Aunt Belle & Ghosts

I've said many times that when Aunt Belle shows up, the ghosts here at my house get pretty active. As an example, here's what happened during her most recent visit, May 2-4.

I'd been seeing flashes of my resident ghosts fairly often. They had also frightened guests several times. The week of Aunt Belle's visit, they grew even more active. I also kept sensing someone new; however, I was busy getting my new books up (Ghost Hunting Diary Volume V) and didn't have time to visit with whoever had wandered in.

After Aunt Belle arrived (finally!), I remembered something I had to do at Wal-Mart.

"Want to ride to Wal-Mart?" I asked her.

"Of course," she said. She's never one to sit around if there's something else to do. She's afraid she might miss out on something.

So we grabbed our purses … or I thought we both did. Just as I opened the front door, she said, "Oh, shoot. I forgot my purse."

She turned around so fast, she walked right through the ghost following her. All I saw was a flash of blue as he disappeared, but I felt sure it was the "new guy."

"You walked right through him!" I said. She just laughed and shook her head, as I did, and went on to get her purse.

Later, we were sitting around watching a DVD. I glanced over toward the front door. There he stood, wearing his blue shirt. But he immediately disappeared when he knew I could see him. I'm still not sure who he is. He's evidently rather shy. Hopefully, he's not a troublemaker. If I start sensing anything like that, he's outta here.

My ghosts are also usually quite helpful when I lose something. I had mislaid my keys after one of our in and out trips for shopping and/or fun. The next time we left, I had to use the backup keys, and when we got back, I looked everywhere for that ring of keys. They sure weren't in the usual place, where I always put them, in the bookshelf in the dining room. Believe me, I searched there at least three times. No keys.

After I'd seen the blue shirt guy, I mentioned to Aunt Belle, "I wish I could find my keys. Maybe I should ask the ghosts to find them."

"You probably should," she said."

I said to the room at large, "I really need my keys. Do you think one of y'all could find them for me and put them where I can find them, too? Please, and thank you." I always say please, and thank them in advance.

Nothing happened for a moment, then Aunt Belle frowned and said, "They say they are in the bookcase. Where you always keep them."

"They are not," I denied. "I've looked there three times already."

So we went back to watching the movie … for about thirty seconds.

She glanced over at me as I started to get out of my chair. "Going to check the bookcase again?"

"I guess," I said. "Or I'll never be able to concentrate on our movie."

Sure enough, there were the keys! I did remember to again thank everyone around here who helped put the keys back where they belonged.

The next day, we went to some garage sales. At one, the people had some tools and other things laid out in the garage. I usually browse the tools to see if there's anything my husband might want, and once in a while I even find something for myself. This time, I heard a man say, You don't want to buy any of these tools. I knew it was the man who used to own the tools, still hanging around as a ghost. He was not happy at all about his stuff being sold. He wasn't angry, just sad and upset.

In the car, as we left, I said to Aunt Belle, "The man in the garage wasn't happy about his things being sold."

"Yeah, I know," she agreed. "I felt him behind me as I was looking at some stuff across the garage from where you were. When I turned around, no one was there. I knew it was him."

Things like this happen once in a while when Aunt Belle isn't here, but a lot more frequently when she is visiting. It's nice when we both have experiences together, confirming what each other has seen, heard or sensed. Lots of fun!

As I write this to have it ready to put up this weekend (having cataract removal Thursday, so pre-planning the blog), I have a cleansing scheduled. It's at Aunt Belle's granddaughter's house. Something rather nasty is bothering her granddaughter, her two great-grandchildren and their dog. Nothing gets me moving to a cleansing quicker than a darn ghost messing with kids. And it being Aunt Belle's and my family already has my dander up. I'm taking my heavy backup, Angela, with me on this one. The nasty thing is already on his way outta there, and just doesn't know it.

If you missed the url's for my latest book:

Kindle: http://tiny.cc/tuteww

BN/Nook: http://tiny.cc/bzteww

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/311687

Take care, read a lot, and ….

Boo!

