File this under Random…sort of. I
do write paranormal, and this is a tale of paranormal happenings, so I suppose
it isn’t all that random.
I think I’m being haunted, and I
might be blaming Anne Rice.
I have no idea why I decided to
start reading Ms. Rice’s The Witching Hour just before my husband had three business trips over the course of
three weeks. When I’m home alone this big old house does a lot of settling and
creaking, and things tend to go bump in the night. Reading a scary book at
night when you’re alone in the house is not a good idea. Reading a book that
puts frightening ideas in a mind that tends to have a fairly fertile
imagination? Also not a great choice. Put the two together and you have a
recipe for a haunting.
First a little background on this
book. Of course it is fascinating—it IS Anne Rice!! And it is scary—it IS Anne
Rice!! There is an evil entity that does nasty things to people. It might also
be able to manipulate things and truly make things go bump in the night. As I
tried to go to sleep on Monday night, after a good two hours of reading in bed,
I was sure that there was some kind of entity in my house and it was going to
do something during the night. Maybe just your basic minor destruction—I was
fairly confident that it didn’t want to hurt me. (Yes, I was one of those kids
who couldn’t go upstairs in the dark after watching something scary on the TV.)
But when I got up in the
morning—and I DID sleep well!—I saw that everything looked just as I had left
it the night before. Phew! Dodged that bullet. I didn’t, however, have any
reason to go into the family room until later in the day. What I found was my
high school graduation picture lying on the floor, the glass shattered into a
zillion pieces. It had sat on that shelf for many, many years without deciding
to fly off the shelf and flinging itself to the floor. Why now?
My reaction to this was exactly
what you would expect of someone who was brought up to be a superstitious Irish
Catholic girl. My father taught me to feed the fairies that lived under the
toadstools, and there was a lot of knocking on wood and throwing salt over
shoulders. Seeing the picture and the broken glass freaked me just a little.
Okay, there may have been a search for some holy water, and what kind of Catholic
am I that I have none? A cross may have been placed on the shelf where the
picture had sat. Just rational precautionary measures, you know.
And I was FINE yesterday when the
St. Brigid’s cross I was wearing came unclasped and was lost in my shirt. I
obviously didn’t clasp it properly. The fact that I’m rather OCD about making
sure necklaces are clasped is irrelevant. Later in the day, home alone in the
house, when I felt someone tug on the back of my sweatshirt, I was as calm as
can be, as I knew it was just settling into place. For some reason, unknown to
me. But, ghost? No. Certainly not.
Husband came home last night. Thank
God. A little bit ago he asked me if I’d pushed aside a bunch of stuff on his
desk. Huh? Of course not. Why would I do that? And I know a ghost wouldn’t.
Right.
There’s a reason I write
paranormal. Yes, I was brought up to be a superstitious person. But I’ve also
had a few psychic experiences throughout my life, from the mundane to the Oh My
God, Are You Kidding Me type. That mystery of life has always fascinated me. I
love to explore it in my fiction. Last fall, when I got to meet my favorite YA
author Maggie Stiefvater I asked her about a precognition type dream she’d had
and has mentioned a few times in interviews, as it was very similar to one I
had when I was a girl. She shrugged it off and explained that all the women in
her family are little psychic. Yes, Maggie, that explains your interest in
writing the paranormal. And I guess it explains my interest as well.
As for our ghost here at Casa
Knightley? And why now, after all these years? I have a theory. We’re starting
to do a lot of updating to prepare the house to sell. Time for a little
downsizing. We’ll be moving. Is someone trying to tell us that they’ll miss us?
Good thing this is all in my
imagination. Put there, no doubt, by that fabulous Anne Rice!
Happy Writing!
