Maryse's Book Blog

Happy Halloween Week!!! To kick off the scary fun, I thought it would be awesome if we could tell our own spooky tales. You know… kind of like around the “campfire” type of thing. Well, just go with it. It’s a virtual campfire. 😉 *snort* But, considering how much we love reading stories, I just KNEW we’d all have our own mini ghost stories to tell, and sure enough, authors and readers alike, sent me their own “personal experiences” with the real-life creepy stuff. AND OMG some of ’em gave me goosebumps. If y’all have more stories to tell, I’ll gladly post one of these posts each night to countdown our Halloween excitement!

I’ll start us off, tonight (but this is just a mini-creepy story – my real ghost story I will tell you will come later this week 😛 ):

Maryse: I told this one on my “scary-story specials” post from a few days ago when the Hellraiser book was on sale. Okay one time, I was at my friend’s house and she had a HUGE lifesized cardboard cutout of Pinhead (like a movie advertising swag thingie for theaters that stand there and creep you out and stare at you and stuff)… anyway… it was hung up on her wall. And he ALWAYS creeped me the heck out. Maybe she should have too, going to sleep in a room with that horrific creature. LOL!

Anyway, so one time, we were having a sleepover (likely after one of our horror-movie marathons) and then we were sleeping, and we heard a noise. *rrrrriiiiiiiipppp* *thud*!!! It woke us both up with a start. And we were all… what was that?!!

And I looked up and HE WAS GONE!!!!! *gasp*

Amy: …what the freaking hell about the Pinhead cutout?!? Did she ever find it or was it just gone for good??

Leslie Fear: Yeah, that would freak my freak.

Maryse: LOL!!!!! Amy… he FELL. He unpinned himself (or was it tape???) from the wall and tumbled down to the floor. The noise was him coming down… We picked him up and threw him out the next morning. CREEPY!

Leslie Fear: Haha!! I’da done the same thing.

Johanne (Maryse’s sister): When I was a teenager, my mom (note: Maryse and I have the same father not mother so it us my mom) used to summon the spirits. We had a round glass table and she would cut pieces of paper on which we would write all the letters of the alphabet as well as the numbers from 0 to 9. Then we would put a wine glass upside down in the middle and we would ask questions. Of course, some of my friends were really interested in this so we were often 6 to 8 people around the table. Every time one of my friends (her name was Irma) was with us, the spirit that would be summoned came by himself and he said he was called Zachary.

You’re supposed to be able to ask the spirit to leave to let the space for another spirit to come, that you want to talk to. But Zachary was always very persistent in not leaving. One night, my mom was mad because he didn’t want to leave, so she decides that it’s the end of that night’s session, and as usual, she would gather all of the little papers, put them in an ashtray and set them on fire. She would also put some salt on the table and in the glass itself. And when she said “Ca suffit, Zachary. Vas t’en Zachary!” (“That’s Enough, Zachary. Leave now, Zachary!”) the glass ashtray exploded (because it’s hot or something, I dunno? But she did this after every session without incident, but this time it exploded). But not just that! At the same time, our window blinds that were on a spring, sprung up!! We all YELLED!!!!! LOL!!! And it was the last time my mom did this. That was it. No more sessions for us!

Maryse: *gasp* I would have peed my pants!!!

Leslie Fear: So, back in 2004, my husband and I were in New Orleans visiting friends and decided to take a day trip to Oak Alley Plantation. (About an hour outside New Orleans.) Since we’re both into history we were looking forward to seeing the house and hearing all the stories. I, of course, loving photography, took tons of pictures of the antebellum plantation. It was Christmas time and beautifully decorated…and back then, even though I used a digital camera, I still had to load all the pictures onto my computer to see them on a big screen.

Anyway, I was admiring all of them, remembering each one when the actual house picture came up. I zoomed in for some reason, eventually focusing on the upper right hand dormer window. What I saw blew my mind! I couldn’t believe I actually captured something!! I submitted it to Oak Alley who confirmed the authenticity of the picture and they now allow other paranormal websites to use it for their ghost picture collections! Here is the link to that website which takes you straight to my story and the picture. And btw, there’s a reason Villere House (Blood of My Blood Book 1) is set in Nola and Bayou Grise is set at a planation house in the bayou. ;).

Maryse: OMG I LOVE THIS!!! I’m going to tell a story kind of like this too shortly. Tee hee!!!

Leslie Fear: Girl, I don’t know if you watch “Ghosthunters” on the Syfy channel, but they even looked at the picture and were impressed!

Shelley Stringer: When my son was about 2 1/2, I was on the phone (house line) in our living room. He came running in the room and asked me to untie a mylar balloon from a little wooden car his aunt had given him (it was knotted in some of that curly-ribbon, and I knew I’d have to cut it it was so tightly knotted.) so I told him, “in a minute, baby. Let me get off the phone. He stood around in the living room while I talked, and then went back to his room. After I hung up, he came back in the room, the balloon in one hand, the car in the other. The ribbon had been untied!

