Heddy M. Johannesen's Blog, page 25

The best night of the year

Merry meet all,

Samhain is here. It’s October 31st!!! Have a great Samhain Sabbat celebration!! 

Blessings, Lady Spiderwitch )O(

The 50 Scariest Books of All Time

Originally posted on Flavorwire:

The air is getting crisper, the nights are getting longer, and All Hallow’s Eve draws near. You know what that means: it’s time to curl up with a book guaranteed to give you the shivers — or at least make you check the locks twice. Here, for your horrifying pleasure, are 50 of the scariest books ever written in the English language, whether horror, nonfiction, or speculative futures you never want to see. One caveat: the list is limited to one book per author, so Stephen King fans will have to expand their horizons a little bit. Check out 50 books that will keep you up all night after the jump, and add any other scary favorites to the list in the comments.

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Order Our Collection ‘One Hellacious Halloween’ in Paperback Right Now!

Originally posted on Horror Novel Reviews:

The paperbacks of One Hellacious Halloween Volume 1 are finally available via Amazon.com. It’s been a long time coming, but I’m extremely happy with how it all turned out. It looks great, it reads great and it’s a fine showcase for some of today’s hungriest young authors.

Russell James, Terry M. West, Glenn Rolfe, Sheldon Woodbury, Matt Molgaard and more contribute to this staggering lineup of seasonal shockers. And now you can hold it in your hands!

Other authors include:

Rick Popko

Adam Watts

Claire C. Riley

Colin Bradley

Waayne C. Rogers

Ian McCain

Alexandra Corinth and Michelle Tvete

And more!

Celebrate this horrific holiday with us, Order the paperback right here!

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Spirits & Ghosts

Merry meet all,

 In the most recent post, I talked about some ways to psychically shield yourselves against negativity and other evils. But why the need to shield yourselves and what exactly are you shielding yourselves from? That’s what we’re going to talk about here. 

I wanted to add before I forget another protection technique. Sage is a highly prized herb for its protective energy. Boil water in a kettle. Add plenty of sage leaves to a clean teapot. Pour the boiled water into the teapot and slosh the pot to make sure you equally blend the water and herbs. Allow it to steep. When the sage has steeped, go outside and if you can, circle your entire property and pour the sage water in the circle. You should have a sage circle. Then empty the teapot’s contents on the ground where you began with your circle. Say a chant or a blessing and return inside. It is good to do this at Midsummer when the fairies are around and at Samhain when the spirits are around. 

Put a black candle at your window to ward off bad spirits and a white candle to guide the good spirits at Samhain on October 31st. Of course, your jeering pumpkin should go at the windows too! 

I plan to stock up on sage. You can use either white sage, garden sage, or clary sage. It will all work if you put your intent into it. 

There are, according to some beliefs, different types of spirits. The veil grows thin at this time of year. The Celts believed in ghosts and spirits and believed that at Samhain, the dead walked the earth. 

Earthbound spirits are spirits that may have died accidentally or died before their time. They failed to find the light and wander the earth, in search of energy- your energy or that of someone else- to feed on. 

Shadow people Shadow people are more puzzling. I am not sure if they exist. There is some debate on what they actually are. They could be demons (I doubt it), inter dimensional beings, time travellers, aliens.) Shadow people invade your room and your personal space while you sleep. They have been associated with sleep paralysis. 

Ghosts trapped in time. I visited a popular restaurant that I may have mentioned in an earlier post. The ghosts in the restaurant have made the restaurant famous. The owner has made money off of the ghostly presences haunting the place. They are trapped in this time and are seen wearing the clothes they wore when they died. The Five Fishermen restaurant is replete with residual energy. A lot of unhappy events occurred there and the restaurant is haunted. I have suggested it and numerous other mediums have suggested shutting the place down for a day or two to ‘cleanse’ the place but they won’t listen to us. 

These are the most common types of ghosts. Most of them won’t bother you. It is the ones who would that cause worry. You don’t have to smudge yourself with sage every time you leave the house or every night before going to sleep. Always try to find a rational explanation for a haunting first. If it persists, and things go missing or are mysteriously moved by unseen hands, which is what happens in my place, then you can rule out a haunting or a fairy and take the right steps to stop it. 

For all you skeptics out there, and there’s nothing wrong with that, I’ll share some actual occurrences that happened to me. One night I was asleep in my bed. My aunt had passed away from cancer. I found out before going to sleep. I felt something behind me as I slept in my bed. The day I got the news that my father passed away. I knew what the person was going to tell my Mom even though this person was thousands of miles away. Yes my dad had died. I didn’t know who the person was but I knew. Don’t ask me how I knew but I did. 

If you read the link below, it will tell you about different types of ghosts. 

Blessings, Lady Spiderwitch )O(

 

http://paranormalistics.blogspot.ca/p/types-of-ghosts-and-spirits.html

Psychic Defence

Merry meet all,

Autumn is a beautiful season. The trees are regaled in fiery colours and everyone is eager to carve pumpkins. It’s also the time when the veil between the worlds is thinning. While it is fun to try seances or do a grave rubbing, do try to protect yourself from unwanted energies. This post tells you how.

There are many methods to use to shield yourself. I shield myself and I am now accustomed to it. If you practice regularly, you will be too. The most important methods are firstly meditation, visualization and intent.

Meditation Meditation is a great and foolproof way to put yourself in a certain state of mind, and to prepare for a ritual or whatever you had planned. You cleanse your mind, body and spirit and clear your head.

Visualization Practice visualizing in your mind a shield around yourself. Your shield can be anything you want it to be. That can range from a beehive to a cave to an egg to a huge boulder or even a spider web. It can be anything, if it works for you. Just try to see something clearly in your mind. This is very important.

Intent When I went to the famous haunted (I’m not kidding!), Five Fishermen Restaurant, which I was secretly investigating for ghosts, I entered with intent and I had visualized a shield around myself. I was psychically ‘on’, or entering with the intent to possibly have an encounter with ghosts and ready for whatever experiences may occur. I didn’t enter blindly in other words. I was prepared. See why I say this stuff is important? And if you wanna find out what happened that night, you can mosey on over to my parent blog at Broomsticks & Cauldrons to read the post titled: Ghosts of the Halifax Explosion http://heddyjohannesen.wordpress.com/2012/09/19/ghosts-of-the-halifax-explosion/

Ok here it is: I went to the Five Fishermen restaurant to see if it was haunted. I sat down to enjoy a lovely meal of seafood salad and wine. As I ate, I kept glancing at the wall of wine bottles across the room. I sensed nothing downstairs, and there was so much hustle and bustle of people entering and exiting the restaurant. After I paid for the meal, I confessed to an employee why I was really there. I was given a tour of the upstairs area of the restaurant. We chatted as we climbed the stairs. Halfway up I felt like someone was dancing over my grave. My chest felt tight. We climbed the stairs and reached the top floor. I became uneasy. We went into a small room full of wine bottles. I sensed something almost angry, oppressed, and unhappy. I wanted to leave. I was told this was a very haunted room of the restaurant. I realized that was why I kept glancing at the wine bottles downstairs. I could not remain long in that room. I told the spirit, maybe an old sea captain, I meant no harm. I sensed he was curious about me. We then went to the private dining room- the employee and I- though maybe the ghost followed us. I could almost see people from another time seated at the tables and dining. I was told a lot of mediums have entered the dining room and have wanted to leave. I sensed a spirit or two haunted that room, too.

The Five Fishermen serves excellent food. It is a haunted restaurant and needs a good spiritual cleansing. The Halifax Explosion has created a lot of residual energy that is stagnant and stuck and unable to move on. I hope I have the chance to cleanse the energy there of the residual energy.

You can see by the above post how crucial it is to shield yourself. I didn’t take the energy home with me. I left it there and when I arrived home, I smudged myself with sage. All I did was shield myself. You get better at it the more you practice at it. Soon it becomes second nature to you.

Other ways to shield yourself are by setting up defences in your home. I hung a dreamcatcher above my bed, put a tiger’s eye crystal below my bed, and I placed amethyst and hematite crystals on the windowsills. I smudge my home with sage often and on every full moon. I actually have a gargoyle statue near my front door to guard my home. I keep a salt pouch in my kitchen pantry cupboard. I sprinkle salt on the windowsill and doors. I keep a bent clothes hanger in the shape of a g at my back door that bars bad energy and even insects, not kidding! I cast a door threshold protection spell at my back and front door while a squirrel chirped fiercely in my garden the entire time. Thanks, squirrel!! I found the spell in the book titled The Way of the Hedge Witch.

We will talk more about psychically protecting yourself in the next blog posts. Do use common sense and don’t become paranoid. The best way to be protected is to have a sense of humour and be calm.

Blessings, Lady Spiderwitch )O(

Spooky tales

Merry meet all,

‘Tis the time for that eerie chill that breathes on your neck, for cats’ hisses to ring out and trees howl like ghosts in the wind. 

Everyone loves a spooky story. The Writers Federation of Nova Scotia just published my story on their website. Here it is:

‘Till Death do us Part

By Heddy Johannesen

21-year old Christina Winters shrieked. She pushed at the solid wood above her and realized she was in a coffin.

I’m not dead, she thought. I’m not dead. She screamed and pounded the lid with her fists. Her heart raced and her eyes widened in fear. Dirt caked the inside of her mouth. Something slithered across her bare toes. No, she thought. No, I’ve got to get out of here.

With all her strength, she shoved the lid aside and gulped in deep breaths of air. She tried to call for help but her throat felt funny. She climbed from the coffin, tripped on the hem of her gown, and walked toward the church. She wiped a drop of muddy blood off her chin and clutched her bouquet. Light glowed from the church windows. Her bloodstained hand shoved the door wide open. A man gasped and froze when he recognized her. The moon cast an eerie glow over the cemetery.

She reached the altar. It would be their honeymoon tonight. She dropped the bouquet and collapsed. He cradled her in his arms to her grave and laid her down in the coffin. He put a red rose down and kissed his true love. He knelt by her grave for long moments. As he turned away, a bony hand shot out from the earth and seized his foot.

A piercing scream rant out into the night then all went silent.

 

Do you have any flash fiction horror tales you’d like to share? Post them in a comment and I will share them. The most blood curdling tale wins $5.00!! Best if you have a paypal account. 

 

So hurry and get them in before the 31st!!

Blessings, Lady Spiderwitch )O(