"Growing Up With Ghosts"



I'm working on my book "Growing Up With Ghosts." It's actually creeping the hell out of me. I'm writing the notes from my mother's accounts from when we first moved into the house when I was a toddler. It really was an active and interesting place. No wonder I pursue ghosts relentlessly. This is likely to be my favorite book so far. Here's a first draft unedited opening scene:

My mother awakened from her newly acquired sleep because one of her five children was climbing back up the steep staircase, the wood creaking and clicking with the sounds of boot heels.

She peeled back the blankets in the chilly house and automatically slid her feet into her slippers to guide the lost sheep back to bed. Halfway down the hall and finally awakening, she realized none of her children had anything but rubber heeled boots. She stopped nervously and looked back at her open bedroom door. My father was away on business and she and the children were alone in the estate and with no locks on the doors.

Taking the chance, she plunged forward, tightening her robe belt and reached the top of the narrow enclosed stairwell. She reached over and flicked on the hall light. There was no one in sight. She rushed down the stairs, her slippered feet making the ancient wood stairs creak appropriately, but none of the clicking sounds of hard heels that she heard earlier.

She went from room to room in the mansion flicking on lights, checking the doors, the chains still in place. Considering we had just moved into the house weeks before, the sounds of the 200-year-old mansion were all foreign to her. Deciding she had a nightmare drifting into her waking state, mom went back to bed.

Little did she know that she would act out this scenario many times before father returned from his trip.

Comments

  1. I can't wait. I love your stories of growing up at Aspen Grove.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Prediction . . . You & I are going to start a paranormal/parapsychological channel & one of the very 1st documentaries that it airs is going to be a filmic version of your book, Growing Up With Ghosts . . . Best wishes in seeing this to fruition, Sha' . . .

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love the way you think, Bror. I realize this story is so amazing because there were so many people living in our home (5 kids and 2 parents) and because each sibling had different experiences and some shared together. It is made even more unusual because I developed my psychometric abilities digging up relics and touching them. There are the dimensions of the issues of the 60s and my siblings eventual maturity and troubles and renovations, people moving in and out... The house had a lot of activity in a time that echoed the strife in America, so I find that an historic parallel of sorts.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sounds awesome and creepy. Can't wait to read more!

    ReplyDelete
  5. That had to be a great place to live.

    ReplyDelete
  6. It was insanely beautiful and quirky which makes me a bit of a romantic and atmospheric junkie when I write. You can't grow up with that much beauty around you and not be sentimental about nature and old buildings.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment