Welcome to Day Six of Coffin Hop 2011. For a chance at Nate Southard's He Stepped Through, visit Monday's blog. For a chance to win an ARC of Chris Golden's short story collection, The Secret Backs of Things, visit Tuesday's blog. For a chance to win The Cage and The Last Zombie, both by Brian Keene, visit Wednesday's blog. For a chance to win the Cemetery Dance ARC of William Peter Blatty's The Exorsist and Legion, visit Thursday's Blog.
So. We're all writers and lovers of the spooky things that go bump in the night. And that's part of what Halloween is all about. But how many of us have experienced ACTUAL spooky moments ourselves? Had our own "spooky" moment, when we heard something go "bump" in the night?
Believe it or not, I used to be a huge science fiction fan. Loved my Issac Asimov, ate up my Star Wars and Star Trek novels like they were candy. And, because of that, I wanted to write science fiction, too. My first - and forever to be unpublished (because it SUCKS) - novel was part one of an epic science fiction space opera trilogy. The next Issac Asimov, I was going to be.
Then, I had an experience. A brief brush with something....else...that changed my perspective. Now, I'm going to cheat a little, and direct you to an article I wrote for Flames Rising, detailing this experience. Suffice to say, it involved an old, broken down Victorian home in the middle of an abandoned corn field. Afterwards, I decided that things lurking in the shadows here on our OWN world were far more interesting than aliens and space ships, and I wanted to write about THAT, instead.
SO. Not exactly a ghost story, but a brush with something distinctly abnormal. Do you have any ghostly, spooky stories that serve as your inspiration? Or simple a brush with the abnormal that left you shaking...just a bit...even if the sun hung high in the sky at noon?
For the offering today is Five Strokes to Midnight, a collection offering the likes of Gary Braunbeck, Chris Golden, Tom Piccirilli, Debeorah LeBlanc, and Hank Schwable. Here's the description:
Five Strokes to Midnight features multiple, all-new works from Bram Stoker Award-winner Christopher Golden, Bram Stoker Award-winner Gary Braunbeck, Bram Stoker Award-winner Tom Piccirilli, southern gothic sensation Deborah LeBlanc, and hard-hitting newcomer Hank Schwaeble.
Each writer offering approximately 20,000 words of fiction --
comprising at least two stories per author inspired by a theme of the
author's own choosing. For this first volume, readers can look forward
to multiple tales on the subject of Folklore (Golden), Hauntings (Braunbeck), Loss (Piccirilli), Curses (LeBlanc), and Demons (Schwaeble).
So. How about it. Some real life scary stories, anyone....?
Hi Kevin. Well, this is maybe not so scary, but it's fresh in my mind after Jason and I went on a Haunted Olympia Walk last night and listened to spooky tales about the buildings in our city's center. The lady asked if anyone had any animal ghost stories. I did. I once saw a ghost chicken! It was a strange spectral image on the side of the road in a park, and in a place a chicken wouldn't normally be. It was early in the morning and I was on my way to work and had slowed down because there was a car ahead of me turning. I had about 10 seconds to look at it. Very strange!
ReplyDeleteHi. Coffin hopping and saw Julie post this on FB. Here I am lurking now. LOL
ReplyDeleteI have so many ghost stories. I lived in Albuquerque, NM, one of the oldest places in the country. Lots of ghosts there. This sounds like a Hollywood movie, but my apartment was actually built on sacred Indian burial ground. It was not good. Lots of weird things used to happen in that house.
But my most recent ghost story would be purposely staying the haunted Marshall House in Savannah, Georgia. That was an awesome experience. There is a recorded incident of guests experiencing the presence of a nurse taking their pulse. The hotel used to be a Civil War hospital, among other things in its long history. I had read the story online before checking in and thought nothing of it.
Then... My husband asked me if I was holding his hand in the middle of the night. Of course, I wasn't. He told me to stop it. I wasn't doing anything! It was the nurse. Shortly after, I felt her touch my wrist too. Weirdness.
Our room also had an odd presence when we checked in. We felt like were being watched. My husband and I were joking about how we hoped we hadn't gotten the room where the little kid ghost had bit people in the shower.
The first night we stayed there, our phone mysteriously was off the hook when we came back from visiting relatives. I chalked this up to the maids or something else.
But then the next night, well the next night I almost peed my pants and that is something for me to say. I do not scare easily. I awoke late in the night to heavy footsteps walking up and down the hall. I thought surely, it was someone in the room next to us, but then I heard them above us. We were on the top floor and there is no way anyone could have been up there, but of course, I rationalized away and tried to sleep. But then I heard what sounded like clanking chains and something heavy, possibly metal, being dragged across the ceiling. Of course, my husband the dead sleeper slept through this, but not the nurse. Go figure. The boot steps got louder and louder and actually sounded like they were going to come through our door. The next day, I asked in the lobby if anyone was working on the roof last night. I got the oddest look and no one said anything.
