Doug Dillon's Blog, page 14
September 30, 2016
Haunted Barnes & Noble on Halloween, Jacksonville, FL
A Harry Potter Paranormal Halloween event for all ages at Barnes and Noble Claire Lane Center, Jacksonville, Florida – Saturday, October 29, 2016, 5 PM until 8 PM.
Exciting Harry Potter Activities +
Authors of the Paranormal signing their books and chatting with customers (see below for more details).
Actual Ghost Hunters showing off their equipment and sharing their fascinating experiences.
For questions, call the store @ 904-886-9904.
Store address: 11112 San Jose Blvd.
Featured Authors of the Paranormal
Dave Lapham and Doug Dillon
Dave Lapham – Nonfiction
Dave’s books about hauntings in St. Augustine, Florida are the prime sources of information for researchers looking into the paranormal happenings in America’s Oldest City. These books are:
Dave’s book, Ghost Hunting Florida, is an excellent guide for those interested in Sunshine State paranormal investigations.
Dave proudly served his country as a U.S. Marine Corps officer and it is this hard-headed, no nonsense attitude that allows him to write about the paranormal with great balance.
Click here to see Dave’s website.
Doug Dillon – Nonfiction and fiction
Doug has been probing the paranormal for more years than he cares to count. All that effort has resulted in two nonfiction books where he shares the results of his investigations:
Carl Jung, Hauntings, and Paranormal Coincidences
An Explosion of Being: An American Family’s Journey into the Psychic
Doug is a former Central Florida educator who has combined his love of history, appreciation for the city of St. Augustine and his own paranormal experiences, in order to create a novel series for young adults and adults young at heart.
Titled, The St. Augustine Trilogy, these books carry readers into the frightening world of teenagers Jeff Golden and Carla Rodriquez.
Books 1 & 2 are in print and Book 3 will be available in 2017. These novels are being used in some Florida high school reading programs for motivational and skill building purposes.
Sliding Beneath the Surface: The St. Augustine Trilogy, Book 1
Stepping Off a Cliff: The St. Augustine Trilogy, Book 2
Paranormal Researchers @ Barnes & Noble – Jacksonville, FL
A Harry Potter Paranormal Halloween event for all ages at Barnes and Noble Claire Lane Center, Jacksonville, Florida – Saturday, October 29, 2016, 5 PM until 8 PM.
Exciting Harry Potter Activities +
Authors of the Paranormal signing their books and chatting with customers (see below for more details).
Actual Ghost Hunters showing off their equipment and sharing their fascinating experiences.
For questions, call the store @ 904-886-9904.
Store address: 11112 San Jose Blvd.
Featured Authors of the Paranormal
Dave Lapham and Doug Dillon
Dave Lapham – Nonfiction
Dave’s books about hauntings in St. Augustine, Florida are the prime sources of information for researchers looking into the paranormal happenings in America’s Oldest City. These books are:
Dave’s book, Ghost Hunting Florida, is an excellent guide for those interested in Sunshine State paranormal investigations.
Dave proudly served his country as a U.S. Marine Corps officer and it is this hard-headed, no nonsense attitude that allows him to write about the paranormal with great balance.
Click here to see Dave’s website.
Doug Dillon – Nonfiction and fiction
Doug has been probing the paranormal for more years than he cares to count. All that effort has resulted in two nonfiction books where he shares the results of his investigations:
Carl Jung, Hauntings, and Paranormal Coincidences
An Explosion of Being: An American Family’s Journey into the Psychic
Doug is a former Central Florida educator who has combined his love of history, appreciation for the city of St. Augustine and his own paranormal experiences, in order to create a novel series for young adults and adults young at heart.
Titled, The St. Augustine Trilogy, these books carry readers into the frightening world of teenagers Jeff Golden and Carla Rodriquez.
Books 1 & 2 are in print and Book 3 will be available in 2017. These novels are being used in some Florida high school reading programs for motivational and skill building purposes.
