Conversations With #MyMuse (Ghost Edition) - 0004

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of a work of art in the Public Domain.

Okay, just right off the top let me say I don’t believe in ghosts. Unequivocally. Without hesitation. So why have ghosts been on my mind the last few weeks? I’ve been watching a lot of Ghost Hunters International on Netflix lately, and I’ve been reading Karen White’s Tradd Street series. I just finished The Girl on Legare Street and look forward to reading The Strangers on Montagu Street. While I was in Colorado, I saw three ghost towns and posted some pictures here.

Because of all this “ghostly” activity, my muse keeps whispering in my ear, distracting me with a bunch of what if scenarios. Now I must write.

But first a blog post…

I wrote a ghost story not long ago that Still Moments is publishing in the October anthology, Haunted Shadows. Sometimes I write a story and at the end I want to know what happens to my hero and heroine next. That was the case with Bo and Liza from Ghost in the Garden. Bo’s business is called Bo’s Paranormal Extermination Service. With that set up already in place, I keep hatching sequels to their story.

Ghost in the Garden had flying books and strange noises. The Girl on Legare Street had full-bodied apparitions and spiteful spirit beings that would choke the main character. The ghost towns in Colorado? Yep, all three of them were sleepy, peaceful, abandoned mountain towns. I didn’t hear a single disembodied voice. No need for a digital recorder to catch the electronic voice phenomena. There wasn’t any.

Whether you believe in ghosts or not, Ghost Hunters is a fascinating show. The producers go to a lot of trouble to prove the paranormal. Just far enough, but not too far to suspend disbelief for the less than ambitious debunker…or to lose the entertainment value of a reality show. I’ve read a lot of posts and watched a lot of YouTube videos about debunking the show’s claims of documenting paranormal activity. After all those episodes, you’d think they would have captured more than grainy quality pictures of abnormalities or distorted recordings of sounds that might be voices. Why does their camera crew point their cameras at the investigators instead of the space being investigated? You’d think the camera crew would have caught something after years of traipsing around the world filming haunted mansions, prisons, hotels, and insane asylums etc. Despite the questionable, easily dismissed methods of the investigators, the show is still fun to watch.

Real life is so much different than fiction. On GHI the only ghostly experiences the investigators encounter are the occasional weird shadow zipping from left to right and frequent generously interpreted “voices” on digital recordings. Even in the paranormal television series the encounters are less than obvious. In Karen White’s books, the ghosts are so real the main character couldn’t avoid them if she tried…and she did try. White’s ghost stories are a fun read, but I don’t take any of the ghostly occurrences seriously. There appears to be a fine line between the seriousness of a movie like Ghost and the blatant spoofs of a movie like Ghost Busters. At what point does the reader/viewer start viewing the plot as humor rather than drama?

So what is the appeal of the paranormal and why am I so inclined to write about it? Maybe it’s the fascination of peeking behind the curtain that veils the visible realm. Capturing a glimpse of the spiritual realm. Going beyond what’s considered normal into the paranormal.

Or maybe I just like getting chill bumps…

So…do you believe in ghosts?