T. M.

Volume V Up and Selling

Whew! Another one of those busy, busy weeks. I did a house cleansing with the Lonestar crew on Monday evening, and took Sarah from SRT along to help. Again, it was one of those where there were a gazillion ghosts. When I opened the door into The Light out in the yard, we both felt the breeze as they rushed past us. I left the door open and more crossed over to peace instead of roaming around lost, lonely and unhappy.

And with a lot more hard work, I met my self-imposed deadline! Ghost Hunting Diary Volume V is up and running for sale. The Kindle and Nook versions went smoothly. However, sheesh, Smashwords gave me all sorts of heck. But I'm stubborn. It won't make its way to Kobo or Apple for a few days, because Smashwords is rather slow. But it will be there soon.

Since Aunt Belle's here, I'm taking a few days off. We had one ghost show up within an hour of her arrival. She and I were headed out the door to go shopping, and she realized she'd forgotten something. She turned in one of those quick turnabouts and walked right through the man following her.  All I saw was a flash of blue; not a denim blue, a different, brighter blue shirt. It wasn't a shirt I'd seen on any of my normal residents, but we had other company that evening and didn't get time to chat with the new ghost. We'll see if he visits again tonight.

Shoot, we may even hunt up some more sights and tales, if we get done with the estate and garage sales in time. But I just saw there is a neighborhood sale tomorrow. Gee, better hurry and get the blog up!

Here's where the e-book is available as of now, and it's already climbed as high as #7 on the Amazon charts! Woohoo!

Kindle: http://tiny.cc/tuteww

BN/Nook: http://tiny.cc/bzteww

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/311687

Hope you enjoy my latest tales, scary, astounding, eerie and sometimes a break for a chortle of laughter. Leave a review, if you have time. Thanks!

Boo!

T. M.

More Mineola Ghosts

I love it when I get confirmation my psychic senses are spot-on. Yesterday, Friday April 26, 2013, Sarah, Angela and I went back to Mineola, the town where the Beckham Hotel is located. Angela wanted to visit some cemeteries and the museum to do some historical research. Sarah and I wanted to go along and see what Angela found. As usually happens, though, we discovered more ghosts along with the research.

We "chatted" with several ghosts in one of the cemeteries, but the other one was very quiet. I'll expand more on these in a longer post, or maybe when we do the e-book about the Beckham. The most fun for me, excluding the estate and garage sales we hit, was the visit to the Chamber of Commerce.

The lady at the Chamber, Pam, helped us contact Connie Meissner, who's restoring the Beckham Hotel. Since this resulted in our fantastic overnight investigation, I wanted to stop by and thank Pam. Angela and Sarah saw an interesting shop and decided to prowl in there while I visited with Pam in the Chamber building across the street.

Pam was there, and we only talked long enough to introduce ourselves before I felt someone. "You've got at least one ghost here," I told Pam.

"Doesn't surprise me," she said. "The building is very old. It used to be a bank. We've got three stories: this floor, a basement and a floor above us. The basement contained the original bank vault."

"Would it be possible for me to take some pictures and see if I catch the ghost on film?" I asked.

"Sure." She wasn't hesitant at all, and I recalled she had mentioned during our first conversation that she did believe in the paranormal.

"I'll have to go get my friends," I said. "They'll never forgive me if I go looking for ghosts without them."

I went back across the street and got the video camera out of the car, then went into the store Sarah and Angela indicated they were going go shop in.

"Hello!" I called.

A female answered, "Hello," and I thought it sounded like Sarah.

"We've got ghosts," I called. "Come on, let's go."

Oops. The lady who walked out wasn't Sarah. Neither she nor Angela were in the store. I apologized to the woman, who had a very puzzled look on her face, and hurried out the front door without explaining myself. Next door, I saw a Gourmet Popcorn Shop." Yep, that's where they were.

After they paid for their popcorn, we headed back to the Chamber building. We descended to the basement, with Pam telling us more about the history of the building and being a really good tour guide. We liked her immensely. In the basement, we examined the vault and took photos. We even walked into the vault, but the atmosphere was nothing at all like the one we found at the Beckham. We also didn't catch anything paranormal.

We traipsed back up the stair, two sets of them, to the third floor. There, we found the ghosts we were looking for.

Pam said the building had also once been used as a lawyer's office. Then I said, "I'm getting the name Harry. Is there a Harry associated with the building?"

