Holiday Hop! and 12 Days of Creepfest!

It's December 25. Merry Christmas!


Time to announce the winners!


GRAND PRIZE WINNERS:


1. Rebecca Treadway


2. Red Tash


3. Cherry Blossom Rain


RUNNERS UP:


1. Craig Smith


2. Paul Dail


CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WINNERS!


And a big THANK YOU to everyone who stopped by! 

Ghosts.

We all know somebody who's got one or seen one. 

My parents have one. 

He likes to appear at Christmas time.

He inspired a story I wrote called Santa's Bones releasing this holiday season through Muse It Up Publishing. 

Read to the end of my blog to find out how to win an electronic copy of Santa's Bones, a hard copy of the WTF!? anthology by Pink Narcissus Press, an electronic copy of Living Dead at Zigfreidt & Roy by Axel Howerton, a string of gnome holiday lights, and a stocking full of candy...

My parents' ghost is a dark shadow that walks up and down the hall.

 Sometimes he peers at you from a doorway. He plays tricks like turning the tv or lights on and off, turning objects around, causing drafts, making the senile cat chase after him...usual ghost stuff.  

He also does something I've never heard of a ghost doing. At night, if you wake up in the wee hours and open the bedroom door to step into the hall, you'll see a shower of sparks. It's like you've startled him and he's run off.  

I think the ghost becomes more active at Christmas because of the children that run through the house. The ghost gets all riled up. He's cranky. Children disturb his peace and quiet. 

It's also because of the visitors. My mom entertains a lot during the holidays.  

The ghost doesn't like all the commotion. And he especially doesn't like the children. That's why I think the ghost might be my great uncle. 

My great uncle was a loner who lived in a secluded cabin on a river in Oregon. My dad would bring me with him when I was little to visit my great uncle. 

I wanted to go because there was a wildlife park nearby where ostriches would tap on the window of your car as you drove through and because you could find fossils on the river in the summer when the water level dropped. I liked the snakes in my uncle's woodpile. He'd dangle worms in front of the crevices between the logs and the snakes would slither out. 

But my great uncle wasn't ever really sure what to do with a little girl around. He enjoyed my dad's company, but if I came along, or my sister, we kind of got the evil eye the entire time we huddled near dad in the dark cabin. My great uncle wanted to visit with my dad. 

Not with me or my sister.

There's one other thing the ghost does that I've never really heard of ghosts doing. Sometimes the ghost gets into your head. 

He does this when you're sleeping. You'll be dreaming the shadow man's next to you and that he's reaching his hand into you and trying to pull your insides out. Only it's not really your insides he's trying to get. It's more like your soul. 

You feel out of breath and sometimes wake up screaming.

It's pretty rare he does that, but when he does, it's like a few of us have the same or a similar dream around the same time. Maybe one day I'll have the dream and two days later my dad will have the dream.

We've wanted to have a psychic come to the house to find out what the ghost wants. 

But my mom refuses. 

She's afraid the ghost will get scared and leave. 

It doesn't seem to bother her that some of us get scared and never want to spend any significant amount of time at her house, especially after dark.

I asked my friend, author Axel Howerton, for advice on the matter.

JJ:     I thought I'd bring up a creepy holiday situation... ask for your advice. Do you believe in ghosts, Mr. Howerton?

AH:  I've had some kind of spectral shenanigans in pretty much every place I've ever lived, some more troubling than others. One of the weirdest was when I was nine or ten and had this terrible lucid nightmare about someone coming into our house and slaughtering the entire family. In the dream I had barely escaped and ran outside to a park around the corner, where an old man beckoned me over and told me to be calm and that everything was fine, none of it was real and that he would always be there if I needed him. I remembered that old man's face vividly for years. Several years later I was in Toronto for Christmas and my great-grandmother showed me a picture of my great-grandfather, who had died decades before I was born, and whose picture I had never seen. It was the very man from my dream. Later still, I discovered that he was a well-known psychic and had helped police find a child-killer in the 30's. His "talents" apparently made him a miserable, hateful man and a raging alcoholic, which ostracized him from much of the family. I suppose, in a way, that all formed a lot of my interest in the occult and macabre and my predilection for spookiness.

