Echoes in a Hollow Space

You can view some atmospheric pictures of the notoriously haunted Waverly State Sanitarium here, plus a click through to an eery video, as well as read the commentary of someone who took the tour. Ghost Hunters will be doing their 6-hour live show from Waverly on Halloween night. I see a DVR recording in my future since that's way past my bedtime on a school night.

Apparently, the owners of Waverly want to turn it into a kind of haunted resort. Oh my. Herein lies my hypocrisy and contradictions. I think using the trapped and tormented spirits of the dead as entertainment like this is wrong—yet I eagerly gobble up all these ghost shows, and if I was anywhere near Waverly, I'd take the tour, or the one at Eastern State in Philadelphia, or any of the other infamously haunted places around the country.

I will further confess that the only reason I visited the Drum Barracks in Long Beach (actually adjacent Wilmington) is because they're supposed to have Civil War ghosts. My friend and I tried to surreptitiously get EVPs and took a lot of pictures, but we got nothing of scientific value. We did experience heavy atmosphere and creepy feelings: in other words, no evidence at all.

I guess I'm informally doing research for my novel, Venus in Transit, because I've been reading a number of books on ghost hunting and one of the MC's in that novel is a paranormal investigator. I hadn't planned on doing that, but the season has coincided with the time of year when I wonder what I'm going to work on next. VIT has the advantage of being two-thirds finished. I got close to 70k done on it before it went belly up. I went off on a tangent that didn't work, and I realized the ending was too nebulous, so it sort of died on the vine. I've had a few years to think about it and may have a new ending forming up. I also recently reread what I'd written, and everything but that tangent seems to hold up pretty well. (I can't say the same for the other older, unfinished novel I thought of working on, that which used to be called A Taste of Night before Vicky Petersson.)

And btw, those of you living in the Philadelphia area might be interested to know that Eastern State Penitentiary, abandoned and super-haunted prison, puts on a haunted house extravaganza this time of year with actors and special effects and loads of bloody-gory family fun.

I'd go in a minute if I was in the neighborhood. Even though that would be wrong.

Booga-booga, ya'll!