Ghostly Inspiration - Kathryn Knight

I’ve always wanted to see a ghost.  If there’s a Haunted Walking Tour, I’m there.  But still no luck.  I love all those paranormal reality shows on TV.  I’ve even considered paying to spend the night in a haunted colonial jail a few towns over.  If they had indoor plumbing, I would do it!

But the other night, I thought I heard someone climbing the stairs over and over, up and down, accompanied by the sound of change jingling from a pocket.  Now, my husband runs a few mornings a week, and sometimes he does the stairs a few times to warm up, but I lay there in the dark thinking, why does he have a pocketful of change when he’s going running?  Then I rolled over and saw that he was still in bed next to me, and both our sons were at sleepovers.

My stairs don't actually look anything like that!

 

The noise stopped, but I still had to get up and investigate.  I didn’t find anything, but in the darkness of 1:30 a.m., I decided maybe it wouldn’t be so cool to see a ghost.  At least not in my own home!

But I admit I had a lot of fun writing the scenes in Silver Lake when our heroine Rain Anderson actually sees the ghost.  As much as she wants to help her old friend’s spirit find peace, encountering her ghost is terrifying.  Luckily Jason is at the lake house too—but even he, a Fourth degree black belt in Karate, can’t do much about a ghost determined to get her message through!

I had to tap into a more sinister place to bring the ghost in Gull Harbor “to life”.  While I would never define my novels as horror stories, the paranormal parts are designed to elicit a few chills.  And the ghost in Gull Harbor is very angry and aggressive—for a good reason.  Can psychic medium Claire Linden figure out what happened before tragedy strikes again?  And can Max Baron, her former boyfriend, get past Claire’s resentment in enough time to try to help keep her safe?

How about you?  Has anyone seen a ghost?  I’d love to hear your haunting stories - and it just might help kick my imagination into gear for my next ghost story :)