Sliding Beneath the Surface: The St. Augustine Trilogy, Book 1
Stepping Off a Cliff: The St. Augustine Trilogy, Book 2
Paranormal Investigators on Halloween – Jacksonville, FL
A Harry Potter Paranormal Halloween event for all ages at Barnes and Noble Claire Lane Center, Jacksonville, Florida – Saturday, October 29, 2016, 5 PM until 8 PM.
Exciting Harry Potter Activities +
Authors of the Paranormal signing their books and chatting with customers (see below for more details).
Actual Ghost Hunters showing off their equipment and sharing their fascinating experiences.
For questions, call the store @ 904-886-9904.
Store address: 11112 San Jose Blvd.
Featured Authors of the Paranormal
Dave Lapham and Doug Dillon
Dave Lapham – Nonfiction
Dave’s books about hauntings in St. Augustine, Florida are the prime sources of information for researchers looking into the paranormal happenings in America’s Oldest City. These books are:
Dave’s book, Ghost Hunting Florida, is an excellent guide for those interested in Sunshine State paranormal investigations.
Dave proudly served his country as a U.S. Marine Corps officer and it is this hard-headed, no nonsense attitude that allows him to write about the paranormal with great balance.
Click here to see Dave’s website.
Doug Dillon – Nonfiction and fiction
Doug has been probing the paranormal for more years than he cares to count. All that effort has resulted in two nonfiction books where he shares the results of his investigations:
Carl Jung, Hauntings, and Paranormal Coincidences
An Explosion of Being: An American Family’s Journey into the Psychic
Doug is a former Central Florida educator who has combined his love of history, appreciation for the city of St. Augustine and his own paranormal experiences, in order to create a novel series for young adults and adults young at heart.
Titled, The St. Augustine Trilogy, these books carry readers into the frightening world of teenagers Jeff Golden and Carla Rodriquez.
Books 1 & 2 are in print and Book 3 will be available in 2017. These novels are being used in some Florida high school reading programs for motivational and skill building purposes.
Sliding Beneath the Surface: The St. Augustine Trilogy, Book 1
Stepping Off a Cliff: The St. Augustine Trilogy, Book 2
September 23, 2016
Neighborhoods and Maps: St. Augustine, Florida
Understanding the old city of St. Augustine is a lot easier if you can review some basic maps beyond the folded up kind that don’t give you certain perspectives and information. Next to each photo below, you will find a link giving you such information:
This photo shows King St. as seen from Flagler College.
Click here for a map showing the city limits of St. Augustine.
Here is a view in what I call the Water St. Neighborhood. This is where much of my young adult novel, Sliding Beneath the Surface takes place.
The area has quite a history all its own and is actually known as the Abbott Tract. On some maps it is shown as the eastern half of what’s called Uptown.
Click here for a map showing Neighborhoods of St. Augustine in or near the historic area.
Click on any of the following for further information on the city of St. Augustine:
A Calendar of Events for St. Augustine
Haunted Lighthouse of Northeast Florida
Ghostly Tales of Paranormal Florida. Links to the Supernatural at its Best.
Since so many paranormal events have occurred at the St. Augustine Lighthouse, I decided to pull together some key information from various sources into this one posting.
Over the years, visitors and staff members alike have definitely experienced a lot of strange things. Many paranormal investigators have studied the lighthouse, including the popular TV team, Ghost Hunters. So if you haven’t visited the place, put it on your “to do at some point in my lifetime” list.
Photo courtesy of the State Archives of Florida
Historical Background
The present day lighthouse sits at the northern tip of Anastasia Island directly across Matanzas Bay from downtown St. Augustine. In the evening, from downtown, you can see its beam sweep across those waters and then shift out over the Atlantic.
Erected in 1874, the building was preceded by a coquina stone structure originally built by the Spanish. In fact, the Spanish had maintained a watchtower near the present day site ever since their arrival during the late 1500s. Before the Europeans arrived, of course, Native Americans freely roamed the area.
