Mutated Memories

I live in my head.

It’s a scary thought, probably more terrifying than most of the tales I write, but it is an undeniable truth. As a fiction writer and a programmer, I spend a great portion of my time wrapped up in thought. I wonder how much of my real life, I miss because my mind is somewhere else. My wife Diane sometimes notices and says, “You have that look again, you're off writing in your head.”  She knows me so well.

When I look back over my life, which I don’t spend a lot of time doing for the most part, there are all kinds of milestones: graduations, weddings, funerals, and all the day-to-day moments. But there is another long list of memories that never really occurred: the night Will Shepherd discovered the tombstones on the hill above his house, or the day Jay Watson found the headless corpse moments before the police arrived, or Bruce Kane’s battle with the black onyx gargoyle.

I say it is scary, because these are the memories I write down, the stories I create, and if I’m at all lucky, the memories I will leave behind. What is disturbing is that sometimes these tales seem more real than the actual moments in my life that inspire them. Now don’t get me wrong, I haven’t had a mental break with reality, at least no more than most writers, but memory is a fickle thing.

I’m working on a new novel, and part of it takes place in a college much like my alma mater. I’m a little unnerved because the fiction I’m writing seems to be replacing the actual history. Sometimes later when I go back and read the manuscript, I have to think for a moment if that scene is actually the real moments or the fictionalized version.

Of course, all the supernatural elements, the murders and mayhem are fiction, but it is the settings and some of the small details of daily life that seemed to shift back and forth. The names of places etc.
Well at least most of the supernatural stuff is fiction.

The Spookiest Fun Place on Earth

It's a week later and I’m still feeling the afterglow of last weekend at Horrorfind. I’ve always loved scary movies, monster makeup, costumes and Halloween. That probably has a lot to do with
why I write paranormal suspense. Horrorfind embodies all things scary, and 2012 was no exception.

  I have attended this convention in the past, but never from behind a vendor table. So this year selling and signing Shepherd’s Fall, gave me a whole new appreciation for all the effort that goes
into the event.

 There were so many booths and displays of cool horror and Halloween memorabilia, and lots of celebrities from some of my favorite horror movies. Where else would I get a chance to have a
conversation with actor Ray Wise, who stopped by my booth and said hello?

 It was a nonstop weekend, and I met so many nice people. The crew from the movie HOGMAUL were a lot of fun, and I look forward to their upcoming film.

 Of course I met a lot of other authors over the course of the weekend who were also selling and signing their work. It is always fun meeting folks who share the passion for telling stories.



Caroline Cooper and Me in front of our tables at Horrorfind

 

 It is almost certain I will forget someone, so I won’t try to name them all, but I have to give a special shout-out to Caroline Cooper and Sean Adkins who were also first time authors at
Horrorfind and I look forward to reading their work. Caroline wrote The Sun Village Project, and Sean penned Wolfen Bloodlines.

 For me the highlight of the weekend occurred when the producer of Paranormal Xpeditions invited Diane and me along to the filming of one of their upcoming episodes at haunted Ghosts of Gettysburg Walking Tours® Headquarters-where disembodied voices have been recorded and a child has been spotted…a century after his death.

Me, Tina Storer and Diane at our booth at Horrofind

 If you read my blog then you know I write about other people’s ghost stories, well after last weekend, I guess I will be able to write my own account of some paranormal activity, watch for that
in future posts.

 Diane and I had a lot of fun filming the program with the group of guests from the convention at Mark Nesbitt’s headquarters for his Ghosts of Gettysburg Walking Tours® Headquarters. Mark gave us a guided tour of his building where lots of paranormal activity has occurred in the past.

Tina Storer interviewing me about Shepherd's Fall for
an upcomming episode of Paranormal Xpeditions.

Rachel Hoffman, and Tina Storer did an outstanding job as hosts leading us through the investigation. Even though I’m kinda a chicken when it comes to things that go bump in the night it was a cool experience, and some strange stuff occurred that I couldn’t explain away.  I look forward to seeing the upcoming episode and will let you know when and where it airs.






 I have to say that while Horrorfind may be the spookiest show on earth, it was also a friendly, fun weekend. If you like Halloween, horror or suspense literature, and scary movies than I
recommend you check out future Horrorfind conventions and definately take one of the Ghosts of Gettysburg Walking Tours®.

Seeing Is Not Always Believing

As I get ready to leave for Gettysburg for the 2012 Horrorfind Convention, I’m reminded of this ghost story. I have to admit out of all the stories I’ve been told since I started writing paranormal suspense novels, this is one of the strangest.

Even before I start to relate the tale, I have to disclose that Brad is a total skeptic, he does not believe in anything supernatural or paranormal, and this is his story. He tries to explain this event as a mass hallucination. I even find that hard to believe, but that’s just me.

When Brad was a young boy, as opposed to the young man he has become, he visited the Gettysburg battle field with his Boy Scout troop. Of course this included a stop at Devil’s Den. Now that area of the battle field has its fair share of ghost sightings, but he didn’t see anything unusual at the rocks.

The troop enjoyed their time exploring the large rocks and then started to follow a trail that led up to Little Round Top. Brad explained that when he was a boy more trees had grown up in this area and were later removed to make the battlefield more authentic to the period of the actual battle. I seem to remember hearing this myself. At the time his troop followed this path, it went through some thick trees and came out in a clearing that was bordered on both sides with split rail fences.

When the troop stepped into the clearing, Brad said it felt like time had slowed down, and a golden retriever ran out across the clearing. The dog seemed to move in slow motion. What must have only been a few minutes felt like it spanned into hours as the dog bolted across the clearing and entered the forest on the other side. When the dog dove into the brush time snapped back into place. All the boys and even their adult leaders had experienced that same slow motion feeling watching the dog.

The path did not continue past the clearing so they returned to the road and followed another trail up to Little Round Top.

A few weeks later Brad returned to the battle field with his parents and wanted to show them where he had seen the dog, but they could not find the path that lead back to the clearing.

Although Brad did some research and discovered Golden Retrievers were used to carry messages during the Civil War he still dismisses the event as a mass hallucination.

After hearing this story, I did a little due diligence and did in fact find references in the form of a quote from http://www.esdaw.eu/dogwork.htm  ESDAW European Society of Dog and Animal Welfare, “[t]he American Pit Bull Terrier was used in the American Civil War to protect, [and] send messages”.

So it does appear that dogs were used in the battle fields.

I’m not sure what to think about all these ghost animal stories I’ve been hearing, but maybe I will take a dog biscuit with to Gettysburg this weekend, just in case.

Satan in the Sewing Room

Okay so the title is a little dramatic, with just a touch of melodrama. But this is another true life ghost story I have gathered here for your consideration. I have no way of verifying these stories, and honestly I don’t really want to have a firsthand experience with the dark and scary, but I love to hear about the tales. And honestly they don’t keep me up at night, still I’m not ready to go out and become a paranormal investigator.

I had the pleasant experience of meeting Deb and her husband at my book signing for Shepherd’s Fall at Comics and Paperback Plus in Palmyra last Saturday. Deb wanted a signed copy of my book and then explained to me that her and her husband lived in a haunted house.

At first I wasn’t sure if she was kidding me, but her husband stood there nodding his head and explaining that although he could not see them like his wife, their house was in fact haunted. He went on to tell me that light bulbs burned out on a regular basis in several rooms. Sometimes only lasting a few weeks.

I guess I’m the eternal skeptic, because at that point I’m considering bad wiring. But then he also said that several of their children and friends of the family had experienced and seen the spirits as well.
One of the most disturbing tales involved the sewing room. Deb said that when she first set up the room, she couldn’t spend very long in the space. She felt like a current ran through her body and her stomach grew upset. She also had the sensation of being watched.

Later when she had a carpenter in to replace the windows, his assistant said he didn’t feel good when he was working in that room The carpenter finished the windows, but afterward told Deb that he felt like he wasn’t alone; there was someone in there who didn’t want him there.
Deb’s children also would not go in that room when they were little. They told her that a bad man was in there and they didn’t like to play in there.

For a long time Deb was uncomfortable with that spirit, until she learned from watching Sylvia Browne that she could tell the life-challenged spirits it was her house and if they wouldn’t live in harmony with the living they had to leave. She said after saying that to the dark, shadowy spirit in the sewing room, she no longer got the sick feeling in there.

Apparently Deb’s house is home to many spirits. One night while she was washing dishes she saw the reflection in the dark window above the sink of a man in a white hooded robe with gold trim walking across the kitchen behind her. When she turned to look, he had vanished.
She said by the time this had happened she was no longer afraid of the spirits.

She has also seen the ghost of a red cat fighting and playing with her other two living cats. Animal ghosts are something I had never really heard about until recently, but apparently it is not that uncommon. I wonder if you kill a mouse in a trap if you get a ghost mouse running around your house?

