Creepy Classics: A Conversation with Juliette Harrisson, Author

In these days of short attention spans, making the time to read a novel is a challenge. Short stories, however, can give us much of the same experience. Creepy Classics: Ghost Stories from Ancient Rome (US link) and (UK link), by Doux Reviews’ Juliette Harrisson, treats us to 13 ghost stories situated in the ancient Roman world. Note: I would not write this piece if I could not recommend the book. The storytelling is crisp, and a general delight. Some passages even remind me of PG Wodehouse.

Juliette Harrisson is a lecturer in history at Birmingham Newman University. Here’s my conversation with her, edited to remove redundancy and irrelevancy and to add clarity, on how she came to write these stories.

Victoria: What’s your fascination with classics, and what’s your fascination with horror? What made you decide to combine them?
Juliette: Classics is my job. I decided to do ancient history on a whim because I really liked the TV series I, Claudius.
Victoria : Yeah, that show had a huge impact on many people.
Juliette: I studied ancient history, with specialism on Rome as that’s what got me into it in the first place. I have also always been fascinated by myths, religion and folklore. I focus on two separate strands: the reception of ancient Greece and Rome in popular culture, e.g. film, and myths and religion.
Victoria: And how did you decide on ghost stories?
Juliette: I’ve always been fascinated by ghost stories. I wanted to do more research on ghost stories for my PhD but I needed to get it funded. I came up with something on “dream reports” – that is, reports of prophetic dreams from the ancient world. Literature from ancient Rome that records prophetic dreams.
Victoria: Have you ever met a ghost?
Juliette: I don’t think that I have, but my mum has had experiences of various kinds including a flat that seemed to be haunted. The worst that happened was sheet music flying around. My interest goes back to the picture books they had for kids in the 80s, like the one I read about the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall, based on a famous ghost photo. I grew really fascinated with ghost stories, and I never grew out of it, unlike my obsession with the Great Fire of London, which I did grow out of.

Victoria: Tell me about the podcast, also called Creepy Classics. When did you start?
Juliette: I started the podcast in October 2019 Hallowe’en. One of the stories in the book was the first podcast, so the oldest writing in the book is from 2019. Not every story in the podcast is in the book. My podcast used to be once a month, now it’s every other month, due to time constraints. I also took two serious breaks, once for maternity leave and another because I was too busy.
Victoria: And how does the podcast work?
Juliette: I always start with the story, reading it aloud – and then I follow with a talk. In the talk – which is not as formal as a lecture – I explain how the story was adapted from classics. I describe changes made for artistic reasons. I also give background on relevant historical detail, such as women’s clothing in ancient Greece, which will be especially relevant to one of the stories that will be in volume two!
Also, as I am a history lecturer, it is my professional duty to get the facts right, and to confess when I change them. It pains me when I have to change things even for artistic reasons, even though the ancient Greeks and the Romans would not have cared in the slightest.
Victoria: How long does it take you to write a creepy classic?
Juliette: Roman ones don’t take as long to research because my specialist area. The podcast has Roman stories, Greek stories, one Egyptian one, a couple modern. Did one where I tried to channel Jane Austen, but she didn’t record any ghost stories. One regency one connected to Mary Shelley (took a ton of research, because my knowledge of the era is from the three JA books that I have read). Did Hamlet and some medieval stories.
The reason I write short stories is because I’m very good at writing things with a few number of words, and not so good at making them longer. They take varying amounts of time. I think historical fiction must be one of the genres that take longest to write, because of the research. It’s not harder, just longer.
Victoria: That’s true if people try to get it right. Not everyone does.
Juliette: No.
Victoria: I liked how you managed to include female characters.
Juliette: It’s not always easy, because there are not many women in the source material. That’s one reason I’m so fond of Apuleius.
Victoria: My favorite passage in the collection, comes from “The Dead Marriage,” your short inspired by Apuleius, Metamorphoses.

“Usually women come to me because they want men to fall in love with them, or because they want a man to fall out of love with them and to leave them alone. Which is it to be today?”
“I want my husband to forgive me,” said the visitor.
“Ah.” The witch paused and sucked in her teeth. “That’s trickier.”

Juliette: That was the first story on the podcast. The one that took longest to write – or that simmered the longest – was Dies Irae, about Emperor Nero and the ghost of his mother Agrippina’s ghost. I’m repulsed by domestic violence, so that was hard to write.
Victoria: I thought how you combined it with Nero performing in the Oresteia was brilliant.
Juliette: Thank you!
Victoria: Will there be more Creepy Classics?
Juliette: I’m planning a follow-up volume with ancient Greeks. I’m moving the one based on Virgil’s Aeneid to the Greek volume, even though Virgil was Roman and wrote in Latin. The Aeneid is about the Trojan War, and readers will associate that story with the Greeks and not the Romans. I’m hoping to do another one after that based on the Viking Age, and others after that.
Victoria: Make sure to let us all know!

To learn more about Juliette Harrisson and her works, go to Juliette’s Linktree.

Victoria Grossack loves math, birds, Greek mythology, Jane Austen and great storytelling in many forms.