What People Experience at the Lighthouse Itself
Historical photo from the lighkeeper’s hom
Each night, staff members lock the door at the top of the lighthouse that leads outside to the viewing balcony. Periodically, they find the door open in the morning. There is a security system but but no alarms sound.
On occasion, people see the figure of man at the top of the lighthouse at night even though the place is closed and locked.
At times, people smell cigar smoke at the base of the lighthouse. It is always cigar smoke and there are strict No Smoking signs everywhere on the lighthouse grounds.
A Special Lighthouse Story
Photo courtesy of Greg Dillon, www.greg’sgallery.net
Even though the lighthouse became automated in 1955, someone still needed to monitor the beacon in case something went wrong. One night, the caretaker realized the light had actually ceased functioning. Immediately, he walked rapidly in the darkeness from the old lightkeeper’s house towards the lighthouse entrance.
With each step though, he 
thought he heard someone walking behind him on the gravel walkway. But when he turned around,there was no one there.
Brushing off his experience as imagination, he continued walking only to once again hear those gravely footsteps behind him. Again, he still found himself alone.
Unnerved a bit at this point, the man rushed into the lighthouse and up the stairs. This time though, he could hear footsteps ringing on the metal stairs behind him.
When he finally got to the top and checked the lighting mechanism, he found nothing wrong. As he threw the switch to restart everything, the beacon started functioning again. Not wasting any time or waiting to listen to phantom footsteps, he ran down the 219 metal steps.
For three nights after that event, the beacon again stopped working. Just like before, the caretaker found nothing wrong and was followed just as he had been that first time. He did, however, acquire the habit of taking a flashlight and gun with him whenever he went to the lighthouse after sundown.
The Lighthouse Keeper’s House (Serves now as a museum and gift shop)Some sort of presence is often felt.
People get startled by their experiences but don’t seemed to be threatened by them.
People often experience cold spots.
In the brick bottom floor where the old cistern is located, people have seen the shape of a tall man. One staff member saw this shape in an doorway. It appeared gray in color against the dark room beyond. As the staff member stared in disbelief, the shape simply merged with the darkness.
At times, chairs are moved or overturned
In the gift shop, staff and volunteers will find items have been moved out of place overnight. Sometimes items disappear only to reappear at a later date. Music boxes will turn on by themselves.
A Special Story About the Lightkeeper’s HouseIn the 1960s, the old Lightkeeper’s house was rented to a man who periodically had guests. On two different occasions, guests reported seeing the exact same thing: A little girl in a frilly dress who stands in a doorway and then disappears.
Tracing Some of These Paranormal Events to the Past
One unverified story is that someone, a lightkeeper or a helper, hanged himself from the lighthouse.
Another more traceable story has it that a tragedy happened during the construction of the present day lighthouse. 5 little girls were placing in a handcar set on a railroad track. Somehow the handcar went out of control and ended up in water where three of the children drowned. Two of them were the daughters of the construction supervisor for the lighthouse.
###
If you enjoyed this article, and you’re interested in other true stories of fascinating hauntings, you might like the new book I just published.
Titled, Carl Jung, Hauntings and Paranormal Coincidences, it uses the great psychiatirst’s own paranormal experiences as jumping off points for some of my own life events and those of other very reliable people.
Listed below are direct book links to some of the larger book retail outlets in the English speaking world where you can find it:
Amazon.com, Amazon Canada, Amazon UK, Amazon India, Amazon Australia, Barnes and Noble, Kobo (Canada)
Writing YA Novels to Teach Resilience
At-risk kids, life skills and reading.
The St. Augustine Trilogy – aiming for at-risk young people, using the paranormal, the historical and science fiction:
Book I Sliding Beneath the Surface
Book III Targeting Orion’s Children
My young adult series attracts a variety of readers, a lot of teens of course, and many adults in their twenties and thirties. And in that overall group, as I had hoped, are often a lot young people who live troubled lives.
You see, I’m a former secondary school educator who spent the last ten years of my educational career working full-time with at-risk kids. I worked for Orange County Public Schools which covers the Orlando area of Central Florida.
In that capacity, if I wasn’t setting up and monitoring programs from the district level, I was actually in schools working directly with students and their families.
Drug/alcohol use, suicide attempts, child abuse and even murder were some of the issues I dealt with over years.
I tell you all this because, as a writer, I decided to make a main thread in my book series relate to personal development, decision-making, responsibility and overcoming overwhelming challenges.
The premise of The St. Augustine Trilogy then becomes this: You Create Your Own Reality.
So many of the kids I worked with felt they were stuck in the quicksands of life and had no capacity for self change to make thing better that I had to make one last attempt at reaching others like them.
Jeff
To do that, I created the character of fifteen-year-old Jeff Golden who is a composite of all those young people I dealt with for so long. Jeff comes from a deeply dysfunctional home.
He is angry at the world and it is always somebody else’s fault for whatever happens to him.Using the first person, I have Jeff speak directly to the reader as if he is speaking with a friend.
And to make life even worse for Jeff, I inundate him with wild paranormal/science fiction-type occurrences.
Young adult readers eat that kind of stuff up and it gives me a chance to really put the pressure on the main character. For Jeff, it becomes change or be destroyed.
But to the rescue comes Lobo, the tough, mysterious, Native American Shaman. Oh, and Carla, Jeff’s girlfriend, who is smart, strong and has her head on straight.
It is through this joint guidance and modeling that Jeff learns to use the natural inner strengths that he never realized he possessed.
And at-risk kids who read my books GET IT! Whether reading my stories truly helps them or not, of course, I don’t know. But after visiting classrooms filled with such young people who read one of my books as a class project, I know the possibility exists.
They see Jeff’s gradual maturation and what he had to do to get to those stages of development. And for that I am extremely happy. If I have helped just one kid in this process it will have been well worth the effort.
As a side light, I put the trilogy’s location in America’s oldest and most haunted city, St. Augustine, Florida. This gives me the perfect setting for the spooky aspects of the series and allows the old history teacher in me to come out and play. What great fun to sneak in some lessons about the past and not meet resistance.
The Trilogy Used as Motivation and Skill Building in High School Reading Classes
What has been most interesting and gratifying is seeing high school reading teachers successfully use the trilogy books with those at-risk kids in their classrooms. Here are a couple of links to other post that will tell you all about that.
At-Risk Students and Reading (A full overview of the reading project)
Reading Motivation that Worked (The original high school reading project post)
Rewarding Reading Excellence in Schools (The trilogy used as a reward)
So there you have it. Below are the trailers for the two trilogy books already in print. And below that are some more links in order for you to fill in in any of the blanks:
Sliding Beneath the Surface
Stepping Off a Cliff
Trilogy Locations in St. Augustine, FL
The Main Characters in The St. Augustine Trilogy
Teaching History Through Young Adult Novels
Got Ghosts? Barnes & Noble, Orlando Does
October 22, 2016. A Halloween “Paranormal Saturday” @ Barnes & Noble. Authors’ of the Paranormal presentations, book signings and actual ghost hunters. For all ages.
Where? Barnes & Noble in the Altamonte Mall, Altamonte Springs, FL, 451 E. Altamonte Drive.
When? Saturday, October 22, 2016, 2:00 – 5:00 pm.
Contact: For further questions beyond what is presented in this post, call the Barnes and Noble store @ 407-261-0841.
Featured Authors of the Paranormal
Dave Lapham and Doug Dillon
Dave Lapham – Nonfiction
Dave’s books about hauntings in St. Augustine, Florida are the prime sources of information for researchers looking into the paranormal happenings in America’s Oldest City. These books are:
Dave’s book, Ghost Hunting Florida, is an excellent guide for those interested in Sunshine State paranormal investigations.
Dave proudly served his country as a U.S. Marine Corps officer and it is this hard-headed, no-nonsense attitude that allows him to write about the paranormal with great balance.
Click here to see Dave’s website.
Doug Dillon – Nonfiction and fiction
Doug has been probing the paranormal for more years than he cares to count. All that effort has resulted in two nonfiction books where he shares the results of his investigations:
Carl Jung, Hauntings, and Paranormal Coincidences
An Explosion of Being: An American Family’s Journey into the Psychic
Doug is a former Central Florida educator who has combined his love of history, appreciation for the city of St. Augustine and his own paranormal experiences, in order to create a novel series for young adults and adults young at heart.
Titled, The St. Augustine Trilogy, these books carry readers into the frightening world of teenagers Jeff Golden and Carla Rodriquez as they battle forces beyond their comprehension.
Books 1 & 2 are in print and Book 3 will be available in 2017. These novels are being used in some Florida high school reading programs for motivational and skill building purposes.
Sliding Beneath the Surface: The St. Augustine Trilogy, Book 1
Stepping Off a Cliff: The St. Augustine Trilogy, Book 2
Ghost Hunting Crew:
Offthetrails Paranormal Investigations
Based in Port St. Lucey Florida
Offthetrails Paranormal Investigations is a six person team, including a medium, with the mission of verifying or disproving claims of paranormal activity in private residences and public buildings. We utilize state of the art technology combined with personal experience. We do travel throughout the Eastern half of the United States.
Offthetrails Paranormal is an experienced paranormal investigative and research team that prides itself in our professionalism and results. We treat each case with the utmost respect and attention to detail. There are five members to our team:
Founders: Mary Jo Fister and Greg Bush.
Mary Jo Fister
Ms. Fister has had many personal experiences with the paranormal throughout her life, and has used those experiences as fuel to discover the truth about the paranormal activities that she and many others have felt.
Greg Bush
Mr. Bush has also had many personal experiences and has set out on a quest to record and document proof of paranormal activity. Mr. Bush is also Assistant Case Manager for the team.
Here is a sampling of the equipment they use in their investigations, along with a brief description of how they work:
MEL Meter: Measures both the temperature and level of electro-magnetic fields in the surrounding area. Electro-magnetic fields are energy fields given off by spirits.
The St. Augustine
National Cemetery
K2 Meter: Very similar to the MEL Meter except that it doesn’t measure temperature and is slightly less sensitive than the MEL.
Ovilus: A device that carries a 2500 word data base and allows spirits to “speak” with us. The energy is converted into an electronic voice. We’ve had some very good results with this piece of equipment.
Video Ovilus: A video version of the Ovilus. It includes a pair of video glasses that allow the wearer to see what the Ovilus is detecting and prints out the words on the viewfinder.
Spirit Box: This device scans the radio waves and allows spirits to answer questions we ask. It scans the white noise level where it is said that spirits communicate from.
Digital Voice Recorder: A very sensitive recording device that picks up spirit voices being spoken through the above mentioned white noise.
Full Spectrum Video Camera: This camera sees on all spectrums of the light field, not just the ones that can be seen with the naked eye. Spirits can often be seen within these non-visible light spectrums.
Full Spectrum Digital Camera: Much the same as the video camera, except that it takes still pictures only. It is recommended that you take many shots, as spirits may tend to show up in one and not the other.
FLIR Thermal Imaging Camera: Sees through temperature. This camera is an invaluable tool for us because it sees temperature changes which may be a spirit and allows us to capture that thermal image.
REM Pod: This is an electromagnetic field booster that provides extra energy to spirits, helping them to manifest themselves. It also has an alarm that goes off in the form of colored lights when a spirit comes in contact with it.
Spectral Detector: A device that attaches to a DSLR camera and monitors fluctuations in energy readings. When there is a change in that reading, it automatically triggers the camera and takes a picture.
Flashlight: A simple twist top flashlight that has become an invaluable piece of our equipment. It allows spirits to communicate with us through simple yes or no answers to our questions.
Static Night Vision Cameras: These are video cameras that we set up on tripods and leave running all night, recording what they see onto a DVR system. Later, we can review this evidence to see if we captured any spirit movements in rooms where the cameras were set up. We have a total of 14 night vision cameras.
Click here to visit Offthetrails Paranormal Investigations website.
September 22, 2016
Nurturing Resilience in At-Risk Kids Through Reading
At-risk kids, life skills and reading.
The St. Augustine Trilogy – aiming for at-risk young people, using the paranormal, the historical and science fiction:
Book I Sliding Beneath the Surface
Book III Targeting Orion’s Children
My young adult series attracts a variety of readers, a lot of teens of course, and many adults in their twenties and thirties. And in that overall group, as I had hoped, are often a lot young people who live troubled lives.
You see, I’m a former secondary school educator who spent the last ten years of my educational career working full-time with at-risk kids. I worked for Orange County Public Schools which covers the Orlando area of Central Florida.
In that capacity, if I wasn’t setting up and monitoring programs from the district level, I was actually in schools working directly with students and their families.
Drug/alcohol use, suicide attempts, child abuse and even murder were some of the issues I dealt with over years.
I tell you all this because, as a writer, I decided to make a main thread in my book series relate to personal development, decision-making, responsibility and overcoming overwhelming challenges.
The premise of The St. Augustine Trilogy then becomes this: You Create Your Own Reality.
So many of the kids I worked with felt they were stuck in the quicksands of life and had no capacity for self change to make thing better that I had to make one last attempt at reaching others like them.
Jeff
To do that, I created the character of fifteen-year-old Jeff Golden who is a composite of all those young people I dealt with for so long. Jeff comes from a deeply dysfunctional home.
He is angry at the world and it is always somebody else’s fault for whatever happens to him.Using the first person, I have Jeff speak directly to the reader as if he is speaking with a friend.
And to make life even worse for Jeff, I inundate him with wild paranormal/science fiction-type occurrences.
Young adult readers eat that kind of stuff up and it gives me a chance to really put the pressure on the main character. For Jeff, it becomes change or be destroyed.
But to the rescue comes Lobo, the tough, mysterious, Native American Shaman. Oh, and Carla, Jeff’s girlfriend, who is smart, strong and has her head on straight.
It is through this joint guidance and modeling that Jeff learns to use the natural inner strengths that he never realized he possessed.
And at-risk kids who read my books GET IT! Whether reading my stories truly helps them or not, of course, I don’t know. But after visiting classrooms filled with such young people who read one of my books as a class project, I know the possibility exists.
They see Jeff’s gradual maturation and what he had to do to get to those stages of development. And for that I am extremely happy. If I have helped just one kid in this process it will have been well worth the effort.
As a side light, I put the trilogy’s location in America’s oldest and most haunted city, St. Augustine, Florida. This gives me the perfect setting for the spooky aspects of the series and allows the old history teacher in me to come out and play. What great fun to sneak in some lessons about the past and not meet resistance.
The Trilogy Used as Motivation and Skill Building in High School Reading Classes
What has been most interesting and gratifying is seeing high school reading teachers successfully use the trilogy books with those at-risk kids in their classrooms. Here are a couple of links to other post that will tell you all about that.
At-Risk Students and Reading (A full overview of the reading project)
Reading Motivation that Worked (The original high school reading project post)
Rewarding Reading Excellence in Schools (The trilogy used as a reward)
So there you have it. Below are the trailers for the two trilogy books already in print. And below that are some more links in order for you to fill in in any of the blanks:
Sliding Beneath the Surface
Stepping Off a Cliff
Trilogy Locations in St. Augustine, FL
The Main Characters in The St. Augustine Trilogy
Teaching History Through Young Adult Novels
Teen Novels Teach Resilience and Reading
At-risk kids, life skills and reading.
The St. Augustine Trilogy – aiming for at-risk young people, using the paranormal, the historical and science fiction:
Book I Sliding Beneath the Surface
Book III Targeting Orion’s Children
My young adult series attracts a variety of readers, a lot of teens of course, and many adults in their twenties and thirties. And in that overall group, as I had hoped, are often a lot young people who live troubled lives.
You see, I’m a former secondary school educator who spent the last ten years of my educational career working full-time with at-risk kids. I worked for Orange County Public Schools which covers the Orlando area of Central Florida.
In that capacity, if I wasn’t setting up and monitoring programs from the district level, I was actually in schools working directly with students and their families.
Drug/alcohol use, suicide attempts, child abuse and even murder were some of the issues I dealt with over years.
I tell you all this because, as a writer, I decided to make a main thread in my book series relate to personal development, decision-making, responsibility and overcoming overwhelming challenges.
The premise of The St. Augustine Trilogy then becomes this: You Create Your Own Reality.
So many of the kids I worked with felt they were stuck in the quicksands of life and had no capacity for self change to make thing better that I had to make one last attempt at reaching others like them.
Jeff
To do that, I created the character of fifteen-year-old Jeff Golden who is a composite of all those young people I dealt with for so long. Jeff comes from a deeply dysfunctional home.
He is angry at the world and it is always somebody else’s fault for whatever happens to him.Using the first person, I have Jeff speak directly to the reader as if he is speaking with a friend.
And to make life even worse for Jeff, I inundate him with wild paranormal/science fiction-type occurrences.
Young adult readers eat that kind of stuff up and it gives me a chance to really put the pressure on the main character. For Jeff, it becomes change or be destroyed.
But to the rescue comes Lobo, the tough, mysterious, Native American Shaman. Oh, and Carla, Jeff’s girlfriend, who is smart, strong and has her head on straight.
It is through this joint guidance and modeling that Jeff learns to use the natural inner strengths that he never realized he possessed.
And at-risk kids who read my books GET IT! Whether reading my stories truly helps them or not, of course, I don’t know. But after visiting classrooms filled with such young people who read one of my books as a class project, I know the possibility exists.
They see Jeff’s gradual maturation and what he had to do to get to those stages of development. And for that I am extremely happy. If I have helped just one kid in this process it will have been well worth the effort.
As a side light, I put the trilogy’s location in America’s oldest and most haunted city, St. Augustine, Florida. This gives me the perfect setting for the spooky aspects of the series and allows the old history teacher in me to come out and play. What great fun to sneak in some lessons about the past and not meet resistance.
The Trilogy Used as Motivation and Skill Building in High School Reading Classes
What has been most interesting and gratifying is seeing high school reading teachers successfully use the trilogy books with those at-risk kids in their classrooms. Here are a couple of links to other post that will tell you all about that.
At-Risk Students and Reading (A full overview of the reading project)
Reading Motivation that Worked (The original high school reading project post)
Rewarding Reading Excellence in Schools (The trilogy used as a reward)
So there you have it. Below are the trailers for the two trilogy books already in print. And below that are some more links in order for you to fill in in any of the blanks:
Sliding Beneath the Surface
Stepping Off a Cliff
Trilogy Locations in St. Augustine, FL
The Main Characters in The St. Augustine Trilogy
Teaching History Through Young Adult Novels
St. Augustine, Florida Student Field Trip
Student guide to a St. Augustine, Florida field trip, grades 2-5.
Gary Sanchez’s teacher took their fourth-grade class 100 miles from home to the oldest city in the United States. Gary had so much fun he wants his parents to bring him back for another visit!
Established by Spain in 1565, St. Augustine, Florida has a huge stone fort built over 300 years ago. Visitors to that fort get to see where the great Seminole war chief, Osceola, was kept prisoner. Visitors get to crawl into the old, windowless gunpowder room discovered when the United States took over the fort from Spain.
Cannons still fire in this city just as they did when invaders burned St. Augustine to the ground. On special days, men dressed as pirates and Spanish soldiers pretend to fight in the streets. Cool cemeteries, the oldest wooden schoolhouse in America, and a lighthouse with 219 steps make this ancient city one of the most interesting in the country.
Class Trip Series
Published by Mitchell Lane Publishers
Interest Level: Grades 2-5
Click to Buy:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
