I See Dead People: This and That Ghosts

Hope everyone is having a great Fourth of July weekend. We had yummy steaks Friday night, even yummier because hub and son fixed the meal and I just had to eat.

I've had a few ghostly incidents saved up for when I ran out of ghost stories for my blog. Thing is, I hardly ever run out. So this week I decided to tell you two of those. These incidents happened at my favorite hotel, the Beckham, during Aunt Belle's Birthday Bash on June 21.

The first one was a lot of fun, as it happened when Aunt Belle and I were listening to our crew members, Sarah and Floyd Brigdon, sing a song they had prepared especially for Aunt Belle and the party. It was called Cold Feet, and about a ghost, of course.

A little background: Taste Buds had just moved into their new space a week prior to the party. In their other home, about a block away, Aunt Belle and I had identified three ghosts. Darlena, the owner of Taste Buds, had asked me several times to let her know if those three ghosts had made the move with her. By then, we had already confirmed that all three now "resided" in the new restaurant. One was a young girl, Pauline.

I was sitting on the same side of a table as Aunt Belle, and we were enjoying the song. Suddenly, Pauline showed up beside me. I looked over at Aunt Belle to see her looking at the spot where Pauline stood.

"Pauline," I whispered to Aunt Belle, and she nodded an agreement and smiled at me.

Then Pauline moved closer to me and indicated she wanted to sit on my lap. I reached over and helped her up, then sat there with her, listening to the music, with Aunt Belle periodically glancing at the band, then back at where Pauline sat. We were both smiling. When the song ended, Pauline disappeared, but we knew she had enjoyed the music.

It's always fun when Aunt Belle and I experience something at the same time.

The second story has stayed in my mind, for reasons you will see, and happened a little later that same day. I'm not going to name names, since what happened involved an underage young girl.

This girl came to the party with her mother and grandmother, and they seemed to be having a good time. With Connie's permission, I was taking a few of the guests at a time over to the hotel and showing them around. However, I informed everyone that they were only going to be able to see the lobby and Ballroom, since the rest of the hotel was under construction and dangerous in places.

Everything seemed to be going well until I saw this young girl in the Ballroom, obviously upset. Her grandmother went over to her, then came back to me.

"She needs to tell you something," she said.

I walked over and the young girl didn't appear to want to speak to me. So the grandmother told me, "She was going up the stairs to the third floor..."

Upset, I interrupted. "She wasn't supposed to be up there! Everyone was told to stay with me."

It turned out the girl had slipped away from everyone. She was on the second floor alone, headed toward the third floor. Now, that third floor is still extremely dangerous. In fact, there are holes in the floor that you can see completely through, down to the second floor. I was very upset that the girl had attempted to go up there, for her own safety, as well as the fact that she had disobeyed my orders. Too, I was extremely displeased that the adults hadn't kept an eye on her.

The girl evidently put her foot on the first step of the stairwell leading to the third floor. Something grabbed a necklace she was wearing, jerked it off her neck, and tossed it to the floor. This, of course, scared the girl, and she came racing back to the Ballroom.

"She says she won't go back up there to get her necklace," the grandmother said.

"No, she is indeed not going back up there. I'll go get it."

The grandmother followed me, but I made sure she did not leave my side. We did find the necklace on the floor, right at the top of the second floor stairwell. It could very well have landed there when something jerked it off her neck. I didn't check, because the grandmother picked it up, but the chain appeared to be broken.

I herded this group of people back to Taste Buds and did not take any more guests over there. The only other people who visited after that were my own family and crew members.

Someone asked me who I thought grabbed the necklace.

"A ghost, of course," I said. There was no other explanation, since the girl was totally alone up there. "And the ghost did it for two reasons. One, the girl disobeyed a direct order, and yes, I'm upset that she wasn't being watched. However, I also have no doubt about the second reason. The ghost was protecting the girl. I shudder to think what could have happened if she had fallen through that dangerous third floor."

We now have a Waiver of Liability in place, which anyone who enters the hotel will have to sign. It's sad that we have to do this, but I'm extremely glad whichever ghost wrenched the necklace off did so before a tragedy ensued.

~~~~

I've only got a few thousand words left on Dead Man Ohio. I know exactly where I'm going and what will happen. My fingers just won't fly fast enough to write as quickly as I want to. But there will be an edit and some reads for the story to go through before I can publish it.

In the meantime, Smashwords is having their semi-annual promotion, and giving authors a chance to put their books on sale. Most of my readers already have their copies of the three books I've made free, so I'm hoping to reach new readers. Feel free to pass the word on to anyone you feel would enjoy my books, telling them that by using the coupon code SW100, they can get Dead Man Talking, Grave Yarns, and Montana Surrender free. Of course, if you don't have your copy of these books yet, grab one. The sale ends at midnight July 31.

Dead Man Talking (Dead Man Mystery)