Mountwood School for Ghosts

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Most people know what a hag is. They used to be common enough in every parish in the land. Any old lady who lived alone in a cave by the sea or a tumbledown cottage in marshland or forest might be a hag. If she had a wrinkly face, bushy eyebrows, a gobber tooth, a squint eye, a squawky voice, a scolding tongue and a cat, then she probably was a hag. And if she had hair growing on the inside of her mouth, then there was no doubt about it.

But there are also Great Hagges. They are spelled differently because they are quite rare. You won’t find a Great Hagge living in a half-ruined bothy on a wuthering heath. You are more likely to find one living in a pleasant ground-floor flat in north Oxford. On the outside they are less fierce and disgusting than common hags; they are less hairy, and much bigger. But, inside, a Great Hagge is far more interesting and dangerous and full of ideas.

An ordinary village hag goes out at night to sit on people whom she doesn’t like and stop them breathing, so that they wake in a panic. That’s why some people look hag-ridden when they come down to breakfast. Great Hagges cannot be bothered with stuff like that. They dress properly (they like tweed), they make plans. They organize and put things right. They can’t help it; that’s the way they are. But putting things right is not the same as being nice. Great Hagges aren’t nice. They aren’t do-gooders. Nothing like that. None of your knitting scarves for tramps or founding homes for stray kittens. They don’t like people (not live ones, anyway; they enjoy a nibble of human flesh if it’s properly cooked) — but they don’t not like them either. It’s just that for a Great Hagge it is quite impossible to ignore a mess, and most human beings are in a mess. People have feelings that get them into trouble.

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