BERMUDA'S FAVOURITE HAUNTS: VOLUME TWO -- Ghosted by John Cox, Mac Musson and Joan Skinner -- published by Ghost Writers, Bermuda.

Just in time for Christmas fireside reading and following on the success of their first collection of Bermuda ghost stories, John Cox, Mac Musson and Joan Skinner have now produced a second volume which is subtitled "Picking Up The Threads''.

Encouraged by the number of people who have stepped forward, quite eagerly it seems, to share their own experiences of the supernatural, the authors quite rightly concluded that there was more than enough material to justify another book. Indeed, several of the tales contained in this volume are intriguing indeed. On the whole, the atmosphere seems rather more menacing and, therefore, more powerful in their overall impact on the reader than the first book.

Bermuda, avoided from the earliest times by fearful seamen who avoided the area designated as "the isle of devils'', has always provided fertile ground for the supernatural. With many buildings that are several hundred years old, it is hardly surprising that the Island boasts an inordinate amount of spectral apparitions who have and still make their presence felt.

Once again, the three `ghost writers' are mainly just that: using a determinedly chatty style to relate often frankly bizarre events which have so far defied explanation. While this may not be preferred reading for the truly sceptical, some of the stories should pique the curiosity of almost everyone else.

One of the best -- and, indeed, one of the few tales that really tingle the spine, is John Cox's story of his relation Freer Cox, well known as one of the Island's first conservationists who died in 1957. Less well known was the fact that, like his ancestor Christiana Love Dill, he possessed the gift of `second sight', and able to see the ghosts of the newly dead: even as a child he `saw' his grandmother in the garden at the exact moment she expired and John Cox relates several other incidents that plagued him from that time on. This dubious gift is noted also in Mr. Cox's narration of ghostly goings-on at `Underwood' in Devonshire. One of the earlier owners was a Miss Anna Robinson who, waiting to greet her young man who had gone out earlier in a boat `saw' him coming across her lawn, only to find that he had drowned on the trip and, again, a young wife, living at the beautiful old house, Belfield, in the 1830's, had a ghostly encounter with her sea captain husband who returned one night, water dripping from him, imploring her to move back to her old family home: he was drowned at sea.

Belair in Paget, rebuilt in 1840 from a much earlier building erected in 1692, provides a marvellous collection of well documented ghostly anecdotes. Related in turn by all three writers these include mysterious white-clad ladies materialising in the dead of night, lights clicking on and off, an apparently authentic and highly colloquial Ouija board conversation with spectral Bermudian slaves, and an experiment in `automatic writing'. Robin Blackburne is one of those who confirms some of the strange events at Belair, noting that "most of us had entered into this experiment as sceptics or outright disbelievers, therefore the evidence of our eyes left us in a state of stunned silence.'' Different buildings certainly produce different `vibes', ranging from feelings akin to terror in the story, related by Joan Skinner, of the slave at Fair View in Flatts Village, to the rather happier acceptance of a ghost at `Westward Ho!', related by Stephen West to Mac Musson, and indications that spectres still `operate' in this modern era with John Cox's account of his own encounter with a blond biker on the road by his home who had indeed been killed in an accident there more than a decade earlier.

Once again, a sense of the supernatural is greatly enhanced throughout by Mac Musson's delightful and sensitively drawn sketches in pen, ink and pencil which accompany each story.

This book is not only an entertaining read but, like its predecessor, enlarges our knowledge of Bermuda's historical and cultural heritage.

PATRICIA CALNAN THE GHOST OF DUNSCOMBE HILL -- One of Mac Musson's illustrations for the latest volume of "Bermuda's Favourite Haunts'', showing a young girl who had died of spotted fever, and `visited' before Elizabeth Watlington who lived at Dunscombe Hill in the early 1800s.

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