Ghost Hunting: Mad's Quickie Guide to Hauntings

It has been my experience that many people who don't make a personal habit of investigating the paranormal on a formal or even an informal basis often tend to lump spirit activity under one all-encompassing heading: Hauntings. Actually, this activity can and should be broken down further into the following subheadings:

Poltergeist – The word poltergeist finds its roots in the German language, and essentially means "noisy ghost." And that's it, in a nutshell. Poltergeist activity can run the gamut from noises like knocks or bangs, scattered objects, broken objects. Furniture might move or shake, items might disappear only to reappear in another location, seemingly without human intervention. People who find such activity within their sphere have been poked, prodded, scratched, pushed, whispered to. Poltergeist energies might be short in duration, but others can endure for years; each case is different. What causes this type of activity is open to interpretation. Oftentimes the activity will be centered around one person in the family, possibly a teenager in the throes of hormonal upheaval, or another family member who is undergoing emotional trauma. At other times, the activity can actually be attributed to several entities who pool their energies together in order to manifest change in the environment . . . which means, this activity can overlap other categories. See below.

Residual Haunting – A residual haunting has oft been likened to a recording of energy from a past event, an impression that replays itself over and over again. This type of haunting is one of the most common – just think of all the reports of "grey ladies" and "crying" or "screaming" spirits from castles across Europe. Buildings and even the land itself can serve as a kind of battery or recording device for such energies over time. Any violent or traumatic act that generates extremely high levels of emotion has the potential to generate future residual hauntings. Another factor might be the sheer number/volume of energies that visit a given place – residual hauntings that do not derive from traumatic events seem to take place most often in places that receive a lot of "focused" human traffic – such as churches, schools, hospitals, hallways, staircases. This type of "haunting" is more akin to a movie scene that has been set to repeat, and often the energies recur at the same time of day or year. It is generally not considered a true haunting, because there is no interactivity of the energy with the human activity surrounding it. There have been theories about the interplay of dimensions and linear time and how we might occasionally perceive them, but that's another topic.

Intelligent or Interactive Haunting – Human – This is what most paranormal investigators will consider a "true" haunting situation – when a location or person or object has an attachment by an entity who has intelligence and free will and can interact with its situation and the humans inhabiting the location. The spirit can manifest in many ways: as an apparition {grey haze, sparkles, shimmering space, actual human representation}, as sounds, by movement, by affecting the electrical and/or mechanical equipment in the vicinity. Most importantly, though, they are aware of you, and can acknowledge your presence by trying to communicate with you. Like the humans within your personal sphere of consciousness, these spirits can be benevolent; they can be playful; some seem to be upset and might even act out, depending on their reasons for them being where they are. Most of the time, you will find that they were once human. Generally speaking, they are not confined to one location in a building/physical location, although you might find they have prefered spots to manifest. They seem best able to manifest between the hours of 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. {the Witching hours, LOL...}. Few are strong enough to show themselves physically during the day, although they may make themselves known in other ways, especially with those who are sensitive/intuitive. Why are they there? There could be several reasons. Perhaps the home/ land/object once belonged to them, and they feel they belong to it. Pride of place/ownership can be very strong, perhaps especially so for people in years past, when ownership was not possible for so many. Perhaps they lost someone very important to them and remain in "wait" mode for that person to return to them. Perhaps they are confused and don't know they have passed over. Perhaps they fear fully crossing over due to their religious belief systems in life. Perhaps they suffer from extreme guilt and don't feel they deserve to let go of that. Perhaps they have "unfinished business" left over from their life experience. Some spirits may actually be random "fly-bys" who are attracted to the energy and spiritual openness of a resident of the home, possibly a child, without a doubt someone who is sensitive to energies or who has mediumistic abilities {whether they are aware of this ability or not}. The trick is in discovering the why behind the presence.

One thing to consider: we sometimes confuse contact from our own Spirit Guides as evidence of an intelligent haunting. :)

Intelligent or Interactive Haunting – Non-human – The most controversial category, anything that falls within this type of activity is without a doubt the most unnerving, amazing, and in some cases, frightening examples of spirit contact a person can experience. There are many different types of entities that might qualify under this heading: Shadows {both tall and small}, the Fae, Elementals/Earth Spirits. The Angels and demons of Christian theology. Some paranormal investigators don't believe in dark entities such as demons – they maintain that there is nothing inhuman about such entities, there are only flawed former humans intent upon wreaking malice and hatred upon the living, continuing the behavioral patterns of their former life. Others maintain that non-human entities, both dark and light, do exist. People do tend to believe absolutely only in those things they have personal experience with, and perhaps that is as it should be.

