The Best Kind of Ghost Stories

It’s a couple days past Halloween, but almost everyone I know has a ghost story or two to tell. “Tell me a ghost story you’ve experienced personally.” Wouldn’t that make a great conversation starter at one of those “I don’t know what the hell to talk about” social occasions?

I think there are two major types of ghost stories people experience. There’s the scary, goosebumps, hair-raising on the back of the neck, let’s get the hell out of here and NOT hide behind the chainsaws (love that Geico commercial) kind. Then there’s the far more reassuring kind, where we experience what we believe is a direct contact, sign or intervention from a departed loved one.

My first encounter with a ghostlike being happened when I was really young. I woke up in the middle of the night, and there was a man standing in my bedroom door. I only saw him in silhouette, but he slowly started walking across my room. He was carrying a flashlight, and he moved to my closet. Initially I thought I was dreaming, but then I realized I was wide awake. I called out “Dad?” thinking it was him, but the figure just kept moving. It was when he started opening the closet door that I dashed out of bed, up the hall, and right to my mother. She told me it was a dream, and since there was no one there, I couldn’t disagree, but it was SO real, I remember it to this day. He didn’t do anything scary toward me, but him appearing so corporeal freaked my little self out.

The first “welcoming” ghost incident I encountered was when my husband and I first moved to Southport. We bought this wonderful little pink historic house, built in 1898. The first night we were there, we had no furniture moved in yet, so we’d set up an air mattress in the living room, with a lamp on a box near it. We turned off the light eventually to go to sleep. A couple hours later, the lamp light woke us up. Neither of us had turned it on, and it wasn’t the kind of switch that could be “half-turned” by accident, flipping back to “on” by chance.

We were startled, but there was no bad energy associated with it. We assumed that whatever spirits inhabited the house were basically saying “hello.” We took it that way, said hello back, and returned to sleep (grin). We never had any more incidents like that while we lived there, but the house always had a wonderful, welcoming energy toward us.

Those two situations were my “ghost stories” where I had no personal relationship with the ghost (that I know of – smile). However, the first one that did involve someone I knew who’d passed involved a co-worker, one who’d been permanently confined to a wheelchair by polio when she was younger. She had myriad health issues. She was also a born-again Christian, and while everyone interprets their faith according to their own experience and needs, she did not see other faiths as valid paths to God. At first, we were able to skirt around that and be really good friends, despite me being Wiccan. Over time, it became more difficult, and we started to draw apart, regretfully.

Unfortunately, she passed away one night. It bothered me, how our relationship had degraded in the time leading up to her death, and I wished I’d been a better friend.

A few weeks before, I’d lost an earring. As a Wiccan, I like wearing jewelry that reflects my faith and helps me focus intent and energy. Pentagrams, shamanic style symbols, etc. The earring I lost had a turtle totem on it. Turtles can reflect a lot of things in the Wiccan faith, including ancient earth wisdom and patience.

A few days after her death, I came into work and opened my desk to start the workday. The earring was sitting in the top drawer, plainly in sight. There was no logical explanation for how it could be there, but what jumped into my mind immediately was my friend was sending me a message. Whatever she’d found in the afterlife, I think her understanding of faith had deepened and expanded considerably. And I also felt it was a message of comfort, that our friendship had had value for her, despite it taking a not-so-great turn in the last year.

As fun as the scary ghost stories are, it’s those “messages beyond the grave” ones that have occasionally inspired scenes in my books. Most have heard the tales of the Fae Haunt (or Hunt) on All Hallows’ Eve. The Unseelie ride out to cause mischief, mayhem and terror, and the Seelie to bless the harvest. However, there’s more to the Hunt than that. In Bound by the Vampire Queen, the king of the Seelie summed up one of the deeper purposes here: “There have always been special stories about Samhain night. That those who are torn apart by grief, or regret, or the need for forgiveness, might go to a sacred place, like a burial site. There they might be found by the queen of the Fae. As she holds their heads in her lap, she gives them forgiveness, comfort . . . release.”

I included a cemetery scene during the Hunt in Bound by the Vampire Queen, where my hero Jacob and even the vampire queen Lady Lyssa are reunited with past loved ones for a brief, emotional scene that still makes me cry to read it. It’s impossible to read those kinds of scenes without wishing we could do the same, right?

Then there was the “helping” spirit that came forth during the writing of Marguerite and Tyler’s story in Ice Queen/Mirror of My Soul. During a climactic scene, Marguerite is protected and helped by the spirit of her twin brother, David. Who gets his own story later as an angel in A Witch’s Beauty, my Daughters of Arianne mermaid/angel books.

Those more poignant tales are the kinds of ghost stories that stick with me. Not too long after my father died, my husband’s grandfather was in the hospital. At the time, it was still difficult for me to go into a hospital because of my father’s death, and at one point I was in the restroom. As I was washing my hands, it all kind of overcame me, and I started crying, bending over the sink. I felt a hand on my shoulder, a warm presence at my back, and I knew it was my father. What made me certain of it (rather than just me conjuring a sense of him to comfort myself) was that he and I did not have a close relationship during his life. Him reaching through the Veil to give me comfort meant so much. The connection we couldn’t feel in life was in full force in that moment.

I hope your Samhain had fun scary moments, as well as comforting ones where you felt touched by those who’ve passed. Wiccans believe the Veil is at its thinnest that night, which might be why that scary things are more apt to happen – but so are lovely gestures from those we wish to remember.

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