Childhood trauma: How a ‘monster in a pond’ helped an author heal the trauma of a heartbreaking tragedy

A best-selling author has used his latest psychological thriller to exorcise the memory of a heartbreaking childhood tragedy after a poignant flashback was triggered by his daughter asking if a monster was hiding in a pond.

Alex Woolf, 58, says his whole family’s life was thrown into chaos in 1972 when his three-year-old sister, Abigail, fell into a seaweed-covered canal and drowned after turning her back for a while as a child. go out for a picnic.

Just eight years old at the time, it took him 43 years to begin to lull the ghosts of that haunting day to sleep, prompted by his then eight-year-old daughter to ask an innocent question on a body of water equally troubled.

Dealing with his demons through a storyline in his latest novel, Alex, who lives in Southgate, north London, with his wife Paola Woolf, 49, and their children, Michael, 18, and Maya, now 15, said: “None of us have recovered from Abigail’s death.

“It was as if something had been ripped from us.

“We kept thinking she was going to come back but, of course, she never did.”

He added: “When my daughter asked me if there was anything underwater, it triggered something in me.”

Her daughter’s curious question was asked one morning in 2015 as they walked through an overgrown recreation ground.

He said: “There was this horrible pond covered in algae and it always gave me chills to walk by it.”

He added: “One day my daughter asked me if anything lived in water and that planted the seed of an idea.

“I told him nothing could live under that but, after his remark, thoughts started to flow from me.

“I started imagining what might be lurking underneath and it dramatized the feelings I had been holding for so long, until they became something bigger and scarier.”

On the day Abigail died, the family were returning home from a holiday in the Lake District.

Spotting a field a little way from the side of the road, his mother, Anita Woolf, now 87, and father Emil Woolf, 84, stopped so they could have a picnic.

While helping his older brother, Carl, then nine, who is disabled, out of the car, Alex’s mother asked him to take his sister, Abigail, and brother, Matthew, then six, , in the field.

He said: “We couldn’t really see the meadow she had indicated, so we followed a path down the side of the road to a canal.

“I remember going down the slope towards the canal, which was covered in seaweed, I warned my brother and sister that there was water under the seaweed, because it looked solid.

“Before six, my brother didn’t think it was possible, so he dipped his toe to check, and then Abigail had to do the same, to copy it.”

He added: “At this point I had turned away to see where my parents were, then I heard a splash, I looked back and she was gone.

“I screamed. The next thing I remember is my dad running up the bank and diving into the canal.

“I just remember him coming around looking absolutely terrified, asking where she had fallen and going under five, six times, staying under for ages, but never finding her.”

Despite his father’s desperate and repeated attempts, he was unable to find Abigail, who had become entangled in a pipe running under the road.

“I remember mom crying and crying and the rescue teams coming in,” Alex said.

“I remember thinking it was too late, she must be dead. It was so long.”

He added: “These images have never left me.

“It was a nightmare to drive home that day with one less child in the car.”

Abigail’s death cast an indelible shadow over her formative years, as her entire family choked with the loss.

Already members of an intense offshoot of the Hindu religion, Alex’s parents became heavily involved in the movement after his death.

And Alex was sent to a disciplinary school, aligned with their faith, which was later investigated for student abuse and where he had an authoritarian upbringing, which he says was an experience unhappy.

He said: “I think my parents needed to hold on to something in the aftermath of the tragedy.”

He added: “Mine was an awful school and all of those things I believe combined to make me a very anxious and introverted boy.

“I developed a severe stutter and remember being terrified to get up and read something, because I knew I wouldn’t get my words across.”

Alex took great comfort from the half-hour meditation he had at school every day, during which he chanted a mantra.

Believing that was what ignited his creative spark, he said, “We had to sit in a hardwood chair, eyes closed, chanting a secret word.

“The teacher always said, ‘Follow the mantra wherever it takes you.’

“I imagined the mantra as a little dog that I would follow and we would go on these adventures in my head.”

He added: “I actually started enjoying meditation because it meant I could go on these adventures, as a form of escape.”

At home, Alex remembers his parents meditating, learning Sanskrit – an ancient Indian language – and reading aloud from holy books.

Family photos were banned, watching television was forbidden, and only classical music was allowed, as part of the strict beliefs they adhered to.

Alex said: “Photos were seen as staying in the past and you have to stay in the present, so they were banned, as was popular music.

“I remember being a little jealous of other kids who could watch TV and do things that we couldn’t. ”

Eventually, disillusioned with the religious movement, his mother severed ties with him and transferred Alex to another school for his senior years.

After a difficult start to adapting, by the time he started at the University of Essex in Colchester, he had found his feet and enjoyed studying history and politics.

But, lacking confidence and self-belief, Alex struggled to find the right career path.

He said: “At the time, I didn’t have the confidence to believe that I could be a professional writer.”

He added, “So after college, very oddly, I decided to become an accountant, which took a total of six months before I found publishing.”

Despite his childhood dream of being an author, he had to wait until his forties to start writing professionally.

Then nothing could hold him back.

He has now published over 200 books, including children’s non-fiction, young adult fiction and thrillers.

But in his latest novel, Mr Jones, published in January 2022, he injected a biographical element and helped cleanse his soul in the process.

He said: “I’ve always had an aversion to green spaces that have been left wild and the swamp in the pond that my daughter pointed out took my imagination to some pretty dark places.”

He added: “I think our brain works through trauma in ways that we probably don’t even understand.

“When I wrote Mr Jones, I wasn’t even thinking about Abigail. It was my mother who read it and said, ‘It’s about Abigail, isn’t it? I realized that was partly the case.

“And I realized that must be why I have such a dislike for pond water.”

The novel follows a stressed single father named Ben, who suspects someone is out to kidnap his eight-year-old daughter, Imogen.

Strange messages and bizarre occurrences begin to ensue as a terrifying entity called Mr. Jones begins to haunt the imaginations of children at his daughter’s school – blurring reality with fantasy.

Unlike any other novel he’s written, Alex feels both pride and nervousness over his latest achievement.

“It’s really kind of scary, this personal stuff,” he said.

“Not what I thought I was doing, but I’m glad it’s here now and I’m proud that I did it.”

He added: “It’s quite scary that it took my own daughter to ask a question at the age of eight to confront me with my own eight year old nightmare, but I’m glad it did. .”

Mr Jones Amazon: www.uk.bookshop.org/books/mr-jones-9781739959920/9781739959920