Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Werewolf in the Backyard

Colin from New York sent me this story about his encounter with a werewolf.

Hey, Jason.

My name is Colin and I'm an 8 year old boy living in upstate New
York. I'm reading your book right now and I really like it. Now
here's one of my stories.

Last night, I was at a Halloween party. It was two days after a full
moon and it was still really big in the night sky.

There's a path in the woods that comes up behind the house where we were attending the party. Me and my friend, Katie, decided to check it out.

I just started on the path when I heard a weird noise. And I don't
mean "Boo!" I mean, it was a loud, deep growl. I said, "Did you hear
that, Katie?" She nodded.

I stared deeper into the woods and saw a stick-like figure leaning
against a tree. Then it broke a branch and went down on all fours.

I kept walking further down the path. Katie stayed back. She was
pretty scared. I never saw her like this.

Then I saw its head. It was a wolf-like head. It was furry and
oval shaped. It was looking the other way and I could make out a body. It was furry and had big claws. And it smelled horrible.

Then I called to my dad to give me his cell phone camera. I took one picture of the creature but it didn't come out good. You could just see its back, running away.

Then I heard a twig break. Then another. Then another. Then I heard it breathing on my neck. I didn't want to look back. I was running so fast that I tripped over a log. I yelled out then I got up and kept running until I was out off the woods.

I told everyone about what happened but they didn't believe me. I took all the kids into the woods but I took a wrong turn.

I saw the stick-like creature again. Although, this time he was walking upright on his two back legs - like a human. Katie saw it but
the other kids never did.

No one but Katie believed my story. But I thought maybe you would so I wanted to tell you about it.

Thanks, Colin. Too bad that picture didn't come out too well. Still, a scary encounter!

Living Appliances

Megan from Louisiana sent me this story about what happened to some of the appliances in her house.

Hi Jason I was reading your book and I thought I'd share my story.

At the time I was about ten and I lived in a small town in Louisiana. Anyway, I was in my room at about 10:30 at night. The keyboard that I always have on my bookshelf started playing by itself! I ran from my room. When I got to the kitchen I saw that the oven, microwave, and toaster were all glowing! They also all made weird humming noises.

My parents were out and my older brother was playing basketball down the street.

I was totally alone!

So I just ran back to my room. Everything was quiet again--no music, no keys being pushed, no nothing. I ran back to the kitchen. Same thing.

I'm twelve now and i still don't know what happened. Thanks for reading this.

Megan

Thanks for sharing, Megan. I love music too, but this is just plain weird!

Ghost in the School

Eli from Connecticut sent me this way creepy tale about a ghost that haunts his school.

Dude, you rock for letting me do this. I can't thank you enough.

So, I was just walking to the bathroom on a typical Friday. Our school has classrooms so far away from our bathrooms that you have to walk a mile just to pee. I walked by a friend and of course he had to talk to me. And what's he talking about? The ghost that supposedly haunts our school.

So, later, I'm in the bathroom and all of a sudden, the lights go off and the mirror lights up green. Except for two little dots. They glowed blood red. A chill ran down my spine as a girl walked right out of the mirror! I ran out into the hallway and found that the lights were off there too. Little blood red dots were shining down from the ceiling. Millions and millions of them!

I ran back into the bathroom and everything was normal. I ran back to the hall. Normal again. I rushed to the library and looked in the 1903 school directory. I knew for a fact that that was the year the ghost who haunted our school died. Everyone calls her Bloody Mary. There on the bottom of the page for the 6th grade class, was a name. It definitely started with an M. I took an eraser and rubbed on the name. The name came through to the back of the page. It said "Mary Krunkle died on June 11th, 1903." After that day, I never saw her again, but I heard a few people say that they saw her.

Eli

Wow, Eli. You might want to consider holding it in until you get home!! Jason

Monday, October 29, 2007

Books of Wonder Appearance


So the reading/signing event by Michael Teitelbaum for Scary States of America at Books of Wonder, the coolest bookstore in NYC was a blast!

Here's a photo of Michael reading about The Headless Conductor of North Carolina.

Also, click on this link for a nice review of the event.

Thanks to everyone for coming!

Thursday, October 25, 2007

More Shadow People

Fred from California sent me a tale of her encounter with Shadow People:

Hi, I like to be called Fred, although I'm a girl. Yes I know it's weird. I'm from California, and this freaky thing happened to me, my friend who goes by Weasel, and her dog Minnie.

Ok, so I have been seeing creepy things since I was like, 3. But this is a story not many people believed, so you're pretty much my last hope Jason. My friend and I were at her house on the computer. Her parents were away and her siblings were all outside. We were the only ones inside, and dude, I promise you this is all true.

All of a sudden, we heard footsteps outside the room. We looked and there was this shadow walking, then it disappeared. We looked out the window and saw that all of Weasel's siblings were still outside. They couldn't have gotten in and back out so fast. Freaky! All of a sudden, Minnie started whining and barking. We looked and the shadow was back. That was the last straw. We ran out of the house.

Once in a while the shadow comes back, but it never hurt anyone. Yet.

