A few years ago my friend and I were walking by the Maynard Alley and she asked me if I had written any stories based on the Wah Mee Club Massacre.

What she really wanted to know was, had I written any ghost stories based on the Club.

I told her I had not.

She told me that was a good idea.

 This is the reason why I haven’t done it:

Whenever I walk by the Alley I think of these lines by Shirley Jackson:

Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

I think that something walks alone in the darkness of the Wah Mee now

and it will walk alone there  forever.

KCPQ Channel 13 toured recently with Jake of  Private Eye Tours . They visited one of Seattle’s most infamous haunted spots featured on Haunted Happenings: A Seattle Ghost Tour 

Sometimes on  my way to Whopperville ( that’s what I say when I’m working on a story…I’m heading out to Whopperville ) I’ve run across some true stories that haunt me-  they give me nightmares or creep me out for days.

At the moment I’m working on a story about a Hanging Tree and in my research I found out that the slang name for these trees were ” Dancing Trees “

I’ll let that visual sort of sink in there.

At first blush some of my friends with more refined literary tastes thought I was making a poetic gesture when I floated the first draft for this story out to them.

You can stop laughing now.

The image that came to my mind about Dancing Trees came to me one night and woke me from a dead sleep.

And there was nothing poetic about it.

I saw a group of people sitting under a large shady tree on a hot day  having a picnic. They were dressed in their best summer clothes and as they laughed softly and admired the beauty around them I knew they are blissfully ignorant to the fact that

…many years ago someone danced…

for their lives

right above t their heads

And when I looked up I could see…

they still were.

I found this article at BBC

It’s about a Hang Man’s Tree

That’s located in…

  Kings Mills, Wrexham Wales

Let The Danse Begin…

Hang Man’s tree

Last updated: 31 December 2007

 There is a mill by the river but to get to the really spooky part you have to walk under a bridge. It belongs to the National Trust. Anyway, by the bridge in Biniki there is a tree where events have occurred for centuries.

We normally go there during the summer months and sit on the side by what is called Hang Man’s tree for obvious reasons. There has always been a presence there and I can sense paranormal activity quite easily. That’s why everyone comes with me.

This one night though it got very scary indeed, so much so I told everybody to get up and make for the road. My niece, myself and my husband got across the bridge in time but as we turned to scream for the others they had been blocked off with what can only be described as a distorted shape of mist. It was just floating there and when they moved, it moved.

We screamed for them to run but it followed. They ran through the river but it didn’t cross. As we ran nearly a mile to get out of there it was on the other side of the river along side of us every inch of the way back to the mill where it stayed in the woods. Quite an experience.

I spoke to someone many weeks after that and I asked them when they were younger did they ever experience anything there. They described the same shape even though I had not mentioned it. We have been back there and it has happened a few more times at the same time around about 2.25am.

We have only ever managed to stay there once through the night. This is only one area that has activity. Coming back from there another night we couldn’t stay because it was getting a bit uneasy there. We started to walk back though and got out safe and sound.

However as we passed through the gates on the opposite side of the old mill me and my brother saw a man walking straight at us, we moved apart so he could pass between us. We said ‘hello’ to him but he ignored us.

Anyway we turned to make sure my husband was OK because he was straggling behind. As we turned the man just walked straight through him. I looked at my brother and he looked at me. My husband was oblivious to it all and said he saw no-one there. All I can say is there are many discssions about Biniki but you have to be there at the right time and the spirits seem to love being there when I am. 

King’s Mill Wrexham, Wales

LINK

LINK

Iowa county board gives initial OK for ghost hunters to investigate asylum built in 1855

By Associated Press

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) – County officials have given their informal OK for ghost hunters to check out a one-time insane asylum to see if any spirits are lurking about.

Photograph(s) copyright Shaun O’Boyle

Inspired by The Soul Food Cafe Prompt:

Personality of  A Front Door

Have you ever stood in a dark hallway in a strange building all alone with a flashlight that you found rolling around in the trunk of your car?

It worked fine when you first flicked the switch on and it worked fine when you were with your friends but it was not fine when you broke away from the group to check out those doors- those doors that were shut when you first pointed your flashlight in their direction.

But you were sure that with the last weak beam of light you saw one door ajar- and you were just as sure when you turned around and the last of the light died away you saw the rest of the doors standing wide open.

What kind of things, you thought to yourself, would chose to live in the darkness- what kind of creature would wade through fetid water and be able to listen to the echoes of screaming rusted hinges that go on for ever and ever.

And what kind of monster, you thought to yourself, could stand next to those wide open doors- with the blackness streaming out-

And like it?

for more haunting and moving experience visit Shaun O’Boyle’s

Insane Asylum

This morning I walked two miles to a meeting – two miles on a route where I had to watch out for myself because on this route no one in a car or a truck or a train ever really sees pedestrians making their way from one side of the street to the other.

Then why take that walk?

Because this morning I went looking for ghosts.

The buildings here are old. The sidewalks and roads are breaking apart in some places and just below the surface in other spots you can see the bricks- red and rust colored – that once paved all of the roads down here. They’re still down there under all of that gray…buried alive years and years ago.

On some of the streets I crossed over I saw old railroad tracks that run for a few feet and in some places and  half a block in others.

Now instead of going somewhere else the tracks disappear into the sides of new buildings with names instead of numbers and electronic locks securing their doors instead of padlocks and chains.

I’m drawn to those deadlines and when I was young I used to have nightmares about lost trains and the dead people who still rode them.

I drifted by rows of small tool and cabinet supply stores- the type of stores that contractors and builders go to where the inventory is stocked in boxes instead of shelves and there are clocks with faces on the walls instead of digital clocks on desks.

These buildings have picture windows that face a hillside that was once covered with trees and now face a freeway.

Some of the small stores still have black and white tiled floors or fancy  carvings above their doorways that tell me once long ago maybe ladies bought hats here and maybe a druggist mixed and dispensed his medicines over there and sold penny candies to the kids who once long ago went to school in a building whose foundation is buried under a parking garage.

This place must be full of ghosts I thought- how could I not find one?

It was a lonely and quiet walk and at the end of it I guessed I hadn’t seen any ghosts or caught the echoes from the long gone sawmill that shaped the roads and buildings that are here now.

Even though it was sad was a sad and uneventful walk I’d decided  I’ll take again.

And then as I went by the last empty building, just before I went into the warehouse under the bridge I realized as I caught sight of my pale almost transparent reflection in a dusty window of a closed down store…I may not have seen any ghosts…

but I did learn something

Now I think I know what it feels like to be one.

I have spent the afternoon writing stories.

At one point

I realized I had spent the day thinking about

ghosts and devils and curses

witches and cannibals

and clever ways

to bump people off.

I looked around to make sure

no one was watching

and then I laughed.