I hope this helps you to understand the main types of spirit activity that one can encounter. I think perhaps the most important thing to remember is to treat spirits with the same kind of respect and dignity that you would afford another human being. Just as with people, some are fun, some are harmless but annoying, and some just need to be given wide berth. :)

Love to all,

Mad {madly!}

On Signs, Banishing Rituals, and the Throne of Reckoning...

What led me to write paranormal? Nothing less than a sign. The kind of spiritual sign that is akin to the slap of a frozen salmon upside the head. The kind of sign that says, "Wake up, stupid! You haven't been listening! Go. Do. This. Now."

I need the big signs. I can be a bit dense... though I prefer to blame the constant need for multi-tasking. :)

I had been sticking to writing straight historical romance for so long that I had convinced myself that I couldn't/shouldn't/wouldn't try anything else. In fact, I had accumulated so many rejections that I had slowly, steadily, painfully arrived at the certainty that I would always be two steps behind the market trends in romance; that I was just not a person who could ever consider herself lucky. It just wasn't in the cards for me to be successful in romance.

I'd hit a particularly low point while attending an all-day workshop with a nearby group of writer friends. By that time, I'd already received the "SIGN!!!!!!"--an epic, fun, cool idea for a paranormal themed mystery series set in modern day Indiana--but didn't have the courage to follow the idea to fruition. At this everyday writers workshop, there was an exercise that we were all supposed to take part in, one that smacked of a banishing ritual to me. All writers present were supposed to take a length of toilet paper, and on it we were supposed to write a list of all the things that we saw as obstacles or challenges in the way of our success as writers, any frustrations that were affecting our work, any whining we needed to get off of our chests, and we weren't supposed to be nice, or hold back in any way. If we needed to bitch about anything and everything under the sun, this was our chance.

Well, I try to be a nice person on a day-to-day basis, but that wasn't what this exercise was about, and on that particular day, something inside me just . . . snapped. {I think maybe, just maybe, it was my niceness bone...} I measured out a length of toilet paper, then measured out a little more, broke out my gel pen, and started writing. And writing. And writing. Everyone present was laughing at how long it was getting, and at how fast and furious my pen was moving across the, um, page. I won't go into the details, but suffice it to say, anything that had or was going wrong at that point in my adult life was touched upon. It was negative, and it was petty, and it felt SO GOOD to flush that toilet paper down the throne of reckoning.

And it was a turning point for me. Somehow, in some way, that simple act of symbolically flushing away all of the negativity in my life cleared the way and began to open new doors for me, both spiritually and mentally. I wrote the book that I worried I wasn't a good enough writer to do justice. I started plotting out the series in my airy-wispy-atmosphere-filled-seat-of-the-pants way -- enough to get the bones of it, but not enough to remove the element of synchronicity that keeps me going. I found an agent who loved it, who found a publisher who thought it could work. And from those baby steps, we moved forward with The Bewitching Mysteries.

What do I like best about telling Maggie's story? The freedom. The absolute, utter freedom of creating a world filled with characters I love. Characters who speak to me and whisper their stories. Characters who could be walking the streets of the town I live in {but who, of course, aren't}, who are familiar and down-to-earth and filled with the quirks and idiosyncrasies we all seem to have in abundance. I love being able to bring a taste of Indiana, one of those forgotten states that exist almost nebulously somewhere in the middle of this great nation, into the public eye {and yes, we are aware that most people know nothing about us beyond the Indy 500}. I love being able to show a variety of spiritual and religious beliefs, and I love being able to talk about religious intolerance and hopefully demonstrate that it is never a one-sided issue. I love exploring the spirit world, and the ways that it touches our own. And I love writing Maggie. She is a searcher, and through her journey toward self-discovery I have learned so much about so many lovely spiritual paths. And what's more, I get to do it with a wink and a smile.

Love to all on this lovely autumn day,

Mad {madly!}

Let There Be Fireworks...

Otherworldly Sex -- that does kind of flow, doesn't it? It's almost enough to make me wish I wrote about magickal creatures, gettin' their groove on.