Thanks for sharing. So many folks see Shadow People. They seem to be everywhere!!

Vision of the Future

Heather from Kentucky sent me this story about a vision she had that unfortunately came true.

Hello Jason,

My name is Heather and I live in Kentucky now, but I use to live in Indiana.

I started having dreams and visions that came true when I was 13 or 14.. I didn't really think about it too much or even really make the connections till I was getting ready for school one morning.... I was staring at myself in the mirror when all around me everything seemed to fade to black. I then saw a little girl dressed in black leaning over a coffin and my grandfather was laying inside. The image began to fade and my knees felt weak and I fell to the floor. I was stunned for a bit, but was finally able to get up. I went into the kitchen to talk to my mom who had been on the phone. She then told me that my grandfather was dying.

I have many more stories, too many to write here. But if this helps you in anyway I will be happy.

Heather

Thanks, Heather, for sharing this sad but amazing tale.

Who's Sleeping in the Bed?!

Kailey from Virginia sent me this creepy story that happened to her brother and cousin while they were on vacation in North Carolina.

Dear Jason,

My name is Kailey, the oldest of three from Virginia. One favorite subject in our household are stories of the paranormal. My dad loves watching documentaries of UFOs and my mom and I can't pass up a good show about hauntings. Perhaps one of the reasons for our interests in these eerie encounters is because they hit closer to home than you might think. One such occurance happened to my brother Cameron and our cousin Benjamin a couple of years ago, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

It happened something like this:
Cameron and Ben were spending a week at a beachhouse with Ben's parents, his younger sister and another family. Everything was great until one night the boys were sleeping in a big bed they were sharing when a noise woke them up. They looked at the doorway where the noise was coming from to see a little girl there, dressed in her pajamas. Thinking it was one of the younger kids from the other family who had had a nightmare, they told her she could sleep in the big bed with them. The girl climbed into bed and the boys fell back asleep.

The next morning, Cameron and Ben woke up to find the little girl gone. When they asked everyone in the house if any of them had come to their room, they all said no. Rushing back to the bedroom, they were shocked to discover an indentation on the mattress where their visitor had been sleeping, as if she was still there!

And perhaps she still was, but one thing they knew for certain: they had just spent the night with a ghost.

The adults in the beachhouse told them to stop making up scary stories because they would give the kids nightmares. Typical, huh?

So Cameron and Ben kept quiet and said nothing, though they were still shaken. Once they got back home, Cameron finally did tell his story to the people he knew would believe him: me and my parents.

You see, my parents themselves had a few ghostly encounters before I was born, so they knew exactly how Cameron felt. I believed him because he and Ben would have never made up anything like what they had described.

To date, we have not tried to find out anything about the house or if any child had died there, but who knows? It might one day make for some interesting research.

Sincerely yours,
Kailey

Thanks, Kailey! I'm glad someone believed Cameron and Ben.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Little Girl from the Past

Teresa from Kentucky sent me this tale about her encounters with a little girl from another time.

Jason,

My name is Teresa and I live in Kentucky. I grew up in a haunted house. We moved in in 1972 and all was quiet for a while. My earliest memories of unusual things started at about age 6--unusual sounds, items disappearing and reappearing, the feeling you were not alone (when you know that you are the only one home), footsteps in a room where no one is physically there in the room.

When I was about eleven years old, some friends of mine and I were hanging out in the basement. We looked up into a window facing our yard and saw a girl standing there. Not unusual for our neighborhood, there were lots of kids. But no one recognized this girl and she was wearing clothing not of our time period. She had on a long dress with a white pinifore. She had blonde hair and blue eyes. She looked to be about the same age as me. By the time we raced out of the basement to the spot she had been standing in, she was gone! But we all had seen her.

A few months later, I was asleep in my room. I awoke with this feeling of not being alone in the room. And of course, there she was. The same girl, in the same clothing. She asked me what I was doing in her room. I told her it was my room now. She then told me she had come to warn me that I was in danger. I asked her what kind of danger. She simply said "Time will tell" and disappeared into thin air! I was still half asleep and the next morning I figured I had just dreamed it.

It was wintertime and the neighborhood kids decided to go ice skating at the creek nearby. We walked down there and began playing on the frozen water. I skated off by myself and suddenly got the feeling I was being watched. I looked up the hill from where I was standing and there she was!! In the same clothing, with no winter coat or shoes. About this time, I heard the ice cracking. I realized the ice was breaking, and I quickly laid down on the ice to equally distribute my weight. And I began to scream for the other kids to help me. Someone retrieved a long broken tree branch and pushed it over the ice to me. I grabbed a hold of it and they pulled me to safety. As I got to my feet in a safer place on the ice, the spot I had been standing in just gave way. When I glanced up the hill where the girl had been, she was gone.

I later asked the landlord of the house if there was anything I needed to know about the house, he hesitated but then told me. Back in the 1930's, a young girl named Lydia had died in our house. She was ten years old, and matched the description of the girl I had seen. She died of an asthma attack--in my room! I went to the library and looked at old newspapers on microfilm. After days of research, I found an article about the girl's death and a copy of her obituary. It included a photograph. It was the same girl everyone had seen.

