Collecting Ghost Stories

Collecting Ghost Stories

Everyone who knows me, knows I collect ghost stories. I don't just watch the programs on cable, I actually clip news articles about haunted places (the month of October always sees a whole slew of these in the newspaper). And when I do a school visit or a signing, I invariably ask people to share a true ghost story with me. Some of the tales they have me told still make my hair stand on end.

Last week, my husband and I were vacationing up in Door County, Wisconsin for the Memorial Day weekend. We stopped in at Grandma Tommy's Country Store just out of curiosity and were greeted with the customary and wonderful display of cherries (dried, frozen, chocolate covered), cheese, jams, honey, fudge, gift baskets, tee shirts, and the usual sundry items that make tourist shopping so much fun. I wandered back to the book rack that held the cookbooks, local guides, and gift books, and was pleasantly startled to find a copy of my own Ghosts of Lake Michigan sitting on the top of the rack.

Jim, my husband, who is well aware of how much publicizing I need to do and how much I actually don't, literally grabbed the book in one hand, my arm in the other, and propelled me up to the cash register to ask if she wanted me to sign the copy they had. The young girl behind the register introduced us to her mother, the store owner, and that very nice lady, my husband, and I had a terrific conversation about the store, about her choice of books (she's going to order more of mine! Yay!), and best of all, about ghosts.

While we were standing there, she proceeded to tell us two ghost stories, one of them involving Grandma Tommy's Country Store itself. She confided that she doesn't normally talk so openly about this sort of thing so that people won't think she's crazy, but given the subject matter of my book, she had no problem sharing her stories with me.

I not only collect ghost stories, I remember who told me the stories, and where we were at the time. Against the backdrop of all the true experiences I've heard, this one will always be a standout.

www.grandmatommy's.com

 

By the way, if any of you read the blog for Young Adult Authors No One Has Heard Of, you might have already seen this post. Apologies. I blog there once a month, and I guess for that one time a month, Ubiquitous Ghosts will carry the same story. But just once a month!

I Prefer to Tell My Ghost Stories

As a writer of paranormal fiction, I frequently do what I like to call "research." Sometimes, it's sitting around watching cable TV shows about ghosts, monsters, and psychics, and other times it's rooting around the Internet to see what I can scare up, so to speak. Yesterday I searched for paranormal organizations in Illinois. I found a fantastic website that listed and linked to all the paranormal organizations in my home state. We apparently have 125 of them. One hundred and twenty-five. At the end of that rather extensive list, the site obligingly followed up with a second list of organizations that are active in Illinois even though their home bases are in other states. After scrolling down for several minutes, I decided not to even try counting their total number.

But back to Illinois. One hundred and twenty-five. That's a lot of groups. That's an awful lot of groups.

Being a fiction writer, I started wondering other things about this listing. Do two groups ever stumble over each other at the same investigative site? Better yet, do ghosts stumble over each other trying to keep up with all these groups? Talk about not resting in peace! There may be ghosts that can't even hang out in their favorite abandoned mansion without being disturbed by yet another investigation. And even better than that, is it possible that any of these organizations has a member who is actually no longer breathing?

I sound as if I am mocking paranormal investigation and that is something I certainly would never do. I know I don't have the moxie to go into a reputedly haunted building after dark and look for the things that are going bump in the night. I know. I was invited and I turned it down. (Can we say chicken?)

Still, I am fascinated by the stories that are compiled by groups like this and by the history they unearth while researching hauntings. People who investigate help people who write. Like me.

I currently have a manuscript that involves a group of people who tell ghost stories every Thursday night. A friend of mine who read the book thinks I should have this group of characters branch out into actual investigations, but I don't know if that will ever happen. After all, that would entail research on the part of the author, like a hands-on experience in paranormal investigation. Um, I think my characters will stick to telling stories!

Nothing Like a Short (?) Break

Seeing as how it has been over two (two, gasp!) years since I last posted here, and seeing as how I get daily reports on how this website is doing --there are still people visiting this!!!-- I figured I'd better make an appearance and put in something new.

