Why I've Decided to Write Ghost Stories

When I was a little girl my sisters and I would tell ghost stories; not just the sit-around-the-campfire stories everyone hears but other stories -- our own.  Maybe that was foreshadowing of sorts.  Strange things can happen in families and they certainly did in mine.

My mother was a seer of sorts.  She never told me about ghosts but she had a freaky way of knowing things before they happened.  The time I remember most vividly was the day my brother had gone deer hunting with one of our neighbors.  My mother was hanging out clothes that afternoon and I was helping.  All of  sudden she became completely still and turned to stare at the mountain behind her.  "Something is wrong," she said. 

We had a 10 party line back then; 10 families shared one phone line.  If you wantd to make a call you picked up the receiver and hung up if someone else was talking on the phone.  That day she picked up the receiver and heard a man saying, "Some kid is in the woods with his leg shot off." 

She didn't even wait to find out what kid or who was talking.  She simply got her coat and boots on and waved down the ambulance as it went by the house. "I'm going with you.  He's my son."

My brother had gone after a large buck with a big rack, tripped over some barbed-wire fence, and discharged his shotgun at close range.  His lower leg was shattered.  At the age of 14 he had the presence of mind to strip off his coat, remove his undershirt and put on his own tourniquet. There he was, alone and wounded, in a forest on the mountain.

The farmer who had taken my brother hunting had left him in the woods and gone home to do chores.  Whether he thought Lewie was going home or continuing to hunt I guess I never knew.  That part doesn't really matter, I suppose.  What does matter is that the farmer came out of the barn and saw what every hunter hopes to see -- a large buck with a huge rack standing at the bottom of the field looking at him.  The deer was just out of range.  The farmer grabbed his rifle and took off after the deer.

Every time the farmer had the deer in range and stopped to take a shot, the deer would move.  As soon as it was out of range it would stop again and watch the farmer approach.  This happened repeatedly, the deer always moving just out of range and then stopping as if waiting for the farmer.  The deer led the farmer to my brother and then disappeared.  The farmer swore, over and over for year to come, that the deer had taken him to Lewie on purpose. Some of us believe it was the buck Lewie had been chasing in the first place who saw the child in need of help and went to get it. Without intervention there is no doubt my brother would have either bled to death or frozen to death.

Between the story of the deer and my mother's uncanny way of knowing when things were wrong I knew at an early age that I believed in things that couldn't be seen.  I was disappointed to realize that I wasn't born with any talent in that direction myself; however, I have a sister who attracts premonitions and spirits to the point that she has to work to block them.  It was through her that I found out my mother could sense more than events.  At some point when my mother realized that Faye had inherited this skill or curse, depending on your point of view, she had reassured Faye that the ghosts were real even if other people couldn't see or hear them. "Places aren't haunted; people are," she told her. 

And that seems to be true. I never had a real encounter with a ghost until recently and that was when I was researching a book I'm writing called The Haunting of Waterford Road.  My sister had told me that a spirit pounds on the cellar door.  I was standing right next to the door one day when it was struck by someone or something hard enough to make me jump.  I'm not talking about a tap or a moment when you think you might have heard something; I'm talking about a good, solid bang like a fist on the door.  As I jumped back, startled, Faye laughed.  "That's my ghost," she said and immediately opened the door to show me that no one and nothing was there.  "I don't think he wants to hurt anyone.  He's just angry." 

I think that writing about ghosts draws them to you.  I heard a CSI investigator who did paranormal research say the same thing in a presentation.  My brother-in-law says it's just a matter of being aware.  More and more I think he's right.  He never gave much thought to ghosts until he waved at his young daughter and her friend who were walking up the road to meet him.  When the little girl go to him she was alone. "Where's your friend?" he asked.  Kassie assured him that no one was nor had been with her.  The ghost child is more easily seen than the angry man in the cellar.  She has been seen not only walking up the road but also crouching under the dining room table and walking up the steps to the bedrooms.  I haven't seen her myself although I would like to but three people have. 

If you announce in a crowded room that you are collecting people's ghost stories you always have a few individuals pull you aside before they leave and say, "I don't know if you're interested, but ...." Some of those stories don't ring true; some are "a feeling" or a story that is a third, fourth or fifth person narrative. You know those stories, the ones Aunt Jane told Mom who told Sister Sally who told me.  But there are other stories that are clear and sure: the deceased mother-in-law who insisted her daughter-in-law look at the family album for no apparent reason until she finally found her deceased father-in-law's military discharge and purple heart citation tucked inside the binding, the elderly gentleman who sits rocking in his favorite chair on the porch visible enough for a boy to ask who he is, the doors that won't open or keep opening, the adult children who each had a visit from their deceased mother the week before their father passed away, and more and more and more.

My goal is to write four books this year.  Waking Up Dead is about a woman who doesn't know she's dead and who, when she finds out why everything is so out of whack, goes about the business of deciding how to live after death.  The second book (hopefully) is about Johnny (non-titled at this time) who died in a house fire he accidentally set with matches.  When other children move into the house he now lives in he doesn't want them to leave him -- it gets so lonely -- and so he works on getting them to start a fire, too.  Third, The Haunting of Waterford Road; the story of a family haunted by and then saved by the ghosts who live in their farm house.  The fourth planned book is a collection of ghost stories which I have been collecting as my research for the first three books.  They are all first hand accounts and based in the Endless Mountains.  Maybe we just have more ghosts than other places?  Who knows.