Alas, I write paranormal mystery of the fairly light sort, with little touches of darkness thrown in, of course, to hint at what's really going on in plain, old Stony Mill, Indiana. And while I like to poke at and test the boundaries of genre as much as the PTB will let me get away with {::very big grin::}, I don't think I'm going to be having any pull-out-all-the-stops love scenes any time soon. Let alone sex between magickal beings, considering that the Bewitching series is peopled by ordinary people living somewhat extraordinary lives.

That is not to say that my empathic heroine, Maggie, is not going to be getting some. Eventually. Poor girl, she's been going without for far too long, wouldn't you say? She deserves an otherworldly experience as much as the next girl. But since I have been charged with telling her story, when the time comes I will simply have to rein in the urge to describe every... little... nuance of the experience in oh-so-loving detail.

Me, I'm just wondering what sex between two unshielded empaths would be like. As any empath can attest, the, um, experience is often fortuitously {if inadvertently} enhanced by intercepting the, um, reactions of one's partner. {::koff koff::} Quite handy, that. If two empaths were to share their enthusiasm... well... given their natural ability to project as well as receive... and especially if the experience was carried aloft on the wings of True Love {insert the thumping of hearts here}....

Yeah, I'm pretty much thinking it would be:


Talk about your ultimate in magical powers. Whoever said empaths were short-shrifted in the psychic abilities department, anyway?


Mad {extra madly!}

Stranger than you've dreamt it...

If I tell you that I've never actually seen a ghost, will you hold it against me?

To me, it doesn't matter, really. I don't need to see them to know that they are there. I always have known, even during the years I tried to convince myself that they were figments of my imagination. For me, it's all about sounds, feelings, perceptions, and movement.

Let me share a few glimpses into my world:

1) The first house that we rented when we returned to Indiana ate shoes. Honestly. One half of pairs, and none of them were ever seen again.

2) Another of the houses that we rented had a cold spot in the laundry room, and a very anxious feeling to it. My oldest boys were four and two at the time, and the older of the two would tell me about waking up to find a "chocolate man with red eyes" standing at the end of his bed. Now, we live in rural Indiana, and at the time the population was predominantly caucasian--I don't think my boys had ever actually seen an African American person at the time, which seems terribly odd to me, but that's just the way that it was. We also live in an area that was quite active in the Underground Railroad during the Civil War. Could it have been? Or was this another kind of entity entirely?

3) The chocolate man apparently followed us to our next home, because the younger of the two started seeing him as well. This house had more than one spirit in attendance. Often when I was home alone, I would hear very distinct human footsteps cross the entire length of the two rooms above. We also had a prankster. Things would disappear quite often and then reappear later in places that did not make sense--for example, a recipe card I was using for some cookies I was baking went missing, only to show up three days later in the center of my bed.

The strangest thing that happened at this house, however, occurred on a rare "mental health day" I had taken off work. My employer at the time had a habit of calling with a million questions, no matter if you were sick or on vacation or what, so when I left the house to pick the boys up from school, I took the phone {a wall model... this house was small enough that I just had the one phone, and this was back in the day... ;> } off the hook and laid it on the floor below so that if my employer called, the phone wouldn't just ring and ring, alerting them to the fact that I was not, in fact, at home. I locked the door, and left the house. When the boys and I returned fifteen minutes later, I went to replace the phone, and--you guessed it--the phone was already back on the hook. No one had been there, and the doors were still locked.

4) Most of the dreams I have are just run-of-the-mill dreams {with the odd pre-cog one thrown in for good measure, but always over something trivial}. Some, though, are extremely vivid and detailed and have a sense of urgency to them. That "Hey, pay attention" feeling.

Back when I was searching for an agent for what has become the Bewitching series, I received an offer of representation from two agents on the same day, and I was faced with making a decision between the two. Both had excellent reputations--that wasn't the problem. One of the agencies had irritated a few authors with contract provisions, but the agent was effusive about the first book {TTWM} and felt positive it would sell with only a few very minor revisions prior to submission. The other agent liked the book, liked my writing, but thought that there were elements in it that would need to be completely revised -- but this agent was highly regarded by the authors the agency represented, and I knew more about them than I did the first agency.

I struggled over this dilemma for a few days, knowing that control of my destiny was in my hands, and I would have only myself to blame if things went badly. How was I supposed to choose between two good agents? Which one would be more likely to sell a difficult project? How could I possibly guess? Did my manuscript need a tremendous amount of revision, or would the changes the second agent wanted edit out the things that made the book mine? I had no idea -- agents don't tell you what they want to see without signing you on, so even that was no help. But in reading back over the manuscript itself, it felt right. It felt good. Minor changes I could see, but nothing felt wrong structurally, which is what a major revision would have entailed. But what if I was wrong?

The night before I would have to give my decision {which I still had not made}, I had a conversation with my guides. Look, I told them, I really could use some help here. If you have sent me signs and I've missed them, I'm sorry, but you know that sometimes I get so busy that I can't see what's right in front of me. Help me, please. Help me make the right decision.

That night I had a dream, one of the "Pay attention!" kind that you can't mistake for anything other than Notices From On High. The dream took place sometime in the medieval period -- maybe the 1400s from the way I was dressed when I looked down at myself. It felt like England to me, and the place--a big, cavernous place with a round tower --was very familiar to me, as though I'd been there often. The dream started out sunny and clear, the sky brilliantly blue, warm both in actuality and in the overall feeling of the place, but things quickly changed once inside. Suddenly I was being chased by several men along these raised platforms within the big barn structure. The fear was overwhelming--I could taste it in the back of my throat. I can still feel it now, remembering. I ended up running the wrong way. I remember clutching my stomach and thinking, "My baby..." I was trapped, and I knew it, and the men were coming at me from all directions. I looked down over the railing of the catwalk, and I remember hearing this voice in the dream: "You can either stay here and almost certainly die, or you can take a leap of faith now and perhaps live..." I made my decision. I leapt.

And then I woke up.

I knew the dream was more than that the instant I woke up. The symbolism in the dream to me was unmistakable as it related to my situation, and I accepted the answer I was given gratefully. I called agent #1 that morning and accepted her offer. Four months later, 1 month and 1 day after the book was submitted, she sold the first 3 books in what became the Bewitching series to Berkley. I've been very happy with the agency ever since.

But the dream ... I realized later that it worked on more than one level. I've dreamed of the same place since then, the people, snippets, not a continuing dream, just bits and pieces that all fit together like a puzzle. But nothing that relates directly to my life currently, or if it does I haven't figured that out. Just this place. There is a man there, and the feeling of intense love, blindingly sweet. All I can see is his eyes, and the overall sense of him, but I know I adored him.

I love having these dreams. They leave me happy and serene and... I don't know... certain of the continuation of awareness? Of life?

5) While traveling in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, we stopped at a touristy place called The Mystery Spot, just west of St. Ignace. Like its more famous sister in Oregon, this is a place where compasses don't work right, where things seem to roll uphill, where time and space and distance all seem to converge and fold in upon each other. Or that's what they say. ;> I took the boys in for a little bit of fun, expecting optical illusions and the like... and was amazed by my reaction to the spot. I don't know if it's all part and parcel of being a sensitive/intuitive, or whether it's just because I'm sensitive to energy in general, but the moment I crossed a certain line, I felt... off-balance. Heavy, as though something weighty was pressing down upon me from above. My ears rang. My skin buzzed. It wasn't an uncomfortable place, just very different from what I normally experience. And once I left the property, everything was back to normal.

6) Indiana has a lot of places where Indian battles were fought, as well as places that were sacred to the regional tribes. One of these is a place called Seven Sisters, a series of rocky promontories that overlook the Wabash River, where the movement of the river over eons has carved out a series of seven columnar features from the limestone riverbed. We went looking for this place on recommendation from a friend, and were pleased when we managed to find it, considering that it is kind of out of the way. I got out of the car and approached the edge cautiously {this isn't a well-marked place, so apparently they don't feel the need to put up fencing or guard rails for visitors}. Standing there on the edge, surveying the lower floodplain opposite, I had a flash of fires and sound, almost like the overlay effect often used in film. We found a small sign later that told of the sacredness of the site to the Miami tribe, and that they used to hold rituals there.

7) My most recent experience actually took place at work last fall. I was standing in the doorway to an office, chatting with a friend, and all of a sudden felt a puff of very much directed breath against my neck. It surprised the heck out of me -- I stopped mid-sentence and spun around, wondering which of the office goofballs were feeling just a little bit naughty that morning. :) There was no one there, of course, but it was definitely too focused to be a random draft {if you've ever had someone gently blow their breath up the length of your neck, then you know this feeling... }. We did have two vehicular deaths happen a couple of years apart, directly in front of the building, and of course you never know what has happened on open land prior to the building's existence. Whoever or whatever it was was definitely feeling a bit frisky that morning, though.