I loved my stay there and will be back again. Savannah is truly haunted!
@Nora - that's some creepy stuff! I can believe it about New Mexico, as well. I relay some creepy moments on my most recent blog post - but I do have one related to New Mexico. I had a friend in Albuquerque that I met online, but we had yet to meet in person - while chatting on the phone, naturally we started talking about ghosts. (Her birthday is the day before Halloween) I kept getting this image in my head of a man walking up and down her hallway -even though the only man there was her dad - this was a young fellow - maybe in his 20s. When I told her, based on pictures she sent of her house - that it looked like she had "something" in her hallway - she freaked a little, telling me her dogs are always in the hallway wagging their tales at "empty air" but looking up like someone stood there. Years later, when I was moving across country- I had the chance to meet her and was walking around the house - she had something in that hallway all right - and my Mom bumped into it. Or "he" bumped into her. I never told my Mom this friend has a ghost in there, but she tripped on literally "nothing" and said she felt a man's body sort of bump her upright so she wouldn't fall. You could feel someone standing there with their hand almost on your face. Whoever he was, that was the most corporeal experience anyone had with him - keeping my Mom falling on her face. My friend's dogs seemed to love the guy, and it communicates to them - since they bark and yap at him in a "conversation". Still, it's creepy feeling a ghost next to you - makes your hair stand on end.
ReplyDeleteAnd Happy Halloween Kevin!
ReplyDeleteFellow Coffin Hopper: http://creepywalker.blogspot.com/p/horror-web-tour.html
Julie - ghost chicken! Actually, that WOULD be spooky. Because who would fake that, right?
ReplyDeleteNora - WOA. Now I'm never staying in another hotel room...
RL - Cool story. Definitely more paranormal than I've ever experienced.
Great posts, all! Thanks!
This one time at my house, it was a Saturday after a fairly late night out. I'd woken up around eleven, and with no plans that day, wasn't in a terrible rush to get anywhere. I was painting my nails, just for something to pass a little time while I came further into consciousness. Then I heard the sound of something kind of hollow hitting the inside of my tub. Living alone, noises from other rooms aren't exactly normal. So I went to go look, and there was a shampoo bottle on the inside of my tub, just lying there. Okay, so I figured that I'd left it not too well balanced. So I went back to my room and kept painting my nails. After I'd finished, and was just blowing on them to dry, I heard a similar noise, and a different one. So I went back to the bathroom, and I saw my conditioner bottle lying in the bottom of the tub, and well as the soap. And I was pretty sure there's no way I could have left ALL of those things just unbalanced. As I was leaving, I happened to glance at my mirror on the way out... And I could have sworn that I saw a human, albeit deformed, face. Of course, it could have just been sleep deprivation from the night before, but it just seemed so REAL.
ReplyDeletethe last time i was sick. i got up and saw my last dog sitting on the bed looking like she was guarding me. i even hear growls when my sister walked in. but my dog had been dead for over a year.
ReplyDeleteAlice - those sort of things I hear all the time, right when I'm falling asleep, y'know? In that hazy twilight between awake and sleeping. Probably nothing REAL, obviously...but creepy, all the same.
ReplyDeleteMichael - I ALWAYS get goofy when I'm sick. The fever really distorts things...
When i was 14 or 15 years old I woke up in the middle of the night and thought someone was standing at the end of my bed. I turned on the light and nothing was there. I went back to sleep and got woken up by my stereo coming on. The stereo had a remote, but I had lost it. So the stereo comes on and wakes me up, but then the volume went all the way up without anyone doing anything. I jumped up and unplugged the stereo, and my parents are yelling at me from t heir room wondering why I had my stereo blasting at like 3am. I told them it wasn't me, and explained what happened but we never did figure out why the stereo did that. And it never happened again.
ReplyDeleteOne time was I was a young teen, my mom came home from work and found a little puddle of blood on the kitchen floor, just inside the back door. None of us had any cuts that could explain it. We even checked all of the dog's paws, but she was fine, too. We never could explain where the blood came from.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was little, we thought our house might be haunted. Footsteps and a shape you could barely glimpse -- more like an *absence* of a shape -- in an empty hallway in the middle of the night, that sort of thing. Nothing we couldn't shrug and write off as just imagination.
ReplyDeleteThen, one night, we'd all sat down to dinner -- and the kettle flew about six feet sideways off the stove and hit the wall.
That was the only real overt sign of the haunting, but it was enough to freak us out a bit.
Jamey - stereos and TV's and such randomly turning on are ALWAYS creepy.
ReplyDeleteErin - ooh. Mystery blood...
Michael - that would freak me out, for sure.
Thanks for posting!