As a life-long fan of The Smiths and Morrissey solo, I obviously couldn’t wait to get my hands on Autobiography. Largely, it didn’t disappoint. Maybe throw in a paragraph break here and there, why don’t you? And what’s with all the alliteration? I expected the book to make me laugh, cry, maybe roll my eyes occasionally – which it did. What I didn’t expect was to be sleeping with the light on after reading it. That’s because, embedded within the book, is one of the best and most chilling ghost stories I’ve ever read. I’ve often thought that this section of the book, if removed, would make a brilliant addition to a collection of ghost stories. For me, it’s with this section that Morrissey proves that in another life he could be a celebrated fiction writer.

It purports to be a true story, about a jaunt Morrissey took with some friends one evening in the late 80s onto Saddleworth Moor (Morrissey’s fascination with the Moors Murderers is well known). Returning after dark along a windswept moorland road, they see a figure “rising-up from the black earth…standing upright and then throwing his arms towards our lights.” It’s an apparition worthy of an M.R. James story: “a boy of roughly 18 years wearing only a humiliatingly-short anorak coat that was open to the rest of his body.” Between them the four friends search for an explanation, then at the first phone box they come across they call the police only to be told to keep an open mind. To my way of thinking that’s the last thing anyone in that situation wants to hear from the police!

First published by Penguin, 2013