GHOST HUNTERS

This is another in my “ALONE” series telling an experience I’ve had being alone in a place people don’t usually want to be alone in. I’d passed this two-story building a dozens of times when I was growing up. My family would pile into the station wagon and drive to the mountains of West Virginia to visit my mother’s family. It was a ritual we did several times every year. The building sat across from our motel and I would skip across the road to buy candy. Now, however, the building has been abandoned for decades. I have come back to visit my siblings who ended up settling in the hills and the cousins and aunts and uncles and miscellaneous other distant family. This time, however, I study the building with a frown in the setting sunlight. Branches and limbs have grown through the concrete out front and a tree is growing inside the front window. I peer through the broken glass to study the shelving units drooping and the Coke machine that had faded in the slant of sunlight that comes th...

**Ya'all don't miss the SyFy Original tonight "Stonehenge Apocalypse." I want to hear what you think of this one--promises to be so wickedly bad--it hurts real good! And, tomorrow be sure and check my blog--gonna post a short story contest for ya'all to enter! I am hoping to give you a new installment of "LAUGH" series very soon (righthand side of the page has all the episodes) poking loving fun at the paranormal investigators on TV--warning, do not drink while reading, it will spew from your nose.** This is another in my series describing being alone in places people don’t usually like to be alone. The first one was alone in an abandoned jail, the second was alone in a cemetery, the third was alone in the woods. It goes without saying, I had to do one about being alone in a haunted house; no, THE haunted house . Of course, I was happy that my mother and father went on a trip to England. But, then, it meant my older siblings saw it as an opportunity to ...

Another in my series describing being alone in places people don’t usually like to be alone. The first in the series involved being alone in an abandoned prison, the second was being alone in a cemetery at nighttime. Today’s story is about being alone in the woods at night. I suggest for this one, you darken the room, turn up the ceiling fan and curl up. Join me in the autumnal night woods with something stalking me... I’d walked the path in the daytime through most of the thick autumn woods. I knew where the lake was, where the tree branches and trunks had fallen down and become a spindly mess in the ravine below, where the rock face began, where the wild turkeys congregated, and where the deer liked to graze. I feel confident about these woods during my vacation, perhaps because I enjoyed them with the safe cabin to retreat to. Tonight, however, I want to experience the darkness and have something of substance to write about in my horror novel involving the woods in autumn and nigh...

This is another in my series describing being alone in places people don’t usually like to be alone. The last in the series was Alone in an Abandoned Prison. This time, it’s a cemetery. No, not a daytime visit. It was at nighttime, in a bad part of town, in a scary hidden cemetery, without a weapon, without a cell phone. Yeah, that kind of scary… I pull up to the sprawling cemetery before sunset. It’s halfway between light and dark and the last visitor leaves as I enter. I know the cemetery well, but never dreamed of going here at night alone or even in the day alone for that matter. It’s in an industrial part of town and very remote feeling. If I scream, no one would come . But, something about going to this cemetery alone instead of with my usual entourage is a rush. It’s a form of proving that I’m fearless when it came to ghost hunting. However, I also know I’m very mortal, so my senses are in overdrive. Although the entry is green and shady, it’s bordered by tall oleander hedges th...

Since I adore being in creepy places alone and pushing the limits of what I can stand, I enjoy spending time alone in scary places. Not a lot of people have the ability to or want to sit alone in a dark creepy place, but it's one of my favorite delights. I get a thrilling tingle of being in a damp crawlspace or blackened woods or abandoned mine shaft with only my thoughts and little or no light. I figured, why not share these experiences with you in a new series I will do periodically called "ALONE" telling what it was like to be alone in different places. This first installment is alone in an abandoned old west prison complex. There are only a few of us enjoying the huge abandoned prison for the night. The rest leave for an EVP session in another building on the compound. I remain in the frontier cell block alone. Each cell opens to the outdoors with no protection from the elements except a roof over their heads and bars on each end of the room facing south and north. I ...