Colour tattoo of a haunted house, full moon, bare tree and ghost inside a heart shape on the forearm.

Haunted house and ghost in a heart

Traditional · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A brick house with a red chimney, lit yellow windows and a glowing door sits in the centre of a heart-shaped panel, with a fence and dark green grass at its base. A full yellow moon with bats, a bare black tree and a white ghost fill the pink and purple sky around it. Bold black outlines frame flat, saturated fills with soft shading in the sky, and the design is centred on the skin with a second tattoo of leaves and flowers visible at the bottom edge.

Traditional Neo-trad Forearm Moon Bat Ghost Bare tree Heart Chimney Sky Grass

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell had counted forty-one bats over the headland before the ghost asked her to stop, politely, from the top of the chimney. "They're not ours to tally," he said. "They only come out when the moon's full, and it always is when the estate agent visits."

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The house on Skerry Lidd had stood empty since the Cruddens left in 1962, and the ferry skipper, a man named Gil who owned exactly one jumper, had told her the place was cursed in the way that usually meant damp. Nell had come anyway, with a tin of tea, her late father's ledger and a sensible plan to sell. The ghost, who called himself Mr Thorne and wore his sheet like a good overcoat, had other plans. He opened the front door whenever she shut it. He lit the yellow windows one by one until the house looked like a lantern someone had forgotten on the grass.

That November a fog came down so thick that Gil's ferry lost the slip. Nell stood on the porch and watched the lamps swing across the black water, drifting and uncertain, until the only light left on the headland was the glowing arch of the front door. Gil later admitted he had followed it the way a dog follows a whistle.

Nell put the kettle on and set out two cups on the scrubbed kitchen table. "Stay, then," she said. Thorne drifted down the stairs and sat on the bottom step, a little brighter than before, while the red chimney coughed a thin thread of smoke into the moonlit sky.