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.