Novel excerpts: Supernatural – Part 14

The Witness

Chapter 1

Call me Witness. If you must call me anything. I don’t care. But that’s what I do really.

Witness. My old name has gone, like my motivations and dreams and loves. All I have left is

this hollow knowledge of the old house and everyone in it. I witness them. In a way they

witness me.

When the old house is gone, maybe I’ll be gone too. But maybe not. Maybe ,forgetting even the

word witness, I’ll stare blankly as dust and brush fill up the remain of the basement and it is all

returned to wild grass.

It wasn’t always like this. I lived in the house once, long ago. I was in love with a girl, I forget

her name, and we had a family here. A boy named Tom, I remember that, and the girl who was

sick.

That was a long time ago. The woman I loved is buried in under the oak tree in the back. No

one comes to visit her anymore. The girl who was sick lived here for years after Tom left. I

watched her and her cats. I even tried to keep her company for a while, but I can’t. I’m just the

witness.

After they came and took the girl away, she’d been here for years, no one came to the house for a

long time. I wandered the halls maybe ten million times, watching the wall paper fade and peel.

The back window broke out and a badger lived in the laundry room for a while.

I heard them as soon as the key touched the lock. I don’t really sleep, but sometimes I’m not

really all here. I came to from a sort of a dream, I was crying over something but I couldn’t

remember what. I met them at the door. They were young. She had a thin face and red hair. I

didn’t know her. But the boy, I thought the boy was my Tom. I cried out but didn’t make any

noise of course.

“Oh my God.” She said. “This place is disgusting.”

He was smiling a round smile in his friendly, round face. “It looks like Auntie Reya forgot to

clean up before they hauled her out.”

They stood in the living room surveying my domain. “Is that a dead cat?” The girl asked

disgusted. They were both young and fresh, as if two bright, sweet peaches had been dropped

into a basket of dead flowers. I was feeling strangely about seeing Tom after all this time. I

thought I remembered him, thought I knew him, my boy, but this, this was a different Tom. I

also felt an unsettling pain, or the memory of a pain. I don’t feel anything.

They went into the kitchen talking in hushed tones, as if they might waken a sleeper. “This stuff

has got

What makes a great ghost story? – Part 21

Ghost stories have been around ever since humans could communicate. There have been the good ones, which make it hard to sleep, and the bad one, which put you to sleep. The best ghost stories I have heard have history behind them. I have gotten chills and became paranoid after hearing these stories. These stories have three elements: history, suspense, and relation to normal life. History plays an important role in a great ghost story. The history can be from a wandering soul of a murdered family to a soldier killed in battle. Someone who has died in a struggle is more likely to be a scarier ghost than one who has died on their own. Suspense makes the listener/ reader sit on the edge of their seat. Yet, if there is too much suspense, you tend to lose the interest of the listener/ reader. You need to have enough suspense to make it scary, yet not too much to make it boring. The last element is the relation to normal life. In order to make it seem realistic, the character, or victim, needs to be any ordinary person. You don’t want this person to be too rich, or too poor. This person can be either young or old, male or female. You want the victim to relate to the listener or reader as much as possible. You want to get inside their head, making them think the ghost could visit them. This will have them get the paranoid feeling. If you get those three elements into a ghost story, you will have one of the greatest stories your friends and family have heard.

Living in a haunted house – Part 26

When I first moved into our old family home, I was about four years old. I can still vividly remember the strange occurrences that had happened within the walls of that house. There were hundreds of strange things that had happened.

Apparently, the previous owner of the house had been a chronic alcoholic, who lived with his wife and twenty year old daughter. After walking home from the pub one night, he had stepped out in front of a car and was severely injured. A few weeks upon returning home from the hospital, he had suffered a stroke and had died in the bedroom my sister and I had shared when we were younger.

Many times, and this is no word of a lie, the entire household had been woken up in the middle of the night to cupboards in the kitchen opening and slamming shut. Lights would go on by themselves, the refrigerator door would constantly be open in the morning, after dad had changed the seals on it, and there would be someone pacing endlessly up and down the hallway that adjoined the two bedrooms in the house.

Quite often, my sister and I would wake up to hear someone creeping up to our beds. It kind of sounded like someone who could not walk properly, so they would ’shuffle’ along the carpet. Fan and radios in our room would go on and off most nights and sometimes, we would feel someone blowing on our faces or touching our cheeks and foreheads lightly. Most of the time, my sister and I would refuse to sleep in that particular room.

One night, My sister had gone for a sleep over at a friends house. This happened a few years after we had moved in. I was settling down to go to sleep and just before I was about to drift off, I heard someone standing next to my bed, breathing harshly. I could feel their breath on my face, and I was too scared to open my eyes in-case I saw something scary. After a while, that familiar ’shuffling’ sound returned and I heard someone sit down on my sisters bed. I remember screaming my absolute lungs out and refused to sleep in that room without my sister.

The hunting’s continued for about ten years, then suddenly, it stopped. Every now and then, a light would go on, or something in the house would go missing, but that’s about it. Just before we moved out, a few scary things happened. I would be interested in talking to the new tenants of the house now and asking them if they have experienced anything strange. I think I’ll bet my word on it that they have.

Believing in ghosts – Part 22

“Ghosts”? Honestly, one might as well say poltergeist. Ghosts are in truth, spirits that have not chosen to pass on to the next world, or life, however you view it.

Spirits speak to those that listen. That is why so many people mock and fear them, they don’t understand them in the least.

I was spending the night with a pagan friend of mine about six months ago. We watched three or four movies, and she fell asleep after mentioning that we might be visited by her grandmother’s spirit. I found that I could not sleep.

I left the living room and went into the kitchen and got a glass of water and came back. I laid down on the couch, hoping to sleep because I was to go shopping the next morning. Sleep didn’t come, my friend’s grandmother did.

In my experiences with spirits, they aren’t wailing banshees or people dressed in white. My friend’s grandmother was tall, straight, but friendly all the same. She was quiet, watchful. She spoke some words, not audible to my ears but to my open heart.

I spoke with my friend the next morning, asking about her grandmother. I wanted to just make sure that I had seen her grandmother and that another spirit wasn’t occupying the same space. I had seen her grandmother. The mannerisms were still the same even in death.

Poetry: Demons – Part 10

It comes for me in my sleep and while I stay awake nothing left for him to take, his eyes rip through me with disregard for my soul he thrashes about knowing I am not whole.

He rips at me with his claws and opens me to his nightmarish heart, the feeling he brings is painful and evil right from the start.

The eyes look into me and hold me in fear I have no feeling left whenever he is near, the darkness he seeks is growing within hurting me knowing how much I sin.

This demon comes to me nightly and without regret he opens my soul to the darkness that sees no sunset, he watches as I try and hide as he looks on with the nothing inside.

This demon I fear is dread to be near is hard to stay clear of don’t you see, this demon I fear is the darkest side of me.

Characteristics of Intelligent Hauntings