Deb is very sensitive to these things, but other visitors including one of her daughter’s friends have seen and heard the spirits, too. One girl who was friends with her daughter tried sleeping in Deb’s son’s room when she spent the night, because he was off in college. She was in his bed ready to fall asleep when a woman stood at the foot of the bed and told her to get out because she wasn’t Brad. Deb found the girl sleeping on the couch in the living room the next morning.
She would have found me sleeping in my car, but whatever.

Apparently Deb and her husband have found peace living with the multiple spirits in their home. They have lived there for a long time, over twenty years. And it looks like the spirits who inhabit their house have no intention of hurting them or leaving. Deb has grown used to them so she has no plans to send them away. I guess they buy their light bulbs in bulk.

So Much Fun, So Little Time

Life is racing along like a bullet train on crack. Okay, technically I don’t think drugs affect mechanical devices, but you get the idea.

I have been busy. Two weeks ago I had my launch party for Shepherd’s Fall. Thank you to everyone who attended, I am so grateful for your support. Last weekend I participated in an author panel with Cate Masters, Larry Kerr, Jennifer Harlow, Regge Episale, and Dennis Royer at Supernatural Saturday sponsored by the Mechanicsburg Mystery Bookshop and had a blast.

To top it off, I am working on the final draft of my first book in a new mystery series. More on that later. So, yeah I’m having more fun than circus clown on… well you know what I mean.

All Work And No Play

In honor of father’s day I just wanted to reflect on good dads and bad dads in fiction. Of course we all remember that Jack Torrance from The Shining was not exactly father of year. I don’t think I will ever forget the scenes of him chasing Danny through that haunted hotel.
And then on the good side there was… hmmm. I’m trying to come up with an exemplary father. Of course Harry Potter’s was dead, and Dorothy’s was dead, and Luke’s was thought dead, but turned out to be Darth, but in the end he turned out okay, I guess. Hercules had Zeus, and he was satisfactory in the father department, but he could be fairly tough. There was Pa in the Waltons and Pa on Little House on the Prairie, but I’m hard pressed to come up with a whole baseball team of fine fictitious dads.

Why is it so many dad’s are out of the picture in popular fiction?

I’m sure there are more examples in fiction; they just aren’t coming to mind. Because I have a great dad in real life, I guess I never thought about it before.

So on this Father’s day I want to say thanks to all the great real and fictitious dads. We don’t intend to take you for granted, but when you do your job well, we sometimes fail to remember.

Can you come up with any great dads in fiction?

The Eye of Sauron

With heartfelt apologies to J. R. R. Tolkien I titled my current post. After hearing this latest tale of a supernatural encounter, I had no choice.

Now anyone who knows me, understands I like chilling tales, at least from the safe distance of my imagination, but this story actually disturbed me.
I recently met a guy named Bob who sold me my new cell phone. In the course of him showing me how to use the cool device we started talking about the web, and I showed him my book trailer for Shepherd’s Fall. (I never miss an opportunity to hand out a bookmark or mention my novel. And why not? It took ten years of pounding away at the keyboard to get to this point, so I promote it everywhere I go.)

Anyway I digress. When Bob learned that I write ghost stories, you guessed it, he had one to tell me. And boy was this one a killer.
As a teenager, Bob awoke one night to discover a little girl standing next to his bed sobbing. The fact that he could see through her sent him crabbing backward and slamming into the wall his bed was up against. The girl vanished, and Bob spent a sleepless night.

Over the next few years he saw the girl several times--sometimes her entire figure, other times just a suggestion of body.

Once, a visiting friend took a break from playing video games and went downstairs to the kitchen in the middle of the night. He saw the ghostly girl standing facing the refrigerator. The friend didn’t want her to turn around and see him, so he crept back up to Bob’s room without a snack.
Bob has no idea who the girl is. His family built the home, so it is not like she had lived in it before she became a life-challenged entity.

Bad enough to have one ghost in the house, his father had an even stranger experience. This is the one I find most disturbing.

On the night his father got baptized as a Christian, he came home and saw a giant red eye staring in a window to the master bedroom on the second floor. Angered by the apparition, Bob’s dad charged outside to the window in question and searched for the specter. This to me seemed like one of those bad moves in a horror movie, but then again, this part scares me.
He didn’t see it, but he walked around the yard commanding the spirit in the name of Christ to leave the house, because it was protected by God. This was several years ago and things have quieted down since.

I’m not sure why I find the big red eye more disturbing than other hauntings, but I do, maybe because it reminds me of the red pig eyes in the Amityville Horror.

Luckily Bob and his family haven’t experienced any paranormal events for some time, and he is comfortable in the home. I think I would sleep with one eye open, but that’s just me.