I asked him, “Jake, how did you do that?’ His reply…”That old man in my room.” I said, “What?” He replied, “That old man in my room, mommy. He tooked the tie off for me.” I asked, “What old man?” He took my hand and made me walk back to his room. I had chill bumps, because I knew we were home alone.

When we got in his room, he walked around and then jumped up on his bed. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “I guess he lefted, mommy.”

Several other things happened around that time, including a basketball that would seem to “roll” into our bedroom across the hallway. I told both my boys to keep it picked up, and they swore they weren’t doing it. For two or three years, I would find it (every two or three weeks or so,) under our bed (we had a high, four-poster bed.) I finally took it out to the shed, and didn’t tell the boys (thinking they were just playing with me. The next week, it was back under our bed!

Leslie Fear: Holy moly, what an awesome story!! Very cool!! Do you still live there?

Maryse: Oooooooooh creeeeeeepy!!! Thank you Shelley!! 😀

Shelley Stringer: Yes, Leslie Fear, we still live there. My youngest son swears the house is haunted. There were several other things that have happened…A wreath I had hanging over the tub in the guest bathroom (It was hanging on a nail left by the previous owners) and the nail was HUGE and in a stud in the wall. I would hear a “thud” and go in the bathroom and find the wreath in the tub. My husband said it must have been vibration or something, but this kept happening, and only when I was home alone. I have decided, after 28 years, that if we have ghosts, they are friendly, and just don’t like my decorating! LOL. And I found out recently that the elderly man who built the house, only lived there a couple of years. He died in the house.

Leslie Fear: Oh wow, Shelley…he might be visiting because he likes you! It may not be because he’s doesn’t like your decor, it might be more about just getting your attention. 😉 Btw, you live in Vernon? We have a weekend house in Bowie!! We’re practically neighbors. wink emoticon

Shelley Stringer: Hey! We are! You’ll have to come meet me at a book signing some time. By the way, I try to incorporate some of my experiences in my writing. Check out “Southern Comfort: Chandler’s Story (The Southern Series Book 1)” It will be free on Amazon starting the 27th thru Halloween…all three books in the series will be on super sale. There is a scene in “Comfort” that is from a real-life experience when I had a “peeping tom” in high school.

Aleah: Here’s a ghost story from my childhood, when I was around the age of 4, maybe 5 I would scream bloody murder with night terrors every night. When they finally subsided, I kept seeing a black “shadow figure” at the end of the bed who used to go outside my bedroom door, enter our attic and walk around above my bed. Sometimes he would even knock on the ceiling. My mom would always tell me that it was nothing but the more I saw it, the more scared I became. Now almost 20 years later I found out that a man who used to live in the house was murdered in the forest behind the house and has quite frequently haunted the families living in the house. Scary stuff Happy Halloween!

Rose: …My scariest memories is an alleyway by my mom’s house that I always heard stories about… Neighbors seeing things or knocks on doors in the middle of the night with no one there… I still avoid this alley when driving at night. Too much said to not have some truth

Cassandra: When I was in high school a group of us spent one night driving around to all the haunted spots of our hometown (Ventura, CA). We have a park called Cemetery Park, which was Ventura’s cemetery from 1869 to 1941. There are all kinds of “known sightings” there including a white-gowned lady, a headless runner, and a boy who hanged himself in a tree there. Well, this night driving around for awhile and after already working ourselves in a frenzy, we finally reached Cemetery Park…and there were “people” strolling around. It was too dark to make out any details, but whether they were living or ghosts we didn’t stick around to find out!

Mindi: I used to work in a movie theatre that many of us swear was haunted. You’d hear things, see someone in the projection booth and when you’d walk towards them no one would be there. We’d have awesome Halloween parties there where we’d turn out the lights and play hide and seek or even bust out the Ouija board and scare the crap out of ourselves!

Dellen: I grew up by a cemetery. On Halloween the neighborhood kids would go trick or treating then afterwards we gathered at the front gate of the cemetery for a game of dare. I was dared to go in to cemetery and touch the headstone of a buried leg. It said on the headstone “a leg” was buried in the grave. The cemetery was not lighted, I took off running and touch the headstone, turned to run back and took a different route. I fell into a freshly dug grave. Needless to say I scared everyone to death with my screams!

Amy: Movies that creep me out…anything that has to do with ghosts or spirits or demons. Holy crap, that stuff terrifies me! I’m always afraid to walk around the house in the dark after watching those. Probably stems from some seriously disturbing stuff I saw in our first apartment. I swear, that place was possessed. And no, this isn’t me being dramatic and exaggerating…we ended up moving because I was so freaked out, despite the fact that we had no money and couldn’t really afford to be moving from place to place back then! Sheesh, nearly two decades later and I still get anxiety thinking about that place. 😕

Maryse: Amy! I must know details of these creepy apartment stories. I LOVE GHOST STORIES. The love ones, of course, but even more… the creepy ones. Especially true ones.