JJ:     We’ll be spending a lot of time at Christmas with my folks at their place on the other side of town. Mom and Dad have a ghost that always becomes more active at the holidays. I think the ghost gets irritated when there's a lot of commotion in the house. It doesn't seem to be especially fond of children. I try to put myself in the ghost's shoes. If I were trying to mind my own business when some little kid barged into my room and disturbed me in the middle of whatever ghostly daily activity I was used to, I might get a little bent out of shape. Don't ask me to explain why I think this, but I'm pretty sure the ghost is a grumpy relative from my dad's side of the family.

AH:  The spirits I've been around have all been fairly benevolent. We had some pretty nasty negative energy going in the place I'm currently living, especially when our second son was born, but after a cleansing or two it seemed to dissipate. Of course now #2 son would probably have the ghost of Ghengis Khan running for a quiet corner of Hell.

JJ:     Everyone in the family has seen the ghost. Some visitors too. It's a shadow figure, tall and thin. Besides usual ghost stuff he does a couple weird, spookier things. If you happen to get up to use the restroom at night and open the bedroom door to step into the hall, you'll sometimes see a shower of sparks, like you've startled someone or something and they've taken off in a panic. This makes me wonder what Uncle Jerome is up to. The other thing is that he shows up in dreams. In fact, sometimes we have the same dream. The dream: the dark shadow figure hovers above you while you're sleeping and reaches out to you. It grabs you and tries to get you to come with it.

AH:  I hate those dreams. I've had those my whole life. Bloody ghost creepers, always trying to climb up on you in your sleep. I mean, I'm sleeping, man. You're an incorporeal shiftless mass of energy. What do you really think you're going to accomplish here? I'm no Barbara Hershey. This isn't some lurid 80's "horror" movie. Fuck off and let me rest, you bastard.

JJ:     The ghost sometimes plays tricks on little children. It got to one of my nieces a couple years ago when my sister and the girls spent the night at my mom's house. It freaked my sister and my littlest niece out so bad, my sister took off with the girls in the middle of the night. While the little one could only explain it in her words, I think she was a victim of the dream. The situation keeps my sister from ever wanting to spend the night with my parents. She'll come down for an afternoon visit, but that's about it.

AH:  As I mentioned, my kids are hellascary, and I've taught them the Ghostbusters lingo. There's a toy weed whacker in their room that looks just like a proton accelerator pack. They ain't afraid of no ghosts. That's my suggestion for little ones in an active haunt zone. There is nothing more terrifying than a kid with no fear. If they think they're tougher than that ghost, well, I would get your class three free-roaming vapor ass outta dodge if I was you, Casper.

JJ:     I've talked to my mom about having a medium come and try to connect with the ghost, to find out what the hell its problem is, but she won't do it. She says she worries if someone comes to the house, it'll scare the ghost and make it leave. She kind of likes having it around. Any thoughts on how to convince my mom it's a good thing to have this checked out by a non-ghostbusting psychic professional?

AH:  Oh, sure. Now that I've already dropped all of these Ghostbuster references. 

So...time for the contest rules. 

Two people will win an electronic copy of Santa's Bones, a hard copy of the WTF!? anthology by Pink Narcissus Press, Axel  Howerton's Living Dead at Zigfreidt & Roy, a string of holiday gnome lights, and a stocking full of candy (and maybe an extra goodie if you're lucky)...

Three runners up will win an electronic copy of Santa's Bones, an electronic copy of the WTF!? anthology, and an electronic copy of Axel Howerton's Living Dead at Zigfreidt & Roy.

How to win?

Comment with your thoughts on this ghost situation. Give me some sort of idea on how to figure out what my great uncle's ghost wants, why he's so grumpy, and how to make him enjoy the holidays with us (without calling ghostbusters per my mom's wishes). And if you have any idea what the heck the sparks are about (and the creepy dreams) please let me know your thoughts.

The people with the most creative and interesting answers have the best shot at the prizes.

Winners will be announced Christmas Day!

There are many more contests going on during the Holiday Hop! and 12 Days of Creepfest. Just click on Holiday Hop! or 12 Days of Creepfest to visit the other participating authors' sites for more chances to win cool books and other stuff!

Happy Holidays!