The Checklist

Believe it or not, one of my notebooks holds a list of things I consider to be “scary.” I have a list so that I can refer to it while I’m writing my books. Included in this list are things like: seeing the shadow of feet on the other side of a closed door, even if you know you’re the only one in the house; or the face, meaning someone looking at you, whether through a window where it’s impossible (like the second floor) or from the mirror; or someone reaching out through a device like a phone call or a voicemail message from someone dead; or waking up to a specter beside or at the foot of the bed.

Of course, there are a ton more possible scary things: the passenger in the backseat of your car that you just glimpse in the rearview mirror. The footsteps upstairs when you’re alone. The crash in the other room, whether or not you find something on the floor –disturbing- or finding nothing disturbed at all – equally disturbing- when you go to check.

And then there’s touching, and I’m not even talking about something inappropriate. The soft caress across your forehead, the gentle tug on your hair or your clothes. In at least one instance I used an actual slap to the face.

Believe it or not, it’s not necessarily easy to come up with this stuff. Watching paranormal reality shows helps a lot! But sometimes I’ll be looking for just that one kind of disturbing instance, just that one particular thing that will point to supernatural activity, and I struggle to come up with anything. Which is one reason to keep a list. The other is so that I can read it over from time to time and maybe it will help drop a box off a shelf in my head, trigger a story that would be fun to tell.

Sometimes I’ll luck out and the characters will come up with their own hauntings. When I first started writing Cassie, I had no idea she would be able to do what she can do with a picture. I didn’t realize that Michael’s ability would be triggered by Cassie’s presence. As I wrote more and began to realize what these two were actually about, it was amazing for me. I’m still learning about their abilities, just like they are. In my own way, I can’t wait to see what else they can show me, what more they can do. (I don’t think Michael’s too happy about this, but hey, Michael’s not always too happy anyway, so there it is. Sorry, buddy!)

I am currently writing book seven of the Bridgeton Park Cemetery Series and a quick peek at my notebook brought up “imaginary friend” (always a goodie), “the attached entity a person picked up in childhood that never went away”, “coffin plates”, and the word “closet.” Pretty random, but still enough to trigger certain ideas.

What about you? Is there a particular kind of haunt that would bother you the most?

They See Dead People

One of the coolest things I get to do with my job is interview interesting people, and what I learn shows up in my books. I'm careful to research certain details when I write because I know that nothing is as annoying as finding a mistake in a novel when it relates to a subject I know something about. (I've never quite forgiven a particular author for her use of the misnomer "judo chop.") Details, right or wrong, can strengthen or derail an author's credibility. So I find people to talk to.

Some of the people I talk to see the dead. I ask them lots of questions because what Michael Penfield is able to see, or what Cassie Valentine is able to glean from the departed, is crucial to my stories. Since I like tales that have to do with the paranormal, this is one of the more enjoyable aspects of my work. On the other hand, it can be a little unsettling.

One gentleman I know was driving to his lady friend's house one night and as he was pulling into her driveway in back, he noticed that she was standing on her back porch, clad in a long, white nightgown. I'm sure I hardly need to continue this story but here it is for your verification. He got out of the car and she was no longer on the porch so he went around to the front door, the path he usually took when he arrived. She let him in and he looked at her. "What happened to the white nightgown?" he asked.

"What white nightgown?" She was bewildered.

"The one you were wearing when you were standing out on the back porch a minute ago."

She looked at him like he had sprouted another pair of ears. "It's winter. Why would I be standing on my back porch in a white nightgown?" Because, of course, she hadn't been.

I have to admit that I am glad I don't have the ability to see random ghosts. I don't know that I would handle it as gracefully as my friends. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't, given what happened over the summer! But they seem to take it very much in stride.

Another gentleman I know joined me for a book signing in my home town, since he is also a writer. After our three-hour stint of meeting people and selling our wares, I walked with him to the parking lot behind the store and asked him about seeing dead people. He told me it was something he has always been able to do. He didn't always like it, but there it is. He explained how he sees entities in people's houses, or in random buildings. He even explained that ghosts don't always appear the way one might expect. "There's a house down the street from me that's haunted by a young girl, maybe seven or eight years of age. But I know that she was in her nineties when she died. She just likes to project that image of herself." I had never heard of such a thing before that conversation, but have since run into that aspect of a haunting at various locations; he was just the first person to tell me that such a thing might happen.