Amy: …you want to know the story? Okay then…and I swear on my polish collection and makeup this all really happened…

I started seeing these glowing, shapeless blobs moving around every now and then, sometimes flipping end over end like a Slinky, other times just kind of hovering and then moving upward, and they were always in our bedroom against the wall or in a corner. Creepy as sh!t and would make me hide under my blanket, but I just tried to ignore them for the most part.

After that had been going on for a couple of months, I was outside talking with my neighbor one night when the light flipped on in the bathroom at the exact second that the porch light flipped on. The light switches were no where near each other, and no one was inside as my hubby was working a swing shift. When I went inside, both switches were indeed in the “on” position.

THEN, not long after that I was in the bathroom in the middle of the night with the light off so I wouldn’t wake up my hubby, and I felt this burst of air against my ear as if someone had just puffed a breath on me. What did I do? Screamed and tried to jump off the toilet but ended up doing a face plant ’cause my pajama pants were down around my knees.

The final straw was when I was heading into the bathroom in the middle of the night (again) with the light off (again) and something seemed to hit the blinds over the window, like if you were to throw a ball at it from the INSIDE. Seriously, the blinds moved and it made a lound bang against the glass. TMI but I p!ssed my pajama pants and ran back to our room to jump under the covers with my sleeping hubby, wet pants and all. Welcome to married life, babe. We moved right after that.

Good lord, I have goosebumps right now just remembering all of that! *shudder*

fabi: Oh Amy, I was just about to doze off. Now I’m scared to close my eyes. Has that ever happened to you anywhere else you’ve lived?

bev: No. No. No. *hands over ears* La la la la laaaa

Amy: Nope, thankfully it has never happened at any other place we have lived in. But to this day I have to have a nightlight on in the bathroom ’cause I don’t EVER want to take the chance of seeing, hearing or feeling anything like that again!

*pulls Bev’s hands away from her ears* BOO!!!!!!! 😛

Lisa: Amy I swear the last house we lived in was haunted. The microwave would turn itself on at random times…like the middle of the night! It would totally freak me out when I was home alone. And lights in the main bedroom would flicker and dim at times. My husband would hear loud footsteps along the timber hallway, thinking it was me, only to have no one there when he’d look. We found out the previous owners wife had died there. Too spooky.

Maryse: Ooooooh AMY I LOVE your scary ghost story!! I know YOU don’t… ’cause you lived it, but I get a secret thrill reading stuff like that on the internet. Like I said when I came back from the RT signing in Dallas, I caught something with my naked eye (and camera phone) in the haunted hotel in HER room… (the ghost’s room)… I’ll tell that one later.

Amy: Actually, I love reading and watching TV shows about ghost stories…it just wasn’t cool when all of that was happening to me! Did you post about those things happening??? Because if you did then I totally missed all of that! See, that sort of thing is actually fun when you have other people there with you or if you know you can leave at any time (like with a hotel room). In my own home? *rapidly shakes head*

You know what would be so freaking fun? Visiting some of the haunted places from the EIT series here in the Pacific Northwest!! I would LOVE to find out from Karina Halle if there was any basis in her choosing those places (as in, if there has been reported spooky activity) and then go there and check them out. Heck, I would even go camping on D’Arcy Island just to say that I did that! Ooh, and I want to find out if that carousel from Mud Vein really exists and go there too! Hey, I may be a dork but I OWN it. 😉 …Er, I guess I could also just Google the EIT sites because, ya know, that would be a bit easier. 😛

Nancy: Many years ago, when our family was just getting started, we had bought our present home. We could not wait to move in. I was telling the gentleman who delivered meats, cheeses, and other delights that our address was changing. He asked where? I answered.

He said “Oh God! I know that house! The old man got out of the hospital & was fixing himself soup on the gas stove & his sweater caught on fire & he burned to death right there in the kitchen. His shoe prints were burned right into the floor, so they recovered it & painted everything.

1st thing I did was sell the damn gas stove, we never uncovered the footprints, have enlarged & remodeled the kitchen, plus added a second floor, and have never seen a ghost. To this day people ask if I’ve ever seen his ghost or aren’t I worried it is haunted. I just tell them my kids chased him away along time ago!

Maryse: *gasp* Nancy!!!! That is so… grizzly. *shudders*

Okay you guys… send more!!! I know we all have *something* fun and creepy to tell!  Like… it can be scary, creepy, or funny, or twilight-zoney… haunted-house experiences or maybe even a funny story of when you went to one of those “Halloween Horror Nights” type of events and, you know… nearly pooped yourself. LOL! Oh… yeah that was me. *snort*

So… anyone? You can leave it here in the comments or email/message me, and I will feature them.

P.S. Here are a few fun posts (from this year and last) that have great scary book recommendations!