Haunted Halloween Bits from the SSA Authors

We're sharing our personal haunts this week. Feel free to share your own when you're finished reading -- if you dare.

Scariest book I ever read.....

The Marbury Lens by Andrew Smith, and its sequel Passenger. -- Elle Cosimano



Salem's Lot by Stephen King - "I read it while visiting my aunt over Christmas in sixth grade. She had this old radiator that hissed when it came on and it was right under the window. I didn't sleep the entire time -- but I didn't stop reading the book either!" -- Laura Ellen



 It by Stephen King -- Deron Hicks 


The Hot Zone by Richard Preston -- Elisa Ludwig



The Sandman by Neil Gaiman - "I know it's not really straight-up horror, but some story arcs in that series are profoundly chilling and disturbing." -- Mary McCoy


A House in The Sky by Amanda Lindhout - "Nonfiction, but reads like a novel. Captivity narratives in general freak me out, but this one packs a punch." -- Diana Renn

 

 

 

 Spookiest place I ever visited...

St. Mary's

"I spent four nights in the St. Mary's Art Center in Virginia City, Nevada during the NV SCBWI Mentor Retreat. http://www.hauntedhouses.com/states/nv/saint_mary_louise_hospital.htm" -- Elle Cosimano

Holy Trinity Church

"In college I used to cut through a cemetery to get to work. I t freaked me out every time. I'd get jumpy and hear things -- I took to timing myself to see how quick I could get through." -- Laura Ellen

"Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon. We were there on a cold, overcast day. The grounds surrounding the church are packed with ancient graves. If ghosts are real, that's the place you would find them." -- Deron Hicks

"The cemetery behind my college campus, when a few of us decided to visit at midnight with a Ouija board. " -- Elisa Ludwig

The Capuchin Crypt from debbzie.com

ParaPedia

"The Capuchin Crypt in Rome - each room is decorated wall-to-wall with the bones of friars. In one room, there's a plaque that reads 'What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be.' In another room, a woman's heart is entombed in the wall." -- Mary McCoy

"Zelve National Park in Turkey. Lunar landscape, centuries of buried civilizations, caves, isolated hikes, creepy guys following my husband and I around." -- Diana Renn

The one thing that creeps me out the most. . . 

 

"I really, REALLY dislike spiders and scary clowns." -- Elle Cosimano

"I am with Elle on the clowns -- and dolls with porcelain faces. Just too creepy." -- Laura Ellen

"Snakes. Ugh." -- Deron Hicks

"Rats. And serial killers." -- Elisa Ludwig

"Anything having to do with demon possession I just cannot handle." -- Mary McCoy

"Spiders! I grew up in a house by a lake, and we always got supersize spiders on all our windows. They would spawn more spiders, and eat their dinners right in front of us, and fight -- I am truly traumatized by this." -- Diana Renn

 

The freakiest thing that ever happened to me . . 

"I used to sell real estate. One day, I was showing an historic property (an old farm house built in the 1800s on the edge of a Civil War battlefield) to a lovely couple who were considering a purchase. The house itself had some very strange features. The upstairs bedrooms on both sides of a long, crooked hallway had padlocks that locked from the outside, and the entire house had a very creepy, cold feeling about it. In the dining room, there was a hidden stair behind a door in the wall (an old servant staircase). While we were discussing the property, the door unlatched and swung all the way open, very, very slowly and all three of us felt we weren't alone. Needless to say, we left post haste!" -- Elle Cosimano

"I was staying with my sister in her rental house in Eugene, OR. Alone in the house and taking a shower, l I heard someone yell something outside the bathroom door. When I came out, no one was there, but the microwave was on and I heard a shuffling sound in the living room closet. To get out of the house, I would have had to pass the closet so instead I stood watch  in the hall with a kitchen knife, scared out of my mind, until mys sister and brother-in-law got back a few minutes later. When we checked the closet, no one was in it."  -- Laura Ellen

"My grandmother had a large old photograph of some distant, stern looking relative that she hung in the extra bedroom in her home. The house was old and constantly creaked and groaned. When I was young, I had to sleep in that room. It always seemed that the moonlight would illuminate that photograph. My creepy relative would stare down at me in bed from his spot on the wall as the house creaked and groaned around me." -- Deron Hicks

"I was pretty sure at the time that I saw a UFO during a high school Astronomy Club visit to a field at night. Not sure I'd be as convinced now." -- Elisa Ludwig

"My dorm room sophomore year may have been a little bit haunted. More than once, I saw a shadowy figure standing by the window that disappeared the moment I reached out to touch it. I did some research and found out that somebody had died in my room a few decades before. I might add that I relate this story as a person who doesn't believe in ghosts AT ALL." -- Mary McCoy

"I can't think of one single freaky thing, but I've often felt that I have a vague psychic connection. I will think of someone, or dream something, and soon after find my thoughts or dreams are true, something really happened to that person (nothing horrific), or I will run into that person somewhere. Unfortunately I have not been able to channel this vague, intermittent psychic vibe into anything useful like predicting lottery numbers." -- Diana Renn