Her eyes widened. I could tell I'd either shocked or flustered her. "Yes," she said at last. "Harry … uh … Harry … I can't recall his last name." She frowned, then went on, "Meredith! His name was Harry Meredith. I can't believe I couldn't think of his name. He had an office here for years, and when he died, he left a lot of his fortune to the City of Mineola. Part of those funds are responsible for us having the Civic Center in town."

I nodded, happy with the confirmation of my sixth sense. I didn't bother to tell Pam I'd seen others get flustered and forget well-known facts when I received names via my gift.

Sarah, Angela and I all felt Harry and chatted a bit with him. There was a chair Sarah felt was a secretary's chair, or, as she said later, "Maybe a woman who felt she had to do secretarial duties, although she really wasn't the secretary." We got the name Bonnie, but Pam didn't recognize that. She did say she would check her reference material. We also got quite a few interesting photos.

Here are four of mine: The page with the info on Harry Meredith from the centennial book done for Mineola's 100^th birthday; Harry's desk, and two cut-outs of interesting spots in the photo of the desk.

 All in all, it was a wonderful day. We missed finding Connie at the Beckham, but we'll be going back to this wonderful town many more times. Even during the daytime, the larger cemetery we walked through was extremely active. We believe we encountered Doyle, the gambler from the Beckham, whom Aunt Belle talked to. That's who he said he was, anyway, and he wanted to know why Aunt Belle wasn't with us. There are also two "hanging trees," both with areas on limbs that appear to be worn from ropes. I'm already yearning to do a nighttime investigation of this cemetery, so we'll see when we can work it into our plans.

Ghost Hunting Diary Volume V is going through its final edit. I'm fairly certain it should be up by May 1. Then it will depend on how soon the e-sites make it available for sale, but I'll be sure to shout it far and wide after it's up.

If you haven't seen the gorgeous cover on my Facebook page, which the extremely talented Angela did for me, here it is, also:

Take care, hunt safely and respectfully, and ….

Boo!

T. M.

Teddy the Bathroom Ghost

We call him Teddy. He lives in my Molly-Belle Suite guest bathroom. I've never actually seen him, but Aunt Belle has, and she described him to me. I have seen the hat Teddy wears, though, since she identified it clearly. It's similar to those worn by Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders.

The Teddy saga started out when hub came into the house one day to show me what he'd found in the bottom of his tool box. It was a medal — a gold, tri-corner shaped hat with a feather on the back on top, a tiny chain with the medal dangling from it. Two marchers with walking sticks are on each side of a shield-shaped sign with the words Gut Fuss Humes surrounding a phoenix rising, then a pair of hiking shoes beneath that. The German means something like: good foot home, I believe; at least, Google indicates a translation close to that, although some of the results also include things like hiking enthusiasts foot hume  (foot home?). Any readers out there who speak German?

"I found this in the bottom of one of my tool boxes," hub said when he brought it in. "It was not in that tool box before."

"How can you be sure it just appeared there?" I asked.

"Because I've emptied out that box and reorganized it more than once. It was not in it. It just appeared there." Since we'd had similar incidents after we moved into our current haunted house, I believed him.

A few days later, Aunt Belle spoke to a new ghost she met in my house. His name was Teddy, and he told her to thank us for displaying the medal that hub had found. I had laid it on top of the supply dresser in my office, where I keep things with meaning to me. Teddy told Aunt Belle that he wanted his grandson to have the medal, but since he didn't know what had happened to his grandson, he was happy for us just to keep it out where others could see it.

Later, I called Sis and described the medal to her. She told me for the first time about the Volksmarch medals she used to receive when she was in the Army and stationed in Germany. To her, it sounded like one of those. They are non-competitive competitions called Volksmarches (volksmarsch in German), or "people's marches."  When she visited, she confirmed that's what it was. Thus the story of Teddy the Bathroom Ghost began.

We've had several incidents involving Teddy over the years, most of which occurred to men in that bathroom. I'll tell you all about them in a forthcoming set of diaries, but the latest one happened the other day.

