The Paranormal Bucket List. Again.

My friend, Sylvia Shults, is both a writer and a real, live, ghost investigator. If you google her, you can find out all about her and her books. She’s even been on the show Ghost Hunters, so there you go.

Last November, while we were at the Psychic and Paranormal Expo over in Davenport, Iowa, I asked Sylvia if she had a bucket list of places she would like to investigate. And yes, she did. All of them were places I wouldn’t go within ten miles of, like the Villisca Ax Murder House. I don’t remember if she included the fun places like Waverley Sanitarium or the Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum. I don’t think it would have surprised me if she had; this is a woman who had a great time overnighting at the Lizzie Borden Museum/Bed and Breakfast.

But it made me start to think about my own bucket list. In terms of life in general, I don’t have one. I know people would tell me that of course I do, there must be SOME things I’d love to do before I die. Actually, though, I don’t think there are. There are a lot of things I’d like to do or try, but if that never happens, that’s fine. I can’t think of any particular place I absolutely need to get to, or any particular activity I absolutely need to try. I’m actually pretty content with my life, and that is a big blessing, as far as I’m concerned.

On the other hand, though, when it comes to the paranormal, (and I think I’ve written about this whole bucket-list thing before), there are a couple things I wouldn’t mind checking out before I check out permanently, even though I won’t feel disappointed if I never get there. One of them is the opportunity to see ghost lights. The closest ones to me that I know about are the Paulding Lights up in the Upper Peninsula, Michigan. I have a friend who has actually seen them and she got me interested in searching for them myself. Or I suppose if I ever wind up there, I’d be happy to check them out in Marfa, Texas, or Brown Mountain in North Carolina.

And then there’s my whole cryptid obsession. If I get to Maine, I want to see the International Cryptozoology Museum. That seems doable, too. A little dicier would be having an opportunity to see, in real life, a thunderbird. Those have fascinated me for forever. I wouldn’t mind getting a glimpse of the Loch Ness Monster. I’d absolutely love to see a leprechaun. And maybe Bigfoot would be okay –like, from a huge distance. Through binoculars.

There are things I’d rather not see. I don’t feel the need to run into a chupacabra or Mothman. I don’t need to see the New Jersey Devil, either. I’d rather not get caught in a “buzzard-puke” rain –that is, the kind of downpour that literally consists of flesh and blood. No one can explain these particular “rains,” but they’ve been documented and I just think. No thank you, very much.

I learned recently, thanks to one of my FB connections, that the city of Sault Ste. Marie has one of the largest paranormal conferences in the Midwest. I wonder if I could ever pair that with a search for the Paulding ghost lights.

And if I got to Sault Ste. Marie, I know that’s also the home of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum which would be a must for me. Saving Jake, here we come! Besides, that museum has the bell that was raised from the Lake Superior-doomed ship, the Edmund Fitzgerald. I hear that when that bell was raised from the depths, it immediately began ringing, even though there was no wind blowing. They say the divers all got chills when they heard that long-silenced bell find its voice again.

I have been lucky, if that’s the right word for it, to have seen a ghost. Or two. I have also seen a UFO, although it was not up-close-and-personal. This was in the days before phone cameras, but even with one, I would not have been close enough to get a nice video of it. I just got to watch it as it zoomed across the night sky at a high rate of speed, abruptly changed directions –like literally stopping and then heading off another way- and then resumed its quick trek in the night. It did this several times, so I was able to watch it for a few minutes. It was fascinating. It was also a nice, deep, glowing red.

So ghosts and UFO’s. Two things I could check off of my list, if I had one. But I really don’t. Really. Well, maybe those ghost lights…

Museum Displays - And Then Some

Anyone who has ever felt just the slightest tingle of uneasiness while touring a museum, raise your hand. Okay, let's talk about that.

While I was at the Psychic and Paranormal Expo with my fellow writer (and ghost hunter) Sylvia Shults, I asked her what was on her bucket list of places to investigate. After all, I had just put up a blog post about my own bucket list so I was curious about hers. To my surprise, she named two local Chicago museums: The Museum of Science and Industry, and The Field Museum of Natural History.

I've been to both but had a membership to the Field for some years, so I'm more familiar with that one. 

The Museum of Science and Industry houses a coal mine that can be toured, a German U-boat from WWII, and an old train car. All three of them have been noted as at least disturbed, if not all the way haunted. Having visited both the coal mine and the U-boat, I can understand why. 

But the Field Museum, at least to me, would win a hands down contest between the two for "Eeriest Public Place Frequented by Visitors and Tourists." The Field not only has extensive fossil collections -hey, it has Sue, the most complete T-Rex skeleton ever found, as well as its new Titanosaurus that dwarfs pretty much everything else on the first floor,- it also has a large Egyptian display in the basement, and halls and halls filled with the personal belongings of various groups of indigenous people from all the populated continents. With dioramas.

