Want to See A Ghost?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Look out  your window. Is it lovely and sunny and summery? Good thing. Because the amazing, talented and always hilarious Alice Loweecey is wondering today about something just a bit…darker. 

So let the sunshine in—then listen to this.

ALICE LOWEECEY: I have two questions for you this lovely summer day.

#1: Have you ever seen a ghost?

Not Charlie Brown in a sheet with eyeholes. The real thing.  The kind that breathes every so softly on the back of your neck and FREAKS YOU OUT.

The kind that likes to close doors in the house when there’s no one home but you.

 This is the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall, taken in 1936. The photographer was under the cloth hood when his assistant told him to take a picture NOW. He thought she’d wasted a plate until he developed it.

This is the Hampton Court Ghost, taken with a surveillance camera in 2003. Apparently he doesn’t like open doors. He slammed these a few times before leaving them closed.

  

Freddy Jackson, a member of the RAF, was killed in 1919. But he didn’t want to miss the squadron group photo. So he showed up anyway.

      Confession time: I’ve never seen a ghost. Of the three, I think I’d freak out more if Freddy breathed down my neck. The door-slamming ghost is kind of fun. The wispy lady, eh. (That “eh” is subject to revision if said wispy lady floats over my bed one night in the manner of the angry wife in Ju-On.)

     I may have shot myself in the foot over the whole ghost thing. For the new direction my Giulia Driscoll series is taking, I interviewed Joe Nickell, the well-known debunker. He’s pretty much the Jim Cantore of hauntings. You know how if Cantore (from The Weather Channel) shows up in your town it’s time to head for the storm cellar? If Joe Nickell is investigating your haunting, you don’t have a ghost. You’ve got a bored teenager or a rattling windowpane. I’m pretty jaded after sitting at his feet for a single afternoon.

      But even though I haven’t seen a ghost, my mind is open to the possibility. What if that flash of something I see out of the corner of my eye isn’t one of the cats hunting a ladybug? What if that 2 am creaking isn’t the cats heading downstairs for overlooked kibble? (It seems I am haunted—by my cats!)

Which brings me to #2:

Do you want to see a ghost?

I’ll start: Yes, I think so. (I know—be careful what you wish for!) I think it’d be fascinating and frightening and what a story I could write!

What about you?

 HANK: Well, sure!  But:  Can we stipulate that it won’t hurt me? And that it could talk? And would go away if I wanted it to? And that I wouldn’t be the only one who could see it?

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How about you, Reds and readers?

THE CLOCK STRIKES NUN

Giulia has a new job: Hunting ghosts. Maybe. If ghosts are real:

When terrified Elaine Patrick knocks on Driscoll Investigations’ door and insists her house is haunted, Giulia Driscoll’s first response is “we don’t handle ghosts.” When Elaine’s housekeeper and crackpot filthy rich cousin descend on Giulia and demand she find out who’s trying to steal sweet, fragile Elaine’s family business out from under her, that’s a different story.

They want DI to provide Tarot readings, ghost hunting sessions, and even an exorcism. Ghost hunting? There are apps for that. Tarot readings? Experts in the skill are right across the street. Exorcisms? Having a priest for a brother-in-law comes in handy. Giulia plunges into a crash course in all things supernatural, convinced everything happening to Elaine is stagecraft. Except when it isn’t. Giulia’s about to discover a new dimension to sleuthing, if she can survive attempted murder long enough to see through the web of lies around her client.

Alice Loweecey is a former nun who went from the convent to playing prostitutes on stage to accepting her husband’s marriage proposal on the second date. Her mysteries feature an ex-nun PI in an on-again/off-again romance with her boss. She also writes horror, paranormal, and dystopian YA, and is very glad the Internet wasn’t around during her high-school years for her to inflict her angsty teenage poetry on the world. She promises that she no longer whacks errant knuckles with a ruler. Her mascot is a handmade nun doll that will only creep you out if you have a guilty conscience.