My friends from Lonestar, James and Armando, came over to borrow my DVD recorder and burn the evidence they got on their camcorders at the Beckham Hotel onto disk. It was a lot of tape, so I left them to it and went to Wal-Mart, where my photos from the Beckham were waiting to be picked up. As I walked into the store, my cell phone rang.

"Hello?" At first, all I heard was hilarious laughter. I knew it was Armando from Caller ID, so I kept walking and waited until he could control himself and talk.

Finally, he said, "You missed it! You should have been here!"

"What?" I prodded.

"It was James. He came racing out of your bathroom, cursing a blue streak and scared spitless. He said, '(Blankety, blank) bathroom. I'm never going in there again!'"

"What happened?" I asked, although I already knew: Teddy had struck again.

"He saw a face," Armando said. "He was standing there just zipping back up, and he said this disembodied face floated around in front of him. It stared at him with a mean-ass glare, then floated back behind him. He fled! He came tearing out of there, scared as hell but also mad."

Yeah, that's a man for you, I thought to myself. Mad at himself because he allowed something to scare him.

"It was Teddy," I said to Armando. "I warned y'all my house is haunted. And Teddy loves to scare men in that bathroom."

"Well, he did it," Armando said. "James is still pretty shaken up."

"I'll be home in a bit," I said as I hung up, laughing so hard, I noticed several people staring at me. I grabbed a cart, then called Angela as I walked down the aisle. She and I shared a bout of more hilarity. We both agreed we wished we had been there to actually see it happen.

After I hung up from my call to Angela, I realized this had been the third paranormal incident involving my two friends. Previously, James had seen Howard, my Head Ghost, and Armando had witnessed a spirit ball of energy in the Molly Belle Suite.

When I got home, Armando had left to run an errand, and I was rather surprised to find James sitting in my living room with only his little girl for company. His face was still white, and he very obviously didn't appreciate the fact that I busted out laughing the moment I came in and looked at him.

"Darned ghost," he said, and made a few more uncomplimentary remarks about Teddy.

"I warned you the house is haunted," I repeated around my laughter.

"Yeah, but I've never, ever had anything like that happen to me!"

"Was Teddy wearing a hat?" I asked. "A tri-cornered one?"

"I don't know," he said in a disgruntled tone. "I didn't notice. He floated around and gave me this horrible glare." He screwed up his face like the Scream mask. "It was just his head floating around in front of me. I saw it from the corner of my eye first, then right in my face. Then it went back behind me really fast, and I got the heck out of there."

"Armando said you won't go back in there again," I said, trying to sober  up my hilarity. "I have another bathroom you can use, off the master bedroom. But … there's a ghost who hangs out in it, too."

"When a man's gotta pee, he's gotta pee," he said in a grumble.

"You know this incident is blog fodder for me," I said. "But I will ask for your permission to use your name."

He considered for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah, sure. It's a really weird experience."

"One day you'll look back on it and enjoy it," I assured him.

He didn't look like he believed me!

~~~~

We're continuing to review scads of evidence from the overnight investigation of the haunted Beckham Hotel. It's going to be an awesome place to stay when Connie finishes the remodeling, both for paranormal investigators and for people who just want to experience a wonderful, relaxing weekend in a historical hotel in a delightful town like Mineola. We met with Connie this past week, and she was amazed at the evidence we already had. When we told her that we were still reviewing and would have more later, she was even more astounded.

I'm continuing to get reports of our findings from various SRT members who are reviewing our hours of tapes. I'll put as much as I can into the Beckham Hotel story in Ghost Hunting Diary Volume V, but I've already decided to do a separate novella-style book about this fascinating experience. Angela has scads of historical research, and we keep finding additional evidence. I'll have to cut the initial story off at some point, in order to get the book up for sale, but I'll continue working this one into an even longer version. Perhaps I'll brave the wilds of Create Space on Amazon for some paperbacks. Probably so, since I don't want any of what we found and experienced to be lost, and Connie would love to have books on the hotel to sell in her gift shop when the hotel re-opens.

In the meantime, there are four other diaries out there to read, plus the three Dead Man Mysteries. If you are in the mood for romance ;-),  Google me under Trana Mae Simmons. Enjoy, and….

Boo!

T. M.