Elf House, Ghost Dogs of the South

I'm sharing a letter (anonymously ~ from a reader in Edmond, Oklahoma) I received yesterday from a reader of GHOST DOGS OF THE SOUTH. The best part of writing is when someone likes what they read and takes the time and trouble to let an author know. Thanks, anon!

"I read most of Elf House this afternoon. I fell in love with Stanwell Perpett in the first two pages. Chaucer stole my heart, too. I wanted to live with them both, be a part of their life and the ducks! I loved the ducks, but I couldn't read past the pack of wild dogs and the icy pond... My eyes filled with tears. There was a lump in my throat and I couldn't, didn't want to know what happened, not yet at least.

"I mean I KNOW the story is going to end, but I didn't want it to. I loved those ducks and Chaucer and the thought of them dying and the possibility of Stanwell drowning trying to save them was just too much for me.

"I wanted to stay happy a little bit longer. I will continue reading and finish later, but I just can't now. You had me drawn into that story so deeply that it wasn't a story to me, it was real."

Elf House does NOT end sadly, btw.

My follow-up book of ghost stories, GHOST CATS OF THE SOUTH, is being released in paperback this month. You can browse inside and read one of the stories here: Ghosts by Randy Russell.

From the Library: CATCHING A GHOST

Legends of Volcanoes is a charming 1916 Arts & Crafts binding of one of W. D. Westervelt's rarer titles. Westervelt translated many of the original ghost stories of Hawaii from the native language of the Kingdom.

Any W.D. Westervelt's titles are worth reading if you want to know how traditional ghost stories in America begin. The collection in Legends of Volcanoes includes a story of catching a ghost.

Catching a ghost is not an an uncommon theme in Native American cultures. It reminds me of the Cherokee story of Spearfinger. Apparently a lost art, ghost catching is a rare motif in European folklore.

GONE FOR WEEK - SEE ME IN OKLAHOMA

I'll be talking ghosts Friday and Saturday at the Red Dirt Literary Festival in the Sooner State, where I was born and went to high school.

I'll also find time to visit my favorite graveyard. It's a small hidden meadow on tribal land near Quapaw. The exsiting graves are simple coffin hollows (depressions in the ground) now, but they are special in other ways.

"Breathing" pipes extend from underground into the air at each gave site.

My Vote: BEST HALLOWEEN COSTUME 2009

A vampire chihuahua at right! (I think he’s named Edward.)

Cricket Messenger Ghost for Halloween

Just in time for Halloween, I heard a wonderful ghost experience from an audience member at the May Memorial Library in Burlington, North Carolina, last week.

It was the true story of a Ghost Cricket. No kidding.

I was talking about the ways people experience ghosts, you know, by seeing one, hearing one, feeling an icy presence on the stairs... There are even ghosts you can smell.

I also had spoken about the number of times people have told me they dreamed a ghost of a recently-passed loved one who, in the dream, tells them where something (often money) is hidden.

When they get up the next day, they look in this dream-revealed location and that something (again, often money) is found. Apparently, it troubles people to no end when they die and forget to tell a loved one where to find the rainy-day cash that was hidden away.

Because I have heard explicit examples of this type of ghost visit, I advise people when they do see a ghost to be sure to ask it where the money is.

And up popped a hand from the seats in Burlington followed by the woman's story of a cricket ghost that appeared in her life.

A cricket shows up (well, the sound of a cricket) following the death of a woman's father. She has been staying in her father's house through the last days of his final illness.

The woman follows the cricket chirps all through the house for a period of three days. There's just one circket chriping, but it leads her over the span of time throughout the house.

Finally, she isolates the circket in her father's bedroom. Having drawn her there, the circket is no longer heard in other rooms of the house.

On the second day, the cricket only starts chirping when she enters his room. She leaves the bedroom and goes back. Each time she opens the door, the cricket starts chriping.

No matter where she stands in the room, though, she can't quite tell where the chirps are coming from. Until the third day.

One the third day, the cricket is clearly chriping away inside the dresser. Once she approaches the dresser, it shuts up. She opens and closes each dresser drawer in sequence. When she opens the fourth drawer, the circket chirps.

She takes all the socks and underwear out of the drawer. No cricket. But when she closes the empty drawer, the cricket starts up again. So she removes the drawer from the dresser and sets it on the bed next to the items of clothing.

