Majanka Verstraete's Blog, page 25
January 30, 2018
Real Haunted Houses: The Bell Witch Farm
The Bell Witch is perhaps the most notorious story of a haunting set in the United States. If you’ve ever seen “Blair Witch”, then know it was inspired by th Bell Witch – who was probably ten times worse than the “Blair Witch”.
I read a book once, a scientific account of poltergeists. It was an old, stuffy book and I can’t recall the name, but it had a story in it about the “Bell Witch” which was very detailed and extremely scary – so scary I couldn’t sleep for days. Knowing that I can usually get through a horror film without blinking, and that I’ve read hundreds of horror books and true haunting books over the years, that’s saying something. Nothing I’ve ever come across, not even in regards to the Bell Witch after that, was anywhere near as scary as that book.
Anyway, back to the Bell Witch case!
The Bell Witch
The story of the Bell Witch focuses on the nineteenth-century Bell family, who lived in Adams, Tennessee. John Bell Senior, a farmer, was one of the most haunted members of the family. Ever since 1817, and lasting until 1821, his family was under attack by an invisible entity who they called a witch but who we, nowadays, would probably refer to as a poltergeist.
The entity could speak, could affect the environment, and could even change forms. The first story that detailed these events was published in 1894 by newspaper editor Martin V. Ingram, and called “Authenticated History of the Bell Witch”.
The activity centered mostly on aforementioned John Bell Senior, and on his youngest daughter, Betsy. The poltergeist liked to be called ‘Kate’ and didn’t mind being referred to as a witch.
The haunting began when in the summer of 1817, John Bell Sr. saw the apparition of a dog with a rabbit’s head. Soon after, activities started in the house: scratching, knocking, sheets being pulled from beds. Think “Paranormal Activity” but set in the 1800s, and you have a good idea of what the Bell family went through.
Kate, the visiting poltergeist, had two reasons to torment the Bell family: the first was to kill John Bell Sr. (although never giving a reason why the poor man needed to perish), and the second was to end Betsy’s engagement to Joshua Gardner, a boy from the neighborhood.
Witch activity lasted until 1821, at which time the witch claimed she would appear several years later. And she did, as promised, return for a brief period in 1828, before seemingly disappearing again.
Fiction or Truth?
Speculation arises whether the accounts are true or not because of the time between when the haunting happened (1817-1821) and the first written accounts about it, in the 1850s. However, reports of a Tennessee house being haunted which research indicates all seems to point at the Bell Witch farm, was rampant during the entire nineteenth century.
In 1934, Charles Bailey Bell, grandson of John Bell Jr., published a book called “The Bell Witch: A Mysterious Spirit”, in which he recounted stories told to him by his great aunt Betsy.
All throughout the twentieth century, strange occurences seemed to happen, not just on the property of the Bell Witch Farm (and the Bell Witch Cave, another important part of the haunting), but also to several descendants of John Bell Sr., the man with whom the haunting began.
Tours
You can now tour the farm and the Bell Witch Cave. It costs just $18 to tour both. Locations can be found on this website. Unfortunately, it seems like the original farm was torn down, and there’s now a cabin instead, which is a replica from the cabin the Bells lived in.
It’s doubtful you’ll find much paranormal evidence in this replica cabin, but maybe the witch will startle you with a surprise visit when you get down into her cave… Just be warned, when she latches on to you, she tends to stay awhile.
January 25, 2018
TV Series Review: The Frozen Dead
Lately, I’ve grown more and more fond of these Netflix mini-series, with six or eight episodes. I like how they take more time to tell the story than a movie would (with the series lasting about six hours total, whereas movies last only about two hours) so we get to explore the characters and their history more, and we get to know them better. I previously reviewed Manhunt: Unabomber, another eight-part TV series by Netflix, and since I really liked that one, I wanted to give The Frozen Dead a shot, since it seemed similar in tone and topic.