I am fascinated by those displays. I always have been. As a kid I loved to look at the beaded buffalo garments from the Plains nations here in North America, or the utensils and weapons from different peoples in Africa. As I grew more educated, I began to wonder how early collectors got their hands on so many of these items which were surely prized by the people who had made them. And as I started paying more attention to atmosphere, or ambiance, or whatever the correct term may be, I began to feel things through the display glass. I wondered about the woman who had painstakingly beaded that buffalo hide, or the man who had wielded that cruel-looking cudgel. And I wondered what became of all of them, that their possessions should end up on display in a city so far away from where they had lived.

Now, when Jim and I take the grandkids to the museum, we tour through those displays so that the children can look at all of these artifacts the way we had once done. But we never linger. Jim and I both feel a bit of uneasiness there, and my sensitive grandchildren either pick up on that, or are experiencing their own feelings of...what? Disturbance? Edginess? Maybe even lingering residual anger or grief? As goofy as it may sound, I get the sense that everything in those cases may be displayed sensibly -even scientifically- but despite the glass that encompasses them, there is still an energy or an aura emanating from them that hearkens back to their places, and people, of origin.

I had an English professor who traveled extensively through the Outback in Australia and she told me one time that when you were exploring various locations with your guide, and were told that certain places were not to be walked through casually or even entered at all, you paid attention. She said that you could feel something in those places, something that didn't lend itself to touching or measuring or examination, but that was there nonetheless.

One time when Jim and I, along with my sister and her husband, took a tour through an ancient archeological site in New Mexico, the guide told us that where we stood had once been a place of worship. He was careful to greet whatever spirits resided there on our behalf, and also to thank them for allowing us to have visited when it was time to leave. He was serious. And the space itself was rife with an undercurrent of energy or force. Whatever was there, it felt sentient.

During Jim's studies in Native American culture, we met a woman who sold art, jewelry, and blankets from the Southwest nations. She also sold kachina dolls, figures representing different deities from the Hopi culture. Her particular figures stood twelve to fourteen inches in height and were clothed in proper traditional regalia. We admired them and talked to her about her store, and offhandedly she mentioned that when she closed her shop at night and put the dolls back into their glass cabinets, that she never shut the doors on those cabinets.

We were surprised. "Aren't you worried about people breaking in and stealing them?" I asked.

"Not really," was her reply. "And closing them in like that is a mistake." She went on to mention that the energy in the dolls, even though they were reproductions, was enough to have shattered glass. From the inside of the cases. "After that happened, I don't close the doors anymore," she said. "And I no longer have that kind of problem."

So I guess I can understand my friend wanting to investigate the Field Museum. Something is present in and around those display cases. I can't tell you why the glass has never shattered in those museum displays. Although to tell you the truth, I also can't tell you for a fact that it has never happened.

Conversations With My Grandson

My oldest grandchild, as I have mentioned frequently before, sees dead people. But he doesn't announce it all the time and he can be reluctant to talk about it. One time when he was at our house, he asked his grandfather to come to the bathroom with him while he used the facility. Jim went with him and asked, "Why do you always have to have someone in the bathroom with you?" And he answered accordingly, "Because I'm scared." Jim: "Of what?" Grandson: "The ghosts." He didn't explain it any further than that, and my husband, not having the same obsessions I do, didn't ask.

I have related the disturbing conversations about our little guy running up and jumping onto the couch with us, announcing that he was scared because "The boy is coming. The big boy." 

I have related the even more disturbing conversation when he told us he was scared. I asked if he was scared of the big boy, and he said, "No. The big boy is scared, too." That was enough to freak me out, although of course I couldn't say that in front of him.

I have written about the more recent conversation when he told me the people who owned this house before us are now dead. I asked him how he knew and he said that he just knew. I think he ran into them when they came to see what we were doing to their beloved house. (We've renovated two rooms, and while that might not have been to the former owners' taste, I think they may have been pleased to know that we still love our little place.)

So now we come to this past weekend. Just a few evenings ago, as a matter of fact. Our daughter had asked us to take him overnight and we agreed. So per our usual routine, Jim got him bathed and I put him to bed, reading a bunch of books before giving him a kiss and saying goodnight. As always, he told me he was afraid to be alone and afraid for me to turn out the light. We always turn out the light but leave his door open and then turn on the overhead lights in the adjacent rooms so that he's not completely in the dark. I asked him why he was so afraid and he said that when he's alone in the dark, "the ghosts come." So I gave him the same advice my buddy Sylvia Shults gave my character Michael Penfield in Drawing Vengeance: I told him to tell the ghosts to go away, and that they should listen to him and leave him alone.