We chatted a little longer and then decided we should part ways, since he had about a two-hour drive to get home from the bookstore. But he stopped for one last moment and said to me, just before he left, "You know, there's a dead guy watching us from a window in that building across the street." Then he grinned at me and went to his car.

I looked at the building in question and I didn't see a thing, but I would never look at it the same way again.

But...round about that time, Michael Penfield gained his ability to see the dead.

Looking for Cassie

My good friend and amazing writer, Terri Reid, once told me that when she writes a Mary O' Reilly story, she keeps two pictures close-by, each of which represents how she sees her characters Mary O' Reilly and Bradley Alden in her own mind.

I used to think I was nuts for clipping out a picture of an Avon model (I kid you not) that struck me as Michael Penfield as soon as I saw him. Truly. I was going through an Avon catalog and ran into this amazingly nice-looking young man who took my breath away because my brain started screaming "It's Michael Penfield!!!!!!" I tore the picture out of the catalog and stored it away in one of my writing folders, to be taken out and looked at for inspiration, or to show someone else what Michael looks like in my mind. Since that time, I have collected three or four more copies of the same picture and I am thrilled by that. The more Michael, the better!

And thank you Terri Reid for showing me that I'm not the only one who does this!

HOWEVER, I have no such model for Cassie Valentine. All I know about her is that she is on the shorter side, has long dark hair with a bit of a wave to it, has brown eyes, and she might look a bit like a gypsy. And I don't know anyone, nor have I ever seen anyone, who looks like that. EVER. 

And it's not like I'm not looking. I'm always looking. I constantly assess assorted actors and models, including the ones who are not known by name but have been photographed in ads for anything from mascara to tampons. Seriously. Cassie is still out there in the ether, coming to me in fits and starts but never all at once, like her amazingly gorgeous boyfriend. (Incidentally, the model for Michael doesn't have a scar but that's no problem whatsoever. Trust me.)

I know what Nick looks like. I know exactly what Steve looks like. I have a pretty good idea for Eloise. But Cassie, my main protagonist, remains in silhouette form, which is pretty weird. She's probably the main character in the  Bridgeton Park Cemetery Series and somehow remains, well, faceless.

Believe me, I look for my characters incessantly. While I was writing my one and only sword-and-sorcery fantasy (and everyone should be grateful I only tried to write one) I ran into one of my characters at a bar. Well, I didn't run into him. I caught a glimpse of him across the bar while he was taking a break from playing darts and ordering a beer. And like seeing Michael in an Avon catalogue, it made me catch my breath for just a moment. It's a little mind-boggling to see someone you've only pictured in your own head walking around in reality. Jarring, mind-boggling, but at the same time, very nice.

So here's the thing: if any of you have an idea what Cassie actually looks like and can suggest the name of a famous person, or somehow send me a pic to the email at my website, let me know. I'd be curious to see how all of you picture her! (So is Michael...)

Dead Noises, Dead Voices

Most of the time when I write my weekly post, I am focused on apparitions. Specters in the bedroom, or down the hall or on the staircase or in a picture or even looking back at you from your own mirror. Here's the thing, though: most of the ghosts I write about are things that are seen. I once took a preferred-learning-mode test and found out that I learn things 98% visually. Maybe that's why most of my descriptions are about what can be seen.
So this time, maybe I'll connect with the auditory learners I know and go for spectral sounds. And now that I think of it, sound is probably as scary if not scarier than vision when it comes to the supernatural. Who hasn't heard that unexplained thump in the deserted basement, or the voice in the other empty room? Who hasn't heard the sound of a door closing or creaking open, or those footsteps approaching you when you know that all the doors are locked and you're home alone?

There is also an ability called "clairaudient" as opposed to "clairvoyant" and it has to do with hearing voices. Now, before everyone starts going down the roads of psychotic episodes or schizophrenia, let's talk about this. Just as some people seem to have the ability to see dead people, some others (or in some cases, the same people) also have the ability to hear dead people. I looked into this a little, and every site I checked out specifically mentioned hearing the voices of the dead. I guess those of us hearing the other kinds of noises -the thumps, the bangs, the footsteps- are hearing what those spirits can do, not what they say.