The empty drawer starts chirping. Frustrated and thinking she might be going nuts, the lady finally turns the drawer upside down. And, you guessed it, there's the cricket. She reaches for it and it jumps away.

"I saw it, then it just left," she told me. "It just wasn't there any longer."

But something else was.

A cardstock business-size envelope had been taped to the bottom of the drawer. Inside, the woman finds a certain number [I won't say the amount here for privacy's sake] of hundred-dollar bills.

Over the course of several weeks, no other money was found while clearing out her father's estate. Oh, and the cricket that "wasn't there any longer" was never heard chriping inside the house again.

TRUE GHOSTS in Burlington, North Carolina

I will be sharing true ghost experiences this weekend:

2 p.m Sat., Oct. 24
May Memorial Library
Burlington, N.C.

Ghost Cats of the South & Ghost Dogs of the South will be available. But I'm much more interested in hearing ghost experiences than I am in selling a books.

13 TYPES OF GHOSTS

This is pretty basic stuff. Ghosts tend to be defined by

A.) what they are up to now

and by B.) how they died.

I would add by C.) how they are experienced or encountered by the living.

I have very detailed stories (collected from the people who experienced them) of each.

Let’s go with A.) for now. Ghost Types by What They Are Up To.

1. Stuck Ghosts. Going about their normal routine as if alive. These ghosts seem to get stuck in the real world somehow.

Some are stuck in their favorite earth places. I hear story after story of kitchen ghosts. They just like being there. I also hear of ghosts attached to a particular piece of furniture (watch out for rocking chairs, Lay-Z Boy recliners, and beds!) and small objects, including jewelry.

2. Dying-Again Ghosts. Over and over and over again. Popular, as an idea anyway, on ghost tours.

3. Searching Ghosts. They're looking for something and aren't going away until they find it.

4. Comfort Ghosts. Relatives and loved ones who drop by to let you know that everything is okay and it is time for you to quit grieving.

5. Protecting-You or Warning-You Ghosts. A ghost who appears to keep a wandering child safe from the cliff's edge is an example.

6. Mean Ghosts. They just want attention and don't care how they get it.

7. Sad Ghosts. These ghosts are stuck in re-living their most sorrowful moments in life. You hear them weeping. Oh, and weeping... and weeping some more.

8. Message Ghosts. They have a message for you, specifically for you. Often a relative. They tell you where money is hidden, for example.

9. Messenger Ghosts. They have a message for you. But the message is from someone else, usually dead. Really rare, these courier ghosts are absolutely scream-scary when the messenger is a stranger ghost.

10. Explaining Ghost. This ghost wants someone, anyone, to know what really happened.

Even from this general list, you can see that there are two very basic types of ghosts that people experience:

1. Ghosts who are stuck where they are.

2. Ghosts who go away.

As I hear people tell me of their own ghost encounters, my first division as to type is between ghosts of people you know and ghosts of strangers.

11. Ghost Animals. They fit almost all of the above and include beloved family-member dogs and cats, but also horses and, yes, even cows. I have heard of two first-person encounters with bovine boo-critters.

12. Animal Ghosts. These are people ghosts using the form of an animal to visit you. Common as a comfort ghost, as well. You run across a talking dog, it may not be the dog who is doing the talking.

13. Finally, experiences of God, angels, faeries, cognition of living people in dire straights far away, etc. seem to share some phenomena with ghost experiences. They are different and I don't include them in my own catalog of first-person ghost encounters.

Some people like to say spirits are not tied to earth, ghosts are. I personally think there's a little more overlap than that. I accept that ghosts might make a visit in your dreams (what others would call spirit encounters).

Another old book of True Ghost Stories!

From Wikipedia: John Kendrick Bangs (1862-1922), an American author and satirist, and the creator of modern Bangsian fantasy, the school of fantasy writing that sets the plot wholly or partially in the afterlife.

I found this little hardcover in a used-books shop and was taken by the color illustration on the black cover, as much as by the title. I knew nothing about this author (who was for some years the editor of Puck).

A bit of synchronicity here, because my new novel (which recently sold to a New York publisher and will be released in 2011) follows in the Bangsian tradition. That makes me a Bangsian.

I had no idea. I just thought I was writing in a fictional arena where I have done lots of research. Ghosts.

Oh, and that other arena. High school is as good a place as any to play dead for a few years.

Before I get too excited about finding Bangs's book as a named historical literary affirmation of my own work, I should point out that he also authored a book called The Idiot.

I might be working in that tradition, as well. Gulp.