Ghost Stories

One of my dear friends and critique partners writes ghost stories. She has often had to give me 'fair warning' so that I know not to read her stuff after dark. I'm that big of a baby. She blogs a scary short story every week at Scary Mondays.

This week, she has a guest post by a writer friend who shared a personal experience at a haunted hotel in New Orleans. Although the story is very laid back, it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Ghost children? Running around the hotel in New Orleans hiding people's stuff? Yikes!!

I'm a huge weenie. I don't watch scary movies. The few times I have, I've had nightmares for two weeks. Once, my son made me watch a scary movie that he loved and he was SURE I would love too. I stayed awake all night, never could go to sleep.

I don't read horror books although I like a good thriller. I won't read a 'woman in jeopardy' book because I spend way too much time alone to think stalking a woman is entertaining. But fiction is fiction. Most ghost stories aren't fiction to the people who tell them. It actually happened.

Lynn tells some whoppers on Scary Mondays, but she also will tell you quite deadpan about meeting the ghost on her front porch. What? Did you have an exorcist out? No, she called a Native American medicine man who smudged the house with smoke and prayed. Then he told her that the ghost she had met was not a bad guy. If she tried to communicate with him, though, she'd be opening herself to the bad spirit.

So, she lives happily in this house, where doors slam in her face and the ghost gets all exercised whenever they try to paint or change things inside. I could not live that way. I don't think it matters whether you are a believer or not. If there were physical shows of presence when no one was around, you'd have to find an explanation or move out.

I fall firmly into the "move out" category. If I ever walked through a house that gave me a bad feeling or creepy vibe, we didn't move in to begin with. I listen to those feelings. That's not to say that I always buy new homes, but I am not afraid to ask if anyone has been killed or died in a home. If a house has been the scene of a violent crime, I really don't feel the need to live there--some deals aren't worth the money.

I can remember telling ghost stories around the campfire when I was a child. I'd lay awake for hours in my tent hearing noises and imagining bad things happening. I'm suggestible that way. So, I avoid the ghost mansions. I don't stay in the haunted hotels. I don't take the ghost tours or walk through graveyards at dusk. Some people love that stuff--Lynn lives for it. Me, not so much.

--Sandee Wagner