I had a friend who was clairaudient. This made sleeping in new or different places extremely difficult for her, because she would hear people talking, even if there were no possible way there were actual people speaking anywhere in earshot. She had an apartment in San Francisco that got on her nerves for the year or so that she leased it because she could hear conversations in her rooms, and was able to verify that it wasn't due to people on the street or coming from neighbors in adjacent apartments. Whatever or whoever was talking would frequently whisper into her ear, literally. Especially when she was in bed. YIKES. I'm no longer in touch with her but I wonder sometimes if she lives with earbuds in her ears twenty-four, seven. I think I might. I also would have left that apartment a lot sooner than she did.

I have given two of my characters a bit of this ability: Cassie Valentine from the BPC series, and Philip Corts from Saving Jake and Missing Persons. (Well, I guess Michael Penfield had a little bit of that in Dead Voices, but for the most part he's all about seeing the dead.) Neither Cassie nor Corts always hears the dead speaking, but there are times that they do. I don't envy them that.

I guess the closest I ever got to it were the few totally creepy occasions when I heard a child call my name, back in the old house where I grew up. That is very unsettling because it is not a voice you recognize, but it fricking know who you are. Luckily, I don't think this ever happened to me more than twice. I think. I was more likely to hear that same child's voice singing something not discernible, but definitely singing. That wasn't the most comfortable thing either.

So since I don't have experience in this area, it has not turned up much in my work so far, but it's something to consider. I'd need to do more research. And maybe find someone with that ability who was willing to talk to me. (If you're reading this and you are clairaudient, hey, email me through my website or something!)

In the meantime, I guess I am fine with both my characters' and my own tendencies to hear the noises ghosts make as opposed to the words they might whisper. In fact, let's keep it that way.

Solid Ghosts?

I was watching an episode of The Dead Files, one of my favorite shows, and medium Amy Allen made a statement that freaked me out on two different levels. She said that most of the time, ghosts appear to her like normal, solid people, and that when she saw them as "shadow people," that meant something negative and bad.

Okay, that's a two-part sentence, so you can probably see how that would be disturbing in two different ways. Let's take the second , and more obviously bothersome part, first. "Shadow people" mean something negative and bad to her. Oy. I have never seen a ghost and I am glad this is a statement of fact. I have also never seen shadow people, and even gladder of that truth. Shadow people pop up in ghost stories all over the place. If you watch enough paranormal reality TV, shadow people are everywhere. And if all of them mean something not so good, that hits me as, well, problematic. They have been spotted in hotels, hospitals, residences, dormitories, museums - the list is endless and kind of makes me leery about going anywhere at all. (Only because, thank God, I have never seen a shadow person in my own house.) But what if one turns up? That's enough to give me a huge pause.

The first part of her statement, though, is intriguing to me. If she sees most dead people, or spirits, as solid, well, then, how does she know she's seeing someone dead? What's the tip-off? I could imagine some of it would be period dress. Some of it must be context: if she knows she's in a haunted place and that she is the only one there (besides her cameramen) then obviously the person or people she is seeing is/are spirit. But they look solid.

And that brings me to my grandson. When he told me that the former owners of our house were dead, I realized that he MUST have seen them. I think they probably came back to check out the room renovations we were doing to their much-loved former home, and ran smack-dab into my little guy, who can see them. But he knew they were dead, too. Did they tell him? When I asked him how he knew, he kind of glanced away from me and said "I just know."

He knows. Amy Allen knows. Would I know? If I walked past a dead person on the street, would I even be aware of it? If they look like solid people? Do all of us, especially those of us in urban areas, walk past scads of dead people on any given day and not even realize it? If my grandson and I spotted the same dead person at the same time, would he know that person was dead even though I didn't? 

I am fascinated, as is obvious, by the paranormal. I write about it. I read about it. I watch it on TV. I am probably obsessed with it. But despite all of this, there is still so much I don't know and that I wonder about. Maybe one of these days I'll meet a medium and I can ask questions like that. (Actually, I know a few sensitives, but we've never discussed this. I probably should broach the subject somehow, although bringing it up when we've met for lunch seems a bit awkward. "Hey, how's it going? How's the new job? Say, how can you tell that someone you're looking at is dead?")

If you read my work -and I sure hope you do! Shameless plug- you may see me play with this idea in the future. The concept of ghosts that look like living people. Michael Penfield sees them as transparent, for the most part, although he says at one point that dead people get "back-lit something awful" by a movie screen, so maybe not always. It's something to consider, though. I'll put it to him and see what he and Cassie think about it all. It will be interesting to get their take...