October Frights Blog Hop Day 1

'TIS THE SEASON TO BE FRIGHTENED!

 Welcome to the first day of the 2022 October Frights Blog Hop, where from now until October 15 nine scary writers will be sharing their thoughts about Halloween and horror, entertaining you with spooky tales, and hopefully finding ways to keep you up at night.

This year's bloggers and their pages are:

Always Another Chapter - Lyssa Medana

Be Afraid of the Dark - A.F. Stewart

Hawk’s Happenings - Leta Hawk

Carmilla Voiez Dark Reads and Intersectional Feminism - Carmilla Voiez

GirlZombieAuthors - a team of women writers

Frighten Me - a group of horror fans

Angela Yuriko Smith - Angela Yuriko Smith

James P. Nettles  - James P. Nettles

And, of course, me. JG Faherty - author of numerous novels, novellas, and short stories. Horror aficionado. Halloween fan. And most importantly, someone who loves to use his words to terrify and entertain people of all ages!

 

 

I'm going to start off this wild week with a story that goes back to 2011; this was originally written for the Horror Writer's Association's newsletter, but in the spirit of October - the month when the veil between our world and the afterlife is at its weakest - I'm posting it here to get everyone in the mood for the rest of the week.

So, from October 2011, here you go.......

I may be living in a haunted house.

My wife and I moved into a new house back in December. Nothing special, a typical high ranch model in a typical suburban neighborhood. A month or two after we moved in, my wife, Andrea, said she thought the house might be haunted.

"Why?" I asked. I have an open mind about ghosts; I believe in them, I'm pretty sure I've seen a couple, but I don't think they're lurking around every corner or in every abandoned building.

She told me that on a couple of evenings when I wasn't home, or I was outside, she'd seen a shadow dart across a hallway or in the corner of an empty room. Now, since I work from home, I'm in the house practically all the time. And I hadn't seen a thing. So I was a bit skeptical. After all, if there was a ghost, wouldn't it be likely that I'd see it, too? I'm usually up before my wife and go to bed after her, so I actually had more opportunities to see a ghost, if one was lurking.

But she insisted she'd seen something, and so had our dog, Buffy. (Yes, she was named after Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Her full name was Buffy Angel.)

"What makes you think that?" was my next question.

"Sometimes she just sits up and stares at a spot in the room, but nothing's there."

That made me smile. I mentioned that dogs do that a lot, either because they hear or smell something we can't. Usually something outside the house.

I figured that would be all to the ghost stories, but then a few days later we were in the family room watching TV when all of a sudden Buffy sat up and stared at one corner of the room. And growled.

"See?" Andrea gave me a smug look. "The ghost is here."

After that, I did notice Buffy doing this a few times a week. And there were only two places she would do it: the far corner of the family room, and the bottom of the stairs leading up to the top floor. Our other dog, Harley, never did it. And Buffy never did it upstairs in any of the places where Andrea said she'd seen the weird shadow. On one occasion, we came home and found Buffy standing downstairs, ignoring our entrance (she was normally effusive in her greetings, jumping and barking non-stop). She was just staring at her mysterious corner, frozen like a statue.

As months went by, Andrea became more and more convinced the house was haunted. 

 (our house, decorated for Halloween!)

I had the perfect objection to this theory, though. No one had ever died in the house. We'd bought it from the original owner, a widowed woman who lived there with her daughter. The other kids had long moved out. The reason we knew no one had died in the house was because we'd asked. It was one of the questions we'd asked about every house we were interested in. It made no difference to me, but Andrea didn't want to live in a house where someone had died. Because of ghosts and bad luck. And our real estate agent had assured us no one died in the house.

Flash forward to August. We'd taken Buffy for a short walk – she was in the end stages of cancer, and although we didn't know it, we only had two weeks left with her – and met one of our neighbors down the road who we previously hadn't spoken with. During the course of conversation, he mentioned that the woman we'd bought the house from had never been the same after her husband died.

In bed.

"He died in the house?" Andrea asked. Our neighbor assured us he had.

"That explains the ghost!" she said to me later, after we'd gone back home. "We're haunted by an old man, and both Buffy and I know it."

As if to back this up, later that night Buffy got up from her blanket while we were watching TV and proceeded to bark at the corner of the family room.

"He must be here," Andrea said. And I couldn't argue. My one big objection had been blown out of the water, leaving me very upset.

Why was it that only Andrea and Buffy could see the ghost? I'm the damn horror writer! If anyone was going to see it, I should be the one. So the only thing I could think of was that for some reason the ghost had decided not to show itself to me. Or to Harley. Was it a blonde thing? (Buffy was a Yellow Lab and Harley is a Chocolate; I have dark hair and Andrea is a blonde.) Was it some kind of conspiracy just to mess with my head? I wanted to see the ghost, too, darn it. It wasn't fair!

At the end of August, Buffy's cancer got to be too much. We'd made the decision weeks earlier that if she was ever in pain, we'd take her to the vet and end things. Naturally, she started showing signs of discomfort on a Sunday, when the vet wasn't open. We put her on pain killers, and that perked her up, but by Monday night she was so weak she couldn't go up the stairs, and couldn't walk to her water dish without getting out of breath. We made the appointment for Tuesday. On that morning, my parents came over to say their goodbyes and then we took her for a last walk outside. She seemed to know it was the end; she got her strength up, stood in the yard, and looked all around with a sad but accepting expression on her face, taking it all in before leaving it forever. At the vet's, after getting a pain killer and sedative, she gave us a last few kisses, ate a final cookie, and then got her final injection. We watched the light fade from her eyes and then made the arrangements to have her cremated.

Since then, we've had no visits by our shadowy ghost. And without our canine ghost buster, we have no idea if or when our ghost is in the room with us.

But I have hopes. I brought Buffy's ashes home from the vet yesterday. She'd going to be in a nice memorial urn in the family room.

Maybe she'll find a way to show us the ghost again.

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Stay tuned for tomorrow's creepy entry and be sure to check out everyone else on the blog hop!

 
 

 

 As always, be sure to check out  A.F. Stewart's October Frights blog page, https://afstewart.ca/october-frights-blog-hop-participants/, for the links to all the different bloggers and the latest about the blog hop and all things horror. While there, be sure to visit the Book Showcase Page (https://afstewart.ca/october-frights-book-fair/) where all the participants have made their terrifying books available for purchase (most are on sale, including my novel CARNIVAL OF FEAR, which is only 99cents for Kindle!). And don't forget about the free book giveaway page: https://storyoriginapp.com/to/oyHMogF.