The Inspiration and Research behind the Shadow Keeper
When I moved to North Somerset, I moved into the Old Quarry Master’s house that sits directly across from the old town quarry in Weston-Super-Mare, I remembered standing in the kitchen on that first night, listening to the house settling around me, and thinking that I had never lived somewhere with quite so much silence – and quite so much history pressing in from every direction. I did not know it yet, but that house, and the grounds beneath it, would become the beating heart of The Shadow Keeper.
Inspiration
My mother passed away not long before I began writing this novel, and in the months afterwards, I found myself remembering the stories she used to tell me when I was young. She always seemed to know I was spiritually inclined, and she shared her stories accordingly. My favourties were always the ones about the Bear Walkers – figures she described in a way similar to a grim reaper, shapeshifting presences that moved between worlds. I held onto those stories long after I stopped believing I have ever used them.
Then I had a dream. It was about spirits and generational curses, about the way trauma and legacy can pass silently from one generation to the next, waiting to be acknowledged. When I woke, I knew I wanted to write about the inheritance – and I knew the Bear Walkers needed to be a part of it. But I did not want to simply retell my mothers stories. I wanted to reimagine them, so I decided to give the Bear Walkers a new purpose in The Shadow Keeper. As figures tied to animals and the natural world, rising to honour her stories while making something entirely my own – something inspired by my heritage, rather than a claim to speak for it.
Research and Somerset Discoveries
Once the idea took root, I need to understand the land itself. I spent months visiting museums, haunted tours and libraries, speaking to residents who were generous enough to share their own memories and family lore. That is how I learned that the underground cavern just outside my kitchen was once said to connect to the tunnels leading into the quarry itself- a detail that unsettled and trilled me in equal measures, and once I could not resist weaving into a collection book.
I walked through Weston Woods at dusk more than once, and there’s a particular smell there- iron and damp earth- that I now associate entirely with the mood of this book. I travelled out to Brean Island and Salt bay where the cliffs drop away so steeply that the whole landscape feels like it is holding its breath. I stood on Cheddar Gorge and look toward Glastonbury Tor in the distance, and later returned to watch the sunrise from that same vantage point, the Tor rising through the mist like something out of memory rather than geography.
I visited St. Johns the Baptist church from Frome, wandered through Norton St Philips, and stood at Burrow Mump, thinking about the layers of history resting quietly beneath the grass. I became fascinated with the yew trees found in so many churchyards, with ley lines, with the Moors and marshes that seem to hold their own kind of memory. I went on haunted-history tours, dug through museum archives, and slowly, the land began to feel less like a backdrop and more like a character in its own right.
Turning Research into Fiction
The greatest challenge wan not gathering the history- it was a learning how to let it breathe within the story rather than simply reciting it. St Catherine House in Bath became the model for the fictional house at the centre of the story The Circle of Witham Grange inside the book The Shadow Keeper, I could picture its rooms shifting into something darker, older, and more and more haunted.
My fictional villages, too, are shaped by real historical periods and unrest, including the later turmoil that followed the execution of King Charles I, a period whose ripple effects are still across Somerset’s landscape and stories. I want to be honest that I am still checking some of the finer historical details before this goes any further, but the emotional truth of the unrest- the sense of a land marked by upheaval- is very much present in the book.
Perhaps the hardest part of writing this novel was bringing together folklore drawn from my own heritage with the folklore and history of England, respectfully and without flattening either. I never wanted to suggest that the Bear Walkers I have written represent all Anishinaabe or Chippewa storytelling- only that they are inspired by the stories passed down to me, reshaped through my own imagination and grief.
An invitation
The Shadow Keeper began as a way to honour my mother, and became something larger: a story about land, memory, and what refuses to stay buried. I hope readers find themselves walking through Somerset’s woods and marshes right along the characters, feeling the same mixture of unease and wonder I felt while researching every page.
Thank you for joining me on this journey.
E.L. Ravenheart
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About the Author
