare Pete?’