The Frozen Dead, or Glacé as it’s originally called, is a French TV Series that is set mostly in the French Pyrenees, a setting that works wonderfully here. In fact, I would go as far as to say the setting is the most interesting part about the entire series. We get beautiful shots of the mountains, we get a psychiatric center set in total isolation from the rest of the world. As a viewer, you instantly get a sense of isolation, of being abandoned, of being alone, of being lost.
The series opens with main character Martin Servaz, a grizzled old detective who carries a heavy burden of guilt, being brought on a case involving a flayed and headless horse. While this wouldn’t be my preferred case either (and Martin apparently is haunting down a murderer back in Toulouse), he’s apparently been brought on the case because the horse is worth 600 00 euros. Martin makes it clear to his supervisor he would rather be anywhere but here, but gets to work anyway, teaming up with Irene Ziegler, a local policewoman.
We’re also introduced to our second main character, Diane Berg, a psychiatrist working in the local mental hospital, which is totally isolated from the rest of the world. From the get-go, it’s obvious something is up with Berg. For example, why does she want to get into building A so badly? And why is she so dead set on treating Hirtmann, a patient who was locked up there for murdering six girls.
As the story unfolds, and the Martin-Hirtmann-Berg connection becomes clear, the suspension rises, and soon enough, a cat-and-mouse-chase begins, during which it’s far from clear who is the cat and who is the mouse…
Yet, despite the stellar cast and beautiful scenery, the show is missing something. It’s just not thrilling enough. There are too many clichés, too many subplots that are easily to uncover for viewers who often watch this type of show. Every surprise the show throws in, I already saw coming, and while it’s still entertaining, it doesn’t knock you off your seat. Hirtmann is a psychopath for sure, but he’s not scary or creepy, not in the way you expect from a serial murderer: not in the way Hannibal is, or Norman Bates, or heck, even Dexter.
If you don’t go in expecting too much, you’ll probably enjoy yourself. It isn’t the best out there, but definitely not the worst either, and for crime TV fans, it’s a good choice.
January 23, 2018
Real Haunted Houses: LaLaurie House
The LaLaurie House is a supposedly haunted house located in the French Quarter in New Orleans, Los Angeles. People who have watched American Horror Story: Coven, will probably recognize this house, or at least the name of the notorious socialite and alleged murderer, Marie Delphine MacCarthy, who once lived there.
Marie Delphine McCarthy
Marie was born in 1780, and passed away in 1849. She was more commonly known as Madame LaLaurie, a name she took on after marrying her third husband. She lived in New Orleans, was a famous socialite, and she’s also an alleged murderer, who was rumored to torture and kill her household slaves.
The house in question was purchased solely by Marie, although she did live there with her third husband and two of her daughters. The house was quite large, and even had slave quarters attached. The accounts of how Madame LaLaurie treated her slaves are mixed: while some people writing at the time claim her slaves usually looked haggard and wretched, others claim Marie was always polite to her slaves and seemed worried about their health – at least in public. Court records indicate that LaLaurie even freed two of her own slaves.
However, public rumors about slave mistreatment were widespread enough that a lawyer was called to the LaLaurie residence in Royal Street. This lawyer didn’t find any evidence of maltreatment of the slaves, though.
On April 10, 1834 a fire broke out in the LaLaurie residence. When police arrived on the scene, they found the seventy-year-old cook chained to the stove by her ankle. The cook claimed she had set the fire on purpose in a suicide attempt because she feared she would soon be taken to the attic room… And no one who came there, ever came back.
The New Orleans Bee of April 11 printed a story of how bystanders tried to access the slave quarters to make sure everyone was evacuated. The LaLauries refused to give them the keys, and they have to break down the doors. There, they found seven slaves, horribly mutilated, all of them claiming to have been imprisoned there for several months.
Judge Jean-Francois Canonge was one of th people who entered the premises, and who encountered slaves having gone through horrible ordeals. When he questions LaLaurie’s husband about it, the latter told him he had best stayed home and mind his own business.
After this horrific discovery became widely known, a group of local citizens attacked the LaLaurie residence, demolishing everything they could. The Pitssfuld Sun later stated in an article that bodies had been found in the yard of the Royal Street Mansion.
LaLaurie eventually fled to Paris, where she passed away several years later.
The LaLaurie Mansion
You would expect a house with such a horrible history would’ve been long destroyed, but even the mob attacks in 1834 couldn’t destroy this house. It still stands today at 1140 Royal Street in New Orleans.
After the LaLaurie’s abandoned the house, it remained uninhabited for several years. Prior to 1888, it was purchased and restored, and was subsequently used as a public school, music conservatory, a bar, and even a furniture store. The house was even owned by actor Nicholas Cage, at some point.
Hearsay and the Truth
Over the years, the accounts of what happened at the LaLaurie House back in 1834 and before, became enlarged and twisted, due to hearsay, and people who liked to make stories even worse than they already were. For example, Jeanne Delavigne’s book, “The Haunted House of the Rue Royal”, published in 1946, might have something to do with the house’s bad reputation.
This book, seemingly inspired by Mengele’s horrible but real experiments during World War II, claimed similar experiments had been done on the slaves in the LaLaurie mansion. One slave apparently got their limbs broken and then stuck back together, and was made to resemble a crab. Another slave had her intestines removed from her body, and they were then wrapped around her waist.
The stories were supposedly based on newspaprer accounts and interviews, but 100 years after the matter, it’s easy to say. The accounts hold no true to them – no newspaper report ever stated anything of the kind, and in fact, the only current newspaper that mentioned anything about the tortures was The New Orleans Bee – a newspaper with questionable reputation.
That something was amiss in the LaLaurie House is a given. A lawyer had already been sent there before, and enough bystanders saw that the slaves had been tortured for it not to have happened. Also, letters exchanged between Marie and her children, after she had fled to France, have her children expressly forbidden her from returning to New Orleans “after what happened there”.
So yes, something happened. But it’s safe to say it wasn’t the medical experiments or the torture of hundreds that the 1940s and later stories claimed it was.
Another Murder
In fact, some of the ghosts stories currently haunting the house, can maybe be traced back to 1894 when a tenant of the mansion, which had then been converted into apartments, was found murdered in his room. His belongings were ransacked, and the police assumed a robbery had taken place. During interviews with neighbors, one of these neighbors claimed the tenant had been having problems with ‘spirits’ in his home, or even possibly a ‘demon’.
The Ghosts of The Mansion
Ever since 1834, accounts of supernatural activity have plagued the LaLaurie House, and most of these hauntings are, of course, related to the slaves who were tortured there. Reports include: moaning or voices coming from the slave quarters, phantom footsteps, even some ghost sightings, and people sensitive for paranormal activities, can often pick up emotions from past inhabitants in the house, most particularly sadness.
However, it’s a little tough to investigate this phenomena considering… no one is allowed inside.
The house is currently owned by an oil tycoon from Texas, and he doesn’t allow any paranormal investigators inside, let alone any ghost tours. There’s a New Orleans ghost tour that pauses outside the mansion, but even they can’t get you inside. When production crews were filming for American Horror Story: Coven, he didn’t allow them in, or even allowed them to film the outside of the building.
Your best bet is to make friends with the owner. Or maybe stand outside and wait for one of the ghosts to come and befriend you… If one of the resident ghosts does appear in one of the windows, don’t forget to snap a picture, or even better, a video.
Derailed - A Circuit Fae Prequel Novella
Syl Skye. Rouen Rivoche. Star-crossed lovers who should be mortal enemies. This is the story of how they met.
A nightly excursion to DC. A goth-rock show. One innocent train ride. That’s all it takes for high school sophomore Syl Skye’s perfectly normal world to come crashing down.
Because unbeknownst to her, she’s a sleeper-princess of the fair Fae—a vessel of Fae power that has yet to Awaken—and there are dark Fae who want her dead, dead, dead.
Rouen Rivoche is one of those dark Fae. Bound to the Agravaine the dark Fae Huntsman who is dedicated to wiping out all sleeper-princesses, Rouen has no choice but to hunt Syl down and spill her blood.
But a chance meeting in a nightclub, a brush of their hands, a lingering look… Despite herself, Rouen is attracted to Syl. And when she lets Syl get away…that’s when their troubles really begin.
After all, every couple has their issues, right?
Find out how Syl and Rouen met in this new prequel novella to MORIBUND, Book 1 of the Circuit Fae…
THE CIRCUIT FAE
.5. Derailed (Moribund prequel novella) – January 23, 2018
1. Moribund – September 12, 2017
2. Ouroboros – March 27, 1018
Perfect for readers of romance, urban fantasy, fairy stories and LGBT.
“Moribund is a little bit Throne of Glass, a little bit Buffy, and a whole lot sexy.” – Skye Allen, author of The Songbird Thief
Genevieve Iseult Eldredge
Derailed - A Circuit Fae Prequel Novella
Syl Skye. Rouen Rivoche. Star-crossed lovers who should be mortal enemies. This is the story of how they met.
A nightly excursion to DC. A goth-rock show. One innocent train ride. That’s all it takes for high school sophomore Syl Skye’s perfectly normal world to come crashing down.
Because unbeknownst to her, she’s a sleeper-princess of the fair Fae—a vessel of Fae power that has yet to Awaken—and there are dark Fae who want her dead, dead, dead.
Rouen Rivoche is one of those dark Fae. Bound to the Agravaine the dark Fae Huntsman who is dedicated to wiping out all sleeper-princesses, Rouen has no choice but to hunt Syl down and spill her blood.
But a chance meeting in a nightclub, a brush of their hands, a lingering look… Despite herself, Rouen is attracted to Syl. And when she lets Syl get away…that’s when their troubles really begin.
After all, every couple has their issues, right?
Find out how Syl and Rouen met in this new prequel novella to MORIBUND, Book 1 of the Circuit Fae…
THE CIRCUIT FAE
.5. Derailed (Moribund prequel novella) – January 23, 2018
1. Moribund – September 12, 2017
2. Ouroboros – March 27, 1018
Perfect for readers of romance, urban fantasy, fairy stories and LGBT.
“Moribund is a little bit Throne of Glass, a little bit Buffy, and a whole lot sexy.” – Skye Allen, author of The Songbird Thief
Genevieve Iseult Eldredge
January 18, 2018
TV Series Review: Alias Grace
If I had to name my favorite TV series of 2017, I would no doubt choose “Alias Grace”, a miniseries based on a novel written by Margaret Atwood. Another series based on a Margaret Atwood novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale” is gaining a lot of popularity as of late, but don’t hesitate to try “Alias Grace” just because it gets less publicity – this series is pure genius.
The story focuses on Grace Marks, a nineteenth-century Irish-Canadian servant girl who allegedly helped murder the owner and housemaid of the farm where she worked. The book is based on a true homicide case from 1843, but the life story of Grace Marks is mostly fictionalized.
Grace gets to tell the audience her own story through sessions with a therapist, Dr. Simon Jordan, who was hired by a group of citizens eager to get Grace released from prison, believing her innocent of the crime she was accused of permitting. Slowly, while at times gazing straight into the camera, Grace tells us her story. The narrative switches back from the scenes with Grace and Dr. Jordan, to Grace’s past, showing us the events that led to the murder.
The actress portraying Grace Marks, Sarah Gadon, is absolutely phenomenal. Her performance is by far the best of the entire series and that’s saying something considering each actor and actress plays their role extraordinarily well in this miniseries. The issues focused on by the series are surprisingly timely, given that the book is set in the nineteenth century.
The series is a slow burn, taking its time to unfold. Every scene is detailed, mesmerizing, and the last episode is downright ghastly, in the way gothic horror can be, giving an eerie, surreal vibe to the viewer that will stay with you long afterwards. A story about women too often suppressed by society, it’s also about liberation, about setting oneself free, and it tells this tale in a hypnotizing way that keeps viewers glued to the screen.
Keeping the reader guessing if Grace’s story is truth or fiction until the very end, this series is capable of mesmerizing the viewer and compelling them to keep watching episode after episode. Superb acting, lush settings and a strong, multi-layered narrative conjure up the best TV series 2017 had to offer: “Alias Grace”.
January 16, 2018
Real Haunted Houses: The Sallie House
Atchison is a small town that doesn’t particularly look like the stuff of nightmares. However, The Sallie House, as this particular haunted house is nicknamed, is rumored to be haunted – and not just any haunting, but the stuff of nightmares.
Located on 508 N. Second Street in Atchison, and built in the mid-1800s, the house already looks pretty spooky when you just glance at it. But the story behind the house, is even more terrifying.
The History
Back in 1867, The Sallie House was built for the Finney family, a regular family just like any other. Michael Finney was the first inhabitant of the house, along with his wife and children. He passed away in 1872, but the house stayed occupied by Finney family members until the last descendant, Dr. Charles Finney died in 1947.
After Charles’ death, the house became vacant. Tenants moved in, but usually only stayed a few months – supposedly due to strange happenings in the house.
The Legend
As the story goes, a physician used to live in the house. One day, a young woamn appeared with her six-year-old daughter, Sallie, who was suffering from severe abdominal pain. The doctor feared the young girl had acute appendicitis, and that if he didn’t cut out the appendix right away, she would die. Before anesthesia fully kicked in, he already started cutting the girl. A frightened Sallie spent her last moments in agony as she died on the operating table.
Since then, the house is supposedly haunted.
However, the story only gained attention in the mid-1990s, several decades after the supposed appendicitis-removal-gone-wrong. The then-owners, Tony and Debra Pickman started noticing strange occurences in the house.
Things got a little worse when after the birth of their son, they had decorated the nursery with teddybears. The Sallie ghost loved taking the teddybears off the shelf, and arranging them in a circle in the middle of the bedroom floor.
That was apparently not enough to tell the family to get the hell out of there. They invited one of their friends, a psychic, who claimed the house was haunted by evil. Soon after, Tony seemed to be taken over by an evil spirit, and scratches appeared all over his body. Quite viscious scratches too, so whatever was in the house, it was definitely not happy.
The Kanses Paranormal Group came to investigate the place and declared the house haunted, but not just by Sallie’s ghost. Apparently, The Sallie House is quite the paranormal hotspot, as a middle-aged woman who remained unnamed was also haunting the place.
A Ghost With A Grudge
Whoever is truly haunting The Sallie House, all visitors and guests tend to agree: the ghost is particularly violent toward men. Never attacking women or children, the ghost even goes as far as to scratch men, or put things on fire when they’re near – how the place hasn’t burned down over the years is a complete mystery.
You don’t have to believe everything you read, though. The website for Visit Atchison, which just about declares the whole town as paranormal mayhem (considering you can do murder mystery dinners, meals with a medium, cemetery tours, and anything a paranormal enthusiast can dream of) has a whole page dedicated to haunted videos from The Sallie House.
The Sallie House is open for visits. You can go on a self-guided tour, or ask for a guide, and you can even stay overnight. While you’re at it, you might want to check out the rest of Atchison, which is supposedly the most haunted town in Kansas.
January 11, 2018
Movie Review: Annabelle: Creation
I’ve been wanting to see the movie “Annabelle: Creation” for ages, but because my boyfriend doesn’t like horror movies, and I don’t like watching them alone, we never got around to it. Until last weekend, that is.
While “Annabelle: Creation” is miles ahead of “Annabelle”, the first movie in this series, that’s not exactly a compliment as the first movie was so God-awfully terrible it can only be described as an act of pure evil to force someone to watch it. Either way, “Annebelle: Creation” might be an improvement from its source material , but a decent horror movie, it is not.
For an origin story, the good part is that, besides the Annabelle doll, we get a whole host of original characters. The movie starts by showing us images of a happy family – a dad who is a dollmaker, a young daughter, and her loving and caring mother. Then, minutes into the movie, the daughter gets hit by a car and dies.
Fast forward twelve years, and we see a bus filled with young orphan girls who are headed towards the family’s home. Having lost their daughter so many years prior, the husband and wife team have apparently decided to allow a bunch of orphans back into their house despite, as is revealed later on in the movie, the fact their house was occupied by a demon not-that-long ago, and the remnants of said demon are still locked up in their daughter’s old bedroom upstairs in the (you guessed it) doll named Annabelle.
What could possibly go wrong?
From the outset, the book feels like any haunted house flick. We get a bunch of young orphans in an isolated house with, as the nun who acts as their caretaker so eloquently states, nowhere else to go. The main character is soon revealed and it’s, of course, the weakest member of the group: Janice, who is already weakened by polio and can barely walk.
Why does evil always prey on the weak, or those physically disabled in some way? There’s an arrogant older girl in the movie whose name I already forgot and who, for all I care, can be the primary victim of the evil haunting the Mullins home. But yet again, a young, sweet, innocent girl is being targeted by a demon. Pick someone of your own size, demon, will you?
Anyway, although the build-up is a little slow (which is a good thing in my book), things go bad pretty fast from the moment Janice uncovers the doll. And I’m talking lights going out, people getting thrown about, even ripped in half kind of bad. “Annabelle: Creation” doesn’t do subtlety, no sir.
The movie is riddled with cheap jump scares and events that don’t make a lot of sense when you think about them logically. The first half of the movie is still pretty enjoyable, with Janice creeping into the deceased daughter’s bedroom, with the doll being revealed and my favorite scene – the doll with creepy blanket on following Janice as she wanders through the room. That was, hands down, my favorite scene in the movie.
Then, as soon as Janice locks herself into the chair lift along the stairs, and suddenly gets shot straight up toward the ceiling, the movie became a laughable spectacle of one over-the-top-event following another, one even more ludicrous than the first. The movie relies on the jump scares and heavily-made-up demons for its horror elements, rather than trying to instill genuine, eerie fear in its audience which, in my opinion at least, is the wrong focus.
If you like the franchise so far, “Annabelle: Creation” isn’t the worst addition to the series, but in general horror movie terms, it leaves a lot to be desired.
January 9, 2018
Real Haunted Houses: Villisca Axe Murder House
The Villisca Axe Murder House is famous, not just for its reputation of being haunted, but also because – as suggested by its name – it’s the scene of a horrific crime that happened in 1912.
The Murders
On the evening of June 9, 1912 and the early morning of June 10, 1912, an unknown assailant entered the Moore residence in Villisca, Iowa, and bludgeoned everyone present inside the house. The people present inside the house were the Moore family: parents Josiah B. (aged 43), Sarah (39) and their four children: Herman Montgomery (11), Mary Katherine (10), Arthur Boyd (7) and Paul Vernon (5). On that particular night, two visiting girls also stayed the night: Ina Mae Stillinger (8) and Lena Gertrude Stillinger (12). These guests had been ivnited by Mary Katherine.
That evening, on June 9, the Moore family had attended the Presbyterian church and had gone home at 9.30 p.m., along with the Stillinger girls.
At 7 a.m. the next day, Mary Peckham, the Moore’s neighbour, grew concerned after she noticed the family hadn’t come out to do their morning chores. She knocked on the door, but nobody answered. She tried to open the door and discovered it was locked. Mary Peckham called on Ross Moore, Josiah’s brother, who eventually unlocked the door with his house key. Moore went inside the house and first found the bodies of the Stillinger girls in the guest bedroom. He quickly returned to Mary Peckham, and told her to call the peace officer, who arrived shortly after.
Police quickly arrived. The murder weapon, an axe belonging to Josiah, was found in the guest bedroom, along with the bodies of the Stillinger girls.
Doctors concluded the murders had taken place between midnight and 5 a.m. While some suspects were brought forward in the subsequent trial, no one was actually convicted for the horrific murder that took place on that fateful night.
The Following Years
As can be expected from a house in which an entire family was killed, the Villisca Murder House changed hands often over the years. In 1994, Darwin and Martha Linn, local farmers, decided to purchase the house. They already owned and operated the Olson-Linn museum, and they purchased the house with the intention of preserving more of the area’s history. Using old photographs, they began restoring the house to the state it had been in back in 1912.
Next, using the testimony during the trials that followed the murders, the Linns placed the furniture in approximately the same places as it was located at the time of the murders.
If the house was haunted prior to the Linns purchasing it, is unknown. There are no records about potential hauntings back then, but people don’t always talk about hauntings and while it’s something that is accepted in nowadays culture, this wasn’t always the case in the past. What we can say however is that, ever since the Linns opened up the “murder house” to the public, a lot of people claim it’s haunted, and that they’ve had experiences there.
The Hauntings
The Villesca Murder House doesn’t look like the kind of house that would be haunted – from the outside. It looks pretty normal, a white two-story home, old now, but not that strange or peculiar. By looking at it, one would think that, if not for the horrible murders that took place on June 10, 1912, the house would’ve never been haunted.
The Villisca Murder House can be visited, and even has its own website. It’s open for tours and overnights. You can even go on a virtual tour on the website. From that website, there’s a link to all kinds of Youtube videos of people who have visited or stayed overnight and who have investigated the house, some of them even having captured paranormal evidence.
A lot of people who have visited the house claim they’ve experienced paranormal activities once inside, especially when calling out the names of the children murdered in the house.
However, there’s a website about a movie apparently being shot in regards to the Villisca Murder House that states the film makers interviewed all residents of the house prior to 1993, and none of them have had any paranormal experiences at the house. Also, during filming, the video creators apparently spent dozens of hours filming in the house at all hours of the day and night, and have not had a single paranormal experience.
After reviewing all the evidence, it’s up to you to decide whether you think the house is haunted or not. And maybe, just to cast off all your doubts, go have a visit there, stay the night, and see if any unexpected guests come pay you a visit.
January 8, 2018
Monday Musings #44
Monday Musings is a post in which I talk about my writing goals for the upcoming week, and the progress I made on my goals for the past week.
Here is my progress on the goals for last week:
Schedule all blogs posts for the first two weeks of January (4/4). I’ve finished the blogs for the entire month (8/8).
Finish reviews for Ind’Tale Magazine and send them out.
Finish short story for this week (the story for the Ghost Slayer Series).
Write 10k words in first draft of The Sign of The Serpent, the second book in The Adventures of Marisol Holmes Series.
Finish the fourth round of edits for A Study in Shifters, the first book in The Adventures of Marisol Holmes Series.
Schedule all posts for this month on the Monster House Books Blog (4/4) and crosspost on this blog.
Finish writing short article (0/2500 words) due January 15.
So, I did finish quite a lot of goals, and did quite well overall! Here are my goals for next week:
Finish writing short article (0/2500 words) due January 15.
Write 10k words in first draft of The Sign of The Serpent, the second book in The Adventures of Marisol Holmes Series.
Write a short story for this week.
Not that many goals since I think this week will be quite busy. Fingers crossed that I complete all of these this week!