This is getting way too long so this is it from me for now, but I hope you've enjoyed the tales. For me, what most people view as paranormal or supernatural is just a normal part of life and the way I experience it. And really, I can't imagine living it any other way. :)

What about you? Do you have tales to share?

Love to all,


Mad {madly!}

On Acceptance of Things We May Not See...

Otherworldly beings . . .

For the longest time, I was the Queen of Denial, a product of our oh-so-sophisticated {heh} world. Faeries were a whimsical dream better left behind in childhood. Witches and their magick? Delusional they might be, but not supernatural. A good dose of Prozac might help. Ghosts, goblins, shadow creatures? Please.

Like Maggie, I was too skeptical for that.

I felt things, sure, but didn't everyone? There was a perfectly rational explanation for the things I experienced.

Perfectly. Rational.

I'm happy to say I've come a long way since then. Open to the experiences that are all around us, if we but open our eyes and really see. But it's taken time. It's taken courage. It's taken a hefty dose of my good friend, What If.

What if magic actually did exist? What if I could affect my reality, my perceptions, and bring change into my life by imagining it into being and believing not only that it is possible, but that it must be true? What if the dreams I have always had of other places, other times, other people, other me's, were also true? What if I hadn't misplaced the pencil I had in my hand a moment ago and later found in the kitchen, even though I was alone in the house and had not moved from the desk? Pixies, faeries, imps, sprites, poltergeists . . . what if they actually did cause some of the strange dislocations of objects?

My acceptance of these things and my own abilities as something beyond mythology and imagination was the first step of many toward Maggie's existence.

Welcome to my world. Come on in, the water's fine.

Love to all,

Mad {madly!}

Paranormal Heroines, or why my Maggie jumps when things go bump in the night...

Anyone who has been writing genre fiction for long is bound to encounter The Rules. You know, the ones that other writers toss around with great abandon, like: "Your hero/heroine must be strong. They have to always be active-slash-aggressive, take charge of the situations they find themselves in, and be in command of their lives. You can't write cross-genre -- no one will buy it. Better to stick with one in order to sell. You can't mix humor with darkness -- again, you have to choose to be either funny or dramatic."

My primary goal when I started the Bewitching series was to flush the rules down the toilet and write what felt right.

My Maggie is not a kickass heroine. {Which is not to say I don't love to read them -- I do. I just can't seem to write 'em!} She is a little on the neurotic side, knows enough to question her reactions when the situation warrants it, and is basically feeling her way through life. She isn't drop-dead gorgeous, she isn't model thin, and she doesn't have a smile that drops men to their knees. Her hair frizzes when the humidity is high, she gets sunburned way too easily, and when she doesn't like what she's doing, she tends to procrastinate. She has an acerbic sense of humor that sometimes comes out wrong, but would bite her tongue before purposely hurting anyone's feelings... especially her mother, who drives her crazy. And as she speeds toward her 30th birthday, she has a tendency to wonder if she ever will meet that certain someone.

In other words, she's normal. A person I can relate to.

She's also an intuitive empath. That's another thing I can relate to.

Psychic heroines are a lot of fun, but I wanted to give Maggie something a little bit different. It's always difficult to come up with someone who is fresh and new and yet as familiar to us as our own sisters, but to me that's what Maggie is. She's your average, everyday kind of girl who is still struggling to get somewhere in life when from out of nowhere she finds herself in some paranormally charged circumstances that throw her neat and tidy world view for a loop. But while the discovery of a shadow world hitherto unsuspected knocks her a bit off-balance, it also empowers her. She's always known she was different from everyone around her, but this is the first time she's felt... special. Suddenly things click into place. The kinds of experiences she has always had but used to dismiss as imagination or coincidence have turned out to be real. Otherworldly and a bit magical, yes, but real. And as Maggie is beginning to discover, she's a lot stronger at her core than she ever realized.

This contrast between inner and outer, light and dark, myth and reality, is what keeps me intrigued and keeps me writing. All I can do is hope readers will find it as compelling as I do.

Love to all,

Mad {madly!}