I See Dead People: Aunt Belle Gets Scared

Sorry I'm a little bit late again this week. My life continues to stay busy, busy this year. Lots going on, and I'm enjoying nearly all of it.

As promised, I'll reveal what happened to Aunt Belle during her visit last week. She came in on Friday to stay with me and also go to her great-grandson's birthday party on Saturday. Unfortunately, I didn't get to go to the party with her, since my grandson was performing in a play, and Saturday was my only chance to see him. I did send presents for the kiddos I almost consider grandkids of mine, also.

My son had moved back to Houston the same day Aunt Belle came in to visit, so she was able to stay in our Molly-Belle Suite. The last couple times she stayed in there, nothing really paranormal happened. This time, when she woke up on Saturday morning, she couldn't find her comb. Now, she is nearly as anal as I am about putting things where they belong so we can find them again, something that gets more necessary as we … uh … grow older. She knew she had put the comb back inside her little pink bag. It wasn't there. She looked all over the bedroom, then the bathroom. No comb. So as she and I both do at times, she stood still and put her hands on her hips.

"I want my damn comb back!" she said into the air to whichever ghost was messing with her stuff. "Bring it back now!" She stood there a minute, and when she turned around and looked at her pink bag, there was the comb lying right beside it.As I said, it was pink. The overhead light was on in her room and the bathroom light also on. She had her glasses on. No way did she overlook that comb lying there in plain sight during the five or ten minutes she searched for it. It wasn't there until she ordered them to return it.

"Thank you," she said.

That wasn't the scare. We have things like that happen all the time. We parted ways for the day, and it turned out hub and I were very late getting back home that evening. Aunt Belle had a key, and she came on in. She's happy to be alone, especially when she can sit and read in a nice, peaceful home with no one around … well, no one living, anyway. She's been alone at my house numerous times, as have I. I've admitted that every once in a while one of my paranormal residents will give me a scare, but I don't recall Aunt Belle saying it had happened to her.

However, when I came in the door late that evening, she rose from her chair over by the fireplace and I could tell she was upset.

"These damn ghosts around here," she said. "I got scared, and I don't care if you tell everyone I did."

I immediately stopped and asked her what had happened.

"Well," she said. "I came in about 5 p.m. It was nice and peaceful. I went ahead and got into my jammies and got a book to read. Then I settled into the chair I like beside the fireplace. Everything was wonderful for about half an hour."

"Then what?" I asked when she stopped and looked up.

"I started feeling cold," she said. "At first, I figured it was one of the ghosts doing that and I ignored it and kept reading. But then I felt a breeze and it got cold enough that I started to shiver. I looked up, and the fan was on. Now, I did not turn that fan on and it had not been on until just then. Suddenly I felt something weird, just a weird atmosphere. And for some reason, I started getting scared. I figured I should get up and go over there and check the switch for the fan. But of course, it was clear across the room from where I was sitting, and that fan was whirling overhead."

My living room is a long, rectangular room, and the chair sits on one end of it beside the fireplace. The switches for the overhead lights, fan and outside porch light are at the other end, by the front door.

"I sat there for at least five minutes, looking at that fan, then looking at how far it was to those switches. The fan kept running and I kept shivering and feeling scared. Finally, I screwed my courage up, laid my book down and got up. I sidled around the room, keeping as far away from that fan overhead as I could. I finally got to the switches and flipped them. The lights came on, then I turned them off. The fan wouldn't go off. I turned the outside porch light on, and left it on for when you came home. Then I sidled back around the room over to my chair."

"And?" I asked.

"I sat down, picked up my book … and the damn fan went off!"

I couldn't help myself. I giggled.

"And then," Aunt Belle said, "I said, 'I guess you're cool now, huh?' and went back to my book."

"Oh," I teased. "Aunt Belle Gets Scared is a great title for my blog next week. It will get everyone's attention."

"Well, it got my attention," she sort of snarled as she glared around the living room.

We talked about why something like this would scare her, and decided it had to be a combination of her being her alone and the atmosphere that invaded the room along with the chill. Well, and the fan going on, and off, by itself, with no mistake that it was a ghost doing it. Darn ghosts! She'll be ready for them next time she stays here alone. She knows where I keep the protection packets.

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As to the writing, Dead Man Ohio is going great. I've got well over a third of it finished, and soon I'll hit the halfway mark. I'm loving how it's turning out. I'm also squeezing in some time on the next set of diaries, in between doing some investigating.

Also, I got notice today that Smashwords is having their semi-annual promotional deals. Authors can enroll a selection of their books and give out a coupon code for their readers to get them at discount or free. I prefer free, so in addition to Ghost Hunting Diary Volume I, which is always free, I've enrolled three more of my books for this promotion. To get them free, use the code RW100 at the Smashwords site. Here are the links to the books, one romance, my suspense, and the Halloween novella from last year: