Anna Abner's Blog, page 17
October 20, 2015
Tuesday Teaser (Spell of Binding #2)
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October 19, 2015
Guilford County Ghostly Hitchhiker
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Ghostly Hitchhiker From Guilford County, NC
Written by Joe Borlick, Feb. 2015
JAMESTOWN, N.C. — The legend of a ghostly hitchhiker who is rumored to have haunted a Guilford County underpass is getting a national audience, according to the High Point Enterprise.
The story of Lydia the hitchhiker was featured on an episode of “Monsters and Mysteries in America” on the Destination America cable channel earlier this week.
Legend has it that Lydia haunts the old U.S. 29-70 underpass in Jamestown. The TV crew was filming in the Triad last August. Several locals were interviewed.
The legend goes a little like this: A man is driving through Jamestown. He sees a young woman near the underpass and asks her if she needs a ride. She gets in and they head to her home in High Point. When they get there, she mysteriously disappears. Worried, the man gets out of his car and goes to a nearby house. An elderly woman answers the door. The driver tells the woman his story and the woman responds by saying her daughter was killed in a wreck near that underpass – and other drivers have told her the same story.
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October 16, 2015
Flirty Friday (Once Upon a Time)
In honor of the return on Flirty Fridays and Once Upon a Time I’m devoting October to one of my all-time fave ships–Captain Swan. I can’t handle the way they look at each other! Enjoy.
Video created by Sarah Oncer
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October 14, 2015
Review of Devil’s Kiss (Hellraisers)
Author’s Back Cover Blurb:
1762. James Sherbourne, Earl of Whitney, is a gambling man. Not for the money. But for the thrill, the danger–and the company: Whit has become one of the infamous Hellraisers, losing himself in the chase for adventure and pleasure with his four closest friends.
Which was how Whit found himself in a gypsy encampment, betting against a lovely Romani girl. Zora Grey’s smoky voice and sharp tongue entrance Whit nearly as much as her clever hands–watching them handle cards inspires thoughts of another kind. . .
Zora can’t explain her attraction to the careless blue-eyed Whit. She also can’t stop him and his Hellraisers from a fiendish curse: the power to grant their own hearts’ desires, to chase their pleasures from the merely debauched to the truly diabolical. And if Zora can’t save Whit, she still has to escape him. . .
My Review:
I read this book because I was interested in writing a historical paranormal, so I was very invested in how the author wrote her novel. Though I’m not a fan of gypsies, and the heroine Zora is a gypsy fortune teller, I really liked the first few chapters. I thought Archer had creative ideas about curses, devils, and invisible captives. My favorite part was how Whit could fit Zora in his pocket. It was a very magical and imaginative beginning.
The problem I have is, by the 50% mark the hero and heroine have overcome both the external and internal obstacles to their continued happiness. They were in lust (if not in love) and committed to each other. At that point, I felt like the story was over and I wasn’t interested in reading any further. I really wish Archer had structured the story in a way that kept me on the edge of my seat for the entire novel because I enjoyed her writing and her ideas.
If you’re interested in a dark and fun historical paranormal, I would recommend reading at least part of this book as a great example of the genre.
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October 12, 2015
Haunted Scottish Castle For Sale
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Scottish Castle Haunted by Murdered Cardinal up for Sale
Written by Andrew Clark, Feb. 2015
Ethie Castle in Scotland
A haunted castle near Arbroath has been put up for sale for £1.65 million.
Ethie Castle is believed to be haunted by David Beaton, a 16th century Cardinal who was brutally murdered by a group of protestant lairds.
Cardinal Beaton targeted and arrested a number of Protestant figures and when he arrested preacher George Wishart and had him burned at the stake, a group of Protestant lairds responded by entering St Andrews Castle and savagely murdering the Cardinal before hanging his body out the window.
Before his murder, Beaton live in Arbroath at Ethie Castle and, since his passing, legend his it that his ghost still roams the corridors of the historic building.
As well as the ghost of the Cardinal, guests at the castle have also heard the cries of a child – said to be the young boy whose skeleton was discovered in a secret bricked up room.
As frightening as the ghosts may be, if you can look beyond that, the castle, built in the 14th century, also has plenty of things going for it – it comes with a number of large rooms, tennis courts, outdoor swimming pool and an extensive garden.
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October 9, 2015
Flirty Friday (Once Upon a Time)
In honor of the return on Flirty Fridays and Once Upon a Time I’m devoting October to one of my all-time fave ships–Captain Swan. I imagine, “Sugar? Yes, please!” is something a lot of us would say if face-to-face with Killian Jones. LOL Enjoy!
Video created by Sterling ORay
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October 6, 2015
Tuesday Teaser (Spell of Vanishing #3)
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October 5, 2015
Top 5 Haunted Campuses
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America’s Most Haunted College Campuses
Written by Jamie Gillespie, Feb. 2015
Cutler Hall at Ohio University
Every August, college campuses across the country are packed with families moving eager students into their new dorms. Unless you were lucky enough to move into a brand new building with state of the art air conditioning and a new mattress, you might remember the eerie feeling of taking over an empty room that has been called home by dozens of students before you. The thumbtack holes are still on the walls and the mysterious stain on the carpet will keep you and your roommate guessing until you add stains of your own to the room’s history. It’s almost like the ghosts of previous tenants still haunt the dorms they left. Once some posters of your own are up and the dorm starts feeling like home, college campuses start feeling much more like “Animal House” than a horror movie by the time Halloween parties on are on the mind, but some campuses have haunts that rival Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights. Next time you’re scared to death by that physics final, think of the five most haunted college campuses and be glad your campus doesn’t have more to be afraid of…
5. University of Virginia
Almost every college tour guide has a ghost story to tell prospective students, and the better the story the more likely it is to stick around long past the storyteller’s graduation. Of all the storytellers, however, no one tops Edgar Allen Poe when it comes to hauntings, and his old school starts off our list. A Confederate surgeon named Dr. Green is said to haunt the library to which he donated all of his books, and his ghost moved with the books when the library transferred from the University’s famed Rotunda to Alderman Library. Apart from other haunts on campus, Edgar Allen Poe left a scary note on his windowpane when he was forced to leave U.Va. due to debt…
“O Thou timid one, do not let thy
Form slumber within these
Unhallowed walls,
For herein lies
The ghost of an awful crime.”
Student loans are scary enough, but how would you like to find a note like that on your first night in a new dorm? If you want to learn more, the University Guide Service at U.Va. even offers a Ghost Tour of the campus.
4. Fordham University
Waking up to the sounds of a drunk roommate stumbling into the dorm well after midnight is pretty common in college, but students at Fordham University’s Bronx campus have to worry about something else that goes bump in the night. Students living in Finlay Hall have told of frozen hands grabbing their throats late at night—a reminder that Finlay Hall was built on top of a morgue. The ghost of a young blonde also apparently haunts the showers in Keating Hall, so freshmen have more to worry about than running into their new crush while wearing only a towel. With any old college campus, ghost stories are inevitable, but Fordham might seem eerily familiar to fans of horror because some scenes from “The Exorcist” were filmed at the university.
3. California State University, Channel Islands
When it comes to haunted campuses, it’s all about location, location, location. Cal State’s Channel Islands campus has only been open since 2002, but from 1936 to 1997 the campus was home to the Camarillo State Mental Hospital. Ghosts and strange voices apparently haven’t learned that the campus is now an academic institution rather than an insane asylum, and the signature bell tower is a regular site for paranormal happenings. If living in an old asylum isn’t cause enough to call CSUCI haunted, watch “The Ring” and keep an eye out for scenes shot on the campus.
2. Gettysburg College
Rivalries are popular on college campuses across the country, but Pennsylvania Hall at Gettysburg College was held and used as a hospital by both Confederate and Union troops during the Battle of Gettysburg. Med students know that Civil War era hospitals were more like butcher shops than modern operating rooms, so it should come as no surprise that the ghosts of bloody doctors still haunt Pennsylvania Hall’s basement. College romances can get dramatic, but men should also fear Glatfelter Hall. A young couple made a suicide pact to jump from the bell tower, but the boy bailed after the girl jumped. Her ghost—only visible to guys—haunts the bell tower, trying to lure a potential suitor to jump from the tower in her cowardly boyfriend’s place. After checking out the ghostly version of Romeo and Juliet at Glatfelter Hall, head over to the Kline Theatre at Brua Hall where the General haunts backstage.
1. Ohio University
Ohio University in Athens, Ohio has been universally dubbed the most haunted campus in the United States (if not one of the most haunted places in the U.S. period). From the girl’s basketball team that died in a bus crash haunting Washington Hall to a student named Laura who fell to her death from the fourth floor of Crawford Hall and now stops the Bob Marley song “Laura” from playing in her old building, paranormal experiences are pretty much a prerequisite for graduation. The real haunt at OU, however, is room 428 in Wilson Hall. Ohio University stands in the center of a pentagram of Athens cemeteries, and Wilson Hall just happens to stand at the very center of that pentagram. Exact explanations of the events that have occurred in room 428 are unavailable, but Ohio University officials have sealed off room 428 and dubbed it uninhabitable for students. If you never got off the waitlist for Ohio University’s freshmen class, the violent death of a student in the 1970s practicing a satanic ritual in 428 might be to blame for the lack of an extra bed. Those missing out on ghost stories while an undergrad will have to settle for OU’s killer Halloween party.
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October 2, 2015
Flirty Friday (Once Upon a Time)
In honor of the return on Flirty Fridays and Once Upon a Time I’m devoting October to one of my all-time fave ships–Captain Swan. This video is a little lighter and sillier, but sometimes it’s good to remember the good time (before Dark Swan). Enjoy!
Video created by FanvidsBy Ness
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July 28, 2015
Tuesday Teaser (Spell of Binding #2)
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