Next morning:

Me:  Did the ghosts come last night?

Him:  Yes.

Me:  Did you tell them to go away?

Him:  Yes.

Me:  And did they go away?

Him:  Yes.

This all may sound crazy to nonbelievers, but I think anything that helps this sweet, sensitive kid empower himself is a good idea. Maybe if he can learn to take on the ghosts bothering him in his own room, he'll also learn to take on the living, breathing people who might want to bother him on the bus or at school. Ghosts, bullies, anyone in his space who is unwelcome and unwanted: if he can learn to stand up to all them, then I'm for it, full-tilt boogie.

Hunting in the Dark of Night - Not Me!

Watching paranormal reality shows is one of my life's pleasures, even though Jim likes to say they really have nothing to do with reality.. (He's not that big a skeptic, he just likes to hassle me.) This is not news to anyone who reads this blog, even if just occasionally. So while I was musing over past episodes of Ghost Hunters, The Haunted Collector, and The Dead Files, I began to wonder: why do they do all their investigating in the dark?

Turns out I am not the only one who asked that question. I googled it, in fact, and was surprised at the number of hits that turned up. Skeptics as well as believers both agree that investigating in the dark adds to the "creepiness" factor of paranormal TV shows. No argument there. However, their thoughts take different paths immediately after that. The skeptics say that the darkness makes it easier to fake everything that turns up on camera. The believers have a whole list of reasons why they hunt -and film- in the dark, i.e., at night. 

That list includes: Less people around, therefore less interference both in general and in terms of energy; less electricity being used, therefore less interference in terms of electromagnetic fields; lots of ghost hunters have day jobs and hunting is a hobby, so there's really no choice with that; businesses being investigated can't close their doors to the public so investigations must take place after business hours; ghost hunters who have the high-tech instruments read a spectrum of light anyway, and some things are better seen on infrared; some say that since people are NOT nocturnal, their senses are on higher alert at night and in the dark, so they become more sensitive to even mild disturbances that might be ignored during the day.  I think that about covers it.

My friend Sylvia Shults is a ghost hunter/paranormal investigator, with a specialty in the Peoria State Mental Hospital. (She has written a book about it called Fractured Spirits and was even on Ghost Hunters!) All of her investigations have been at night (she has three jobs; this is a hobby.) She has also invited me along but since this is a volunteer as opposed to a high-paying endeavor (read: "I don't know if you could pay me enough to go there") I don't think I'll be going with her any time soon. She is currently working with a group that investigates all manner of hauntings, but I'd have to interview her and get back to you for more details on that.

The point is, her group also investigates almost exclusively at night. For them, the reasons seem to be the day job thing, and also the heightened sensitivity thing. I will take her word for it.

If hauntings exist, people say, then shouldn't they also be happening during the day? And the short answer is, of course they should. I know lots of stuff happened at my old house during the day, although even those spirits liked night hours. I could -and did- time the most disturbed hours in that house and they were between 10:30 pm and 1:30 am, with many and varied cameo appearances at other times. But I could count on things happening between the above-stated hours. Count on it. Despite the spirit behavior in my house, hauntings are not relegated to overnight hours. They can and do happen at any hour of the day, and people who look into these things will agree with that.

Still, the best hours for investigating the spirit world, even if just for how it looks on camera, seem to be at night. Night is the time of sleep, at one time referred to as "little death," and night is the world claimed by all the scary things, from ghosts, vampires, and werewolves to evil people doing evil things without the sun to reveal them. Night is the time I do not work on my books. Just because.

Some ghost-story writer, huh? I don't write at night. I don't read scary stories at night. And I don't watch my reality TV shows at night, either. The dark may put people on high alert and lead to heightened sensitivity, but in my case, it also leads to a heightened imagination. So I let the paranormal investigators have their day jobs and go hunting at night. I have my day job -and then I turn to the safety of mundane things and try to get a good night's sleep...

PS. Here's a pic of my favorite hunters:

What Has 1000 Heads, 2000 Legs, and Sees Ghosts?

Okay, maybe the title is an exaggeration. Or maybe it's below the mark. I have no idea how many people attended last week's 2014 Paranormal and Psychic Expo in Moline, Illinois, but I suspect the number could reach the high hundreds, at least. And while maybe not everyone who attended sees ghosts, I'll bet an awful lot of them do.

Sylvia Shults, fellow supernatural writer and paranormal investigator, invited me to share a table with her at the Expo, thus giving me a chance to sell some of my own books and read a few palms. (I will always give someone who buys one of my books a free palm-reading, so if you ever meet me on the street and you've bought one of mine online, tell me I owe you one and I'll happily oblige.) I have never been to anything like this. Normally I attend author fests and litererary book signings, so this was a first for me. And I kinda hope it won't be my last. It was terrific.