Life has been kind of crazy, but two years later I have become a certified phlebotomist and medical assistant, picked up a crazy sort of addiction to all the paranormal TV shows on cable (Ghost Hunters, Psychic Kids, Psychic Investigators, Haunted History, My Ghostly Encounter, Celebrity Ghost Stories, etc.), started reviewing books for Windy City Review/Chicago Writers Association, and inflamed my posterior tibialis tendon for about the umpteenth time resulting in the required brace. Oh, and as can be seen above, had the cover of my book redone. Isn't that gorgeous???

I have also learned that if I don't write regularly enough, my writing muscles atrophy. To that end, I will try to be a more disciplined blogger and get going on any of the three unfinished manuscripts I have surrounding me.

Two questions for my readers at large, though:
1) Anyone know a medical practice looking for a part-time medical assistant in the Chicago area?
2) Anyone know how to screen comments for this blog? I don't mind the valid ones but the things that turn up in Asian characters or the Cyrillic alphabet drive me nuts!

Ghosts vs. Vampires

I have never been much of a vampire fan. When I was a kid and watched monster movies with my family, I was always drawn more to ghosts or actual monsters. Vampires pretty much left me cold, and that was without even taking any of my blood. As I got older and began to understand the traditional lure of the suave, handsome, undead lover with the retractable teeth, vampires did even less for me. Even now, when vampires have been coming to the fore of paranormal interest in seemingly endless waves, I'm standing on the shoreline watching the waves rise and fall.

I still prefer ghosts. And as long as I'm riffing on other people's creative offerings, I've decided to put together my top five list of why I prefer ghosts:

5. Ghosts don't mind crosses. There are about a gazillion haunted churches in Europe alone, and the Catholic churches are even laid out in the shape of a cross. Not a problem for the spirit types.

4. Ghosts don't care about garlic. They'll still come to visit you even if your most recent meal included roast garlic on toast points as an appetizer, 40-clove roast chicken as the main course, and a side of garlic bread. In fact, if you go to bed after a meal like that, you're probably going to have haunted dreams.

3. Ghosts can be photographed. Those of us who believe in them, believe that, too.

2. Ghosts can be seen in the mirror. One of their favorite tricks is turning up behind you when you finish washing your face and bring your head up out of the basin to reach for a towel. (Who's that staring at you over your shoulder? The one with the totally white face and the dark, dead eyes?)

1. Ghosts can handle sunlight. They don't burst into flames, disintegrate, or sparkle when they're under the sun.

Just my humble opinion, but I think ghosts have it all over vampires.

That said, though, I've been feeling an overwhelming need to learn more about the fanged types ever since I found that leather-bound journal in the library the other day, a gorgeous old-world kind of tome that was totally blank except for a huge depiction of a dragon in the middle of it...

Scary Toys

Wow, it's going to be hard to leave behind that picture of Ryan Kelley holding Martin's books. Perhaps I should just stick it into random blog posts from time to time just for grins! It's a great picture.

On to today's topic: scary toys. There are a variety of ways toys can be scary. For instance, cheaper versions of Barbie-like dolls frequently look like a little like zombies. Imported toys can have all sorts of health dangers. And anything having to do with clowns? Let's not even go there. Yes, there are all sorts of ways toys can cause a fair amount of anxiousness.

But I'm talking specifically about the battery-powered items that sometimes come to life on their own. Anyone have something like that around the house? The doll that starts talking in the middle of the night? My niece had one of those and finally removed the batteries.

At our house, we have two toys. The first is a remote control "soft" car. The car itself is more plush than hard plastic so it won't hurt the child playing with it, and it won't damage furniture. Seems harmless enough, until it's one a.m., no one is near the car or the remote control, and it suddenly starts revving its own engine. Fortunately, the batteries in it died recently and we just haven't gotten around to replacing them. (Batteries probably last longer in toys that don't turn themselves on.)

The other one is a puzzle of barnyard animals that makes the appropriate animal noise when you remove the animal-shaped puzzle piece and then put it back. When all the pieces are in place, it's as silent as a tomb, heh-heh. Somehow, the horse piece has gone missing, and now this puzzle makes horse noises at me when I enter the room. Especially when 1) it's dark and 2) I'm home alone. I LOVE this because I understand that in order for this thing to make noise, someone or something needs to cover up the hole left by the missing puzzle piece. This toy will start neighing at me from its place on the shelf when no one else is around.

