Do you have a tradition in your family of telling ghost stories at night? It seems like summer evenings gathered outside lend themselves to otherworldly tales. I thought I would share some supernatural stories from our family, some “haunted” places I’ve traveled and review a couple of recent books.
My younger sister Susie and I used to stay up late on Friday nights and watch those old movies on a portable TV in our room. Well, she would watch them and I would generally fall asleep. I’m not sure those old movies ever really scared us, but our family has always loved ghost stories and the movies became part of our tradition. My mother was sensitive to the paranormal and could often sense things others could not. I don’t think anyone else in the family shares the gift, but we love to scare each other with stories – some made up and some purportedly true.
Spooky Travel
When traveling, I cannot resist going on a haunted tour. Good friends Jan and Ted toured with me to Waverly Sanitorium in Louisville one year at Halloween time. On a trip to New Orleans, we visited Marie Laveau’s voodoo shop and Myrtles Plantation which both proclaim to be among America’s most haunted places. Here in Arizona we have visited The Grand Hotel in Jerome. Before it was a hotel, it was hospital and many visitors’ accounts seem to come from what used to be the operating room. For many years I worked in the operating room in a large hospital, and some of the more sensitive nurses told me of the many spirits they saw and the steps they took to be left in peace during their shifts.
Our family visited a friend’s home when I was a kid in the 70s in the Cheesman Park area of Denver. The friends had newly moved in and were renovating the house. Strangely, all the windows on one side of the house facing the neighbor’s house were painted over. After they removed the paint, unexplained things began to happen. Unseen beings would enter their house, leave doors open, etc. They later found out the house next door was the haunted house written about and inspired the movie The Changeling with George C. Scott. I don’t often remember details from my childhood, but I remember that creepy neighborhood very well.
But for all my exposure to these places, I never saw anything myself. However, on a visit to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, my husband and I took the guided tour and were just taking in a few last details after the other visitors had left. I thought my husband was trying to get my attention by placing his hand on my shoulder, but when I turned around, I was alone. I certainly was not expecting a ghost that day and had not heard about hauntings at Monticello, but I cannot explain the hand on my shoulder.
Scary Books
Author Paul Tremblay has received a lot of recognition, winning awards and optioning one book for a movie. I recently read Disappearance at Devil’s Rock: A Novel. I feel that it is more thriller than paranormal or horror, but I enjoyed the book and I kept turning the pages thinking something scary would happen. I would give it 3.5 stars out of 5.
I rarely go wrong with Stephen King. He and his son Owen teamed up to write Sleeping Beauties: A Novel. This book is supernatural, but not scary. I listened to the audio version and I LOVED it. I walked for miles and miles while listening to it.
Also by Stephen King, I read Elevation. It was more of a short story; I read it in one afternoon. I saw it rated on Goodreads as one of the best books of 2018 and I concur. It’s eerie and upbeat all at the same time. I don’t know how King managed that combination, but so good!
If you have a ghost story or great book recommendation, please share and I’ll meet you with some s’mores around the fire.
Hi Corine, I don’t like spooky movies or books. Life is spooky enough, right? But, as a child when visiting our grandparents who lived on Bell street by UNR, us cousins would go to the old cemetery up there at night. I was the youngest of the cousins and they would love scarring me, I hated that. Then they used to tell me that a witch lived next door to my grandparents. The house was a large, or as a child thought it was large house, but when I drive past it now it is actually quite small. Anyway, you could hardly see it as it was surrounded by large trees and shrubs, very dark and the women who lived there was old and always wore black, and was told she was mean. We would dare each other to go to the door and ring the doorbell, then we would run and hide. 😆 I found out much later from my mom that the lady that lived there was actually very nice. She lived alone as her husband passed, and was a world traveler. So much for her being a witch. Anyway, I choose not to be scared anymore and read cheesy romance novels.😀
Haha! I love your not-so-spooky story, Chris!
I used to read Stephen King books when I was a flight attendant but had to stop when I was staying at the Parker House in Boston. The hotel is very old..and haunted. I would have layovers there and get in very late at night-we stayed in the “servants quarters”, so you never knew what kind of room you would get-they could be descent sized or so small you could watch tv, take a shower and write a letter w/o getting out of bed :). I got in late one night and notices a rusty door under the desk was opened-I got on my hands/knees and it was a bunch of plumbing-creepy. I knew of a person who woke up to their shower running, got up, shut it off only to wake up with it on again. A pilot I was flying with said he was up in the wee hours of the morning waiting in the lobby to leave and saw someone walk into a small “coffee closet” and not come back out..nobody was there (he got up and looked). I had to stop reading Stephen King when I stayed there..Also, do your animals ever stare at the wall when nothing is there, bark at nothing or lay in bed at night when you are alone, staring all over, snapping their heads around? Do they see something..or are they messing with you? I still like getting scared though!..by a movie or book :).-Corine’s sister
Oh, Susie, that reminds me of the Tallman Hotel a group of co-workers and I stayed at. They reported a bath tub filling up with nobody in the room. I completely forgot about that.
Love your post!
As the sister who was a SMALL CHILD when you were teenagers, those movies definitely scared me! Like the time Susie pretended to be dead and put ketchup on her face. Or when I was allowed to watch late-night horror movies where someone walked around with his head in his hand (I believe it was The Thing That Couldn’t Die https://youtu.be/jXT0DuVxHkI) or someone was locked in the bathroom while an evil tiny man poked a knife under the door. It destroyed my sleep for years!
For scary books, I haven’t been able to get some scenes from Black Moon by Kenneth Calhoun https://www.npr.org/2014/03/06/285740456/-black-moon-imagines-a-sleepless-american-nightmare out of my head. Seriously disturbing.
Thanks for the book recommendation- I’m on it!