The table to my immediate right was taken by a mother-daughter team who run a company that hand-sews, knits, and crochets stunning clothes. Their ability to take beautiful fabrics and yarns and turn them into wear-ables was amazing. I wound up buying skirts, the mother half of the duo knocked some off the price to get one of my books, and then I read her palm.

Across from me was a woman who had two tables' worth of jewelry. She was just down the row from the incense/herb people, and the energy worker who works on people's scalps. Scattered throughout the gathering were various tarot card readers, palm readers, psychics, and mediums. There were speakers scheduled throughout the event -Sylvia was speaking about the Peoria State Hospital, a mental institution that was opened in 1902 and shut down in 1973, and is haunted. Extremely haunted. Sylvia has been involved in numerous investigations into the defunct facility, and wrote a book about it called Fractured Spirits. It's a great read, by the way, if you want to freak yourself out some night.

Jim came along with me and did nice things like running out to pick up lunch (the event ran from 10 AM until 6 PM), holding down the table when Sylvia and I both needed to be absent at the same time, making change for customers, and generally being a friendly face. He absconded at one point to have his aura photographed and interpreted, but hey, he earned that!

But the highlight of all of this was the ghost stories. Since Sylvia and I are in the business of selling ghost stories, the people who stopped by were quite happy to swap stories with us. I was in pig heaven, listening to tales about orbs, family members who won't go away, and other spirited manifestations. Unfortunately, I didn't get to hear the tales from a woman who grew up in Mississippi and knew a southern tubful of them, but I can catch up with that on Sylvia's podcast.

We ended the evening having dinner with Sylvia and two of her friends, and hearing still more ghost stories. Wow, I couldn't have asked for a better day. The moral of today's story is, if you get a chance to go to one of these things? Take it! I know I will.

I'm Baaaccckkk!

So it turns out that people don't like reading the same blog post for four months solid! Go figure!

I wish I could say I had one big dandy excuse for my four-month absence, but actually it was a bunch of little excuses instead: finishing up the latest novel, Dead Voices; thumb surgery that precluded all writing including keyboarding; 1.5 other procedures; life. I know, I know, writers get around all this sort of thing and produce anyhow, but I had a choice between the novel and the blog and I sacrificed the blog to get the novel finished. And I hope you like it!

But back to my normal topics of conversation. Scary stuff.

Last month, I signed Jim and myself up for a two-part class with Ursula Bielski, author of Chicago Haunts and co-author of Graveyards of Chicago. Like me, Ms. Bielski grew up in a haunted house on the north side of Chicago. Like me, she is passionately devoted to all things paranormal and enjoys getting together with other like-minded individuals. Unlike me, she runs tours and also does paranormal investigation. Her presentations were interesting those two nights, especially with the added attraction of an overhead light that would blink, go off, or flare-up on its own while she lectured. Undoubtedly this was a faulty light bulb but it made things more fun!

But Ms. Bielski's class was just one of the many events I've got going the first part of this year, to feed my obsession and hopefully to inspire future books, as well. In a couple of weeks, I'm dragging Jim to see Jason Hawes and Steve Gonsalves of Ghost Hunters at the (haunted) Rialto Theater in Joliet. I watch the show, I've read their books, and I can't wait! Hopefully they are as entertaining in person as they are on TV. And Jim and I are sitting up in the balcony: maybe we'll get a visit from someone on the other side?

Also, I've been invited to share a book-selling table with colleague Sylvia Shults, author of Fractured Spirits, at the Quad Cities Psychic and Paranormal Expo in Moline on May 3. Fractured Spirits is the story of the Peoria State Hospital, a facility for the mentally ill, that closed its doors in 1973. Sylvia, who is a paranormal investigator as well as a writer, has researched, visited, investigated, and generally become an expert in both the physical and the supernatural history of the extremely haunted grounds of the old hospital. She's a great speaker and a terrific writer. Come and see us if you're around! We love to chat. We love to swap ghost stories. And as always, I offer a basic 10-minute or so palm analysis (okay, okay, palm-reading) to anyone who buys one of my books! Maybe one of Sylvia's books, too, depending on time.

Some time after that, during the summer, Jim and I have been invited to visit Williamsburg, Virginia. Can't wait to get there! The history, the site, the ghosts! And yes, they do ghost tours, and yes, you bet Jim and I are going on one or two.

So hopefully, with all this going on, there will be more regular posts to this site. I know people are stopping by to check it out and I am rightfully embarrassed that I haven't been good about putting up new material. So please take this as my apology and hopefully, I can get this blog back on its very haunted path!

Oh, and one more thing: read Dead Voices!