I got so annoyed with it the other morning (like five-thirty a.m. after Jim had left for work and I was alone) that I stood there in the dark and yelled at it to knock it off.

It did.

I still can't decide if that was scarier than having it talk to me.

I'm Just Glad That Martin Bartloff Is My Friend

Several months ago, I was a guest on my friend Martin Bartloff's blog site. The piece I wrote for him touched on a more than one topic, among them the Law of Attraction and an actor named Ryan Kelley. At the time, Martin was working on his first novel and wanted to contact Mr. Kelley regarding the book.

Apparently since I wrote that blog (see Martin's blog at http://martinbartlo ff.blogspot. com/ and check out the date May 4, 2009) Martin retreated into his wizarding room, picked up his wand, and played a little more with his favorite Law. The proof of that is this lovely picture of Ryan Kelley holding two copies of Martin's novel. I'm not exactly sure what else he or they have in the works but I would guess that since this involves Martin, almost anything is possible.

See, Martin had a story idea, wrote the novel, found an editor, found a publisher, lost a publisher, found another editor, got the book published, (all the while looking for Ryan Kelley who was the inspiration for one of the characters), hit the top ten of Amazon's YA book list, and then became e-mail pals with a certain actor --all inside of a year.

Did I mention that when Martin and I became e-mail friends --we didn't meet in person until few months after that-- he was delighted and perhaps not surprised to find out that I live in the same town where Ryan Kelley grew up? Martin's life is full of weird coincidences like that. Or not coincidences.

At any event, since I first wrote about Martin looking for Mr. Kelley, and now that we know how that turned out, I figured I should do a follow-up to that first blog.

It's the least I could do.

So he won't go back into his wizarding room, pick up his wand, and send something unsavory in my direction...

You can find Martin at http://www.martinbartloff.com/ and his book at Amazon.

Ghosts, Steampunk and Nick Valentino

Hey, I'm stepping aside today to let fellow writer Nick Valentino have his say. Which is pretty dang interesting to someone like me!

Ghosts in Steampunk?

First off, a huge thank you to Ophelia for letting me come on and guest blog today.

Ah! A blog dear to my heart! When I first started writing I wrote horror. Well, I still do, but that’s on the back burner for a little while. Anyway I wrote an entire six hundred page manuscript about a little Japanese/American girl that has grand supernatural powers. One of her abilities was she could speak with the dead. As she grows up she can hear all the ghosts around her. It takes a while for her to be able to calm the thousands of voices in her head and block them out. I love everything that’s remotely spooky.

So it should come to no surprise that yes my Steampunk novel, Thomas Riley has ghosts in it as well. In the chapter “Phantoms”, Thomas has an artifact in his pocket that gets broken. The room gets frigid, and Thomas is surrounded by a horror show of solid but not quite alive people.

It seems a bit odd to inject the supernatural into a Steampunk story, but I see the genre of Steampunk as basically limitless. Try this link if you want to know the skinny on Steampunk. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk

Most of the time Steampunk is all about the human mind. It deals with engineering, science, invention, creativity and ingenuity but I just couldn’t keep away from having some elements of the supernatural in the novel. Maybe it’s my own fascination that I wanted my hardcore science based characters to deal with a few things that were a little out of their comfort zone. I wanted to see how they would react to seeing a ghost. Of course they’re pretty confused by the entire encounter, which is how any scientist would probably react.

I know this may all seem a little confusing, but imagine an action story, filled with Sky Pirates, a twenty year war, and two inventors fighting their way through enemy territory to save a woman’s soul and all of a sudden they have to deal with ghosts? If that interests you, here’s the blurb to wet your appetite some more.

For more than twenty years West Canvia and Lemuria have been at war. From the safety of his laboratory, weapons designer Thomas Riley has cleverly and proudly empowered the West Canvian forces. But when a risky alchemy experiment goes horribly wrong, Thomas and his wily assistant Cynthia Bassett are thrust onto the front lines of battle and forced into shaky alliances with murderous sky pirates in a deadly race to kidnap the only man who can undo the damage: the mad genius behind Lemuria's cunning armaments.

Find out more at:

http://sirthomasriley.com

You can purchase signed copies at:

http://thomasriley.bigcartel.com/

or

http://www.echelonpress.com