My parents lived in the house for almost three decades. Everyone I knew was afraid to sleep in that upstairs bedroom, but me. I got used to having her around and after my experience that winter day I felt like she was just a spirit trapped between this world and the next. My younger sister who later inherited my room was terrified of the upstairs of that house, and even as an adult, slept with the lights on at night.

The house is still there and someone new lives in it now. I often wonder if they see or hear anything unusual.

Thanks so much for sharing your story, Teresa!

The Ghosts of a Christmas Past?

Ed from Pennsylvania sent this tale of a very bizarre Christmas...in July!!

My name is Ed and I'm from Pennsylvania.

This event was experienced by my brother and me. We were walking our dog on her nightly outing. We noticed a house brightly lit with the blinds/shades up. Inside were people wearing heavy coats and clothing. They were having a great time. Why not? Everyone was celebrating Christmas inside the house!

Only one thing! It was the middle of July and these people were having a Christmas party!

At that point, our dog was acting funny as if something was not normal. We left the area. Oddly, there was no one on the street while we were there. Again, it was July in a big city and people sometimes sit out on their steps.

A few days later, we went past the same house. To our surprise, the house was boarded up. We asked a neighbor about the house never mentioning what we saw just a few nights ago. The person said that the house was boarded up after a fire had killed almost everyone inside. My brother and I looked at each other with no comment.

The next thing he told us shocked us beyond belief...

The disaster took place over twenty years ago during a Christmas celebration!

We still talk of this event 40 years later.

Wow! Talk about a party going on for too long!! Thanks for your story, Ed.

The Haunted Washroom

Tommy from New Jersey sent me this story about the previous owner of his house who died, but simply forgot to leave.

Hi. I'm Tommy from New Jersey. I'm 10. I think my house is haunted by the soul of the lady that previously owned it. It all started when I threw a tennis ball down the stairs and into the washing room. It rolled in, and then I heard a wail and then the ball was thrown back out!

My dad never believes me with ghosts and all, so he said it must've bounced off of something. Then at night (my room is right next to the washing room), I heard the door of the washroom creak, so I rushed to the door and tried to lock it, but the locks wouldn't budge! For the next week my door was WAY harder to open, and weird things happened in the washroom.

The first incident was when I put clothes into the washing machine, and then I closed to the door and walked out. I heard a "thump" in there and I opened the door to look. The washing machine door was open and the clothes were all soggy and laying on the floor. The next happening was when the dryer dried the clothes, but the clothes were ICE COLD when they came out. Now, whenever I walk down the stairs to my room, the door swings open--but only for me!

Thanks, Tommy! If that had happened to me, I might still be wearing the same dirty clothes!!

Evil Visitor

Stephanie from Louisiana sent me this story about an unwelcome visitor.

My husband and I lived in a little one bedroom shack-house that had belonged to my uncle before he died. The house had been older than dirt when my uncle had it moved to the property and by this time was another decade older. Strange things would happen around the house and in the house at night.

My husband would sit up in bed in the middle of the night with his eyes wide open and start calling me names and picking a fight with me. When I accused him of this he would say, "What are you talking about, I said no such thing." It was like he was snapping out of a trance and honestly didn't realize what he had said to me.

We would also hear rattling around in the attic, and when we would open the attic door it would make the hair on our necks stand on end. Whatever/whoever it was seemed to dwell in the attic.

On one particular night, we were just sitting quietly on the bed in the dark and we could hear my rocking chair in the other room and what sounded like a child crying. For a minute, we just talked about what it could be. Maybe since the house was so old, it was the sound of a scared child that once lived in the house.

I made a decision, and told my husband that I was going to open myself up to whatever it was because maybe it/he/she needed help. About the time I made that decision I was overwhelmed with the darkest, most evil energy I had ever felt in my life. I immediately started shaking and crying and said, "That is NOT a child!" My husband started saying, "Block it out! Put your walls back up and it can't hurt you!" I felt a real cold energy behind me and then I felt ice cold hands wrap around my throat. I fought it off with all the mind power I could muster up and finally it subsided. I have never been so scared in my entire life.

I have ghost stories for days, but this one tops my list for "scary". I proved to myself that some things are just better left alone.

Stephanie from Louisiana

Thanks, Stephanie! Glad it all turned out okay for you.

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Scary States on the Radio!

I wanted to let all you fans of the paranormal out there know that this Friday, October 12, Michael Teitelbaum, the children's book author who helped get my book, THE SCARY STATES OF AMERICA, published will be appearing on COAST TO COAST AM, THE radio show about the paranormal! He'll be on from 1-2am (technically Saturday morning) on the East Coast (pretty late for most of you, I know), but 10pm-11pm (a little better!) for you West Coast parnormal fans. It's the most amazing show ever about the world of the paranormal. Check out their website. Click on "Affiliates", then click on your state on the map to see if it's on a radio station near you. It's on more than 500 radio stations across the Scary States, so there's a pretty good chance it will be.

Hope you can listen!!

Jason