Who You Gonna Call?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Yesterday ,we thought we posed the question of questions. Steve Ulfelder said the world was divided into two camps; the dog people and the cat people. And we thought, well, that's true. Which side are you on?

But today our dear Laura Benedict (a long time friend of Reds and a fabulous writer and a constant delight) has a--possibly--more difficult question.  When she talks about cat people--she may mean CAT PEOPLE.

So,  Reds, read Laura's position on this--and the decide: which side are you on? And be very very careful how you choose. And a copy of Laura's wonderful new BLISS HOUSE to onw lucky commenter!

DON'T GO INTO THE BASEMENT

by Laura Benedict

Here’s a secret about me: I write supernatural fiction, but I’m no longer a frequent watcher of horror films. Sure, I occasionally watch them (and I adore scary books), but I don’t find films so scary anymore. I fear it’s one of the vagaries of being in the business—and rare is the ghost story that’s told on film in a new, exciting way.

But you know what does scare me, disturbing me so much that I can’t watch anytime after dark? Any tv docudrama about ghosts or people being haunted: Paranormal Witness, When Ghosts Attack, A Haunting. Unlike Ghost Hunters (which I used to watch religiously, until Grant left—long story), these shows aren’t about proving or disproving the presence of ghosts. These shows dramatize the stories of people who have directly experienced being haunted. You’ll notice that I didn’t say “ostensibly” or “purportedly.” I totally (okay, mostly want to) believe these people.

And not only do I believe them, but I can’t stop watching!

One reason I believe: In fiction, hauntings hardly ever happen in ranch houses. Or trailers. But on these shows, hauntings happen in bars, restaurants, town halls, retirement homes. Who would think to make up a haunting in a ranch house or a house trailer? (Usually the ranch houses turn out to be haunted by a teenage suicide from down the street, or an insignificant historical figure named Pauline.)

Here’s how the shows work: They hire actors to do dramatizations of the stories, and the people originally involved are shot in a studio, talking about the events. Some stories are decades old, others only two or three years.

That’s the other reason I find these shows believable. I watch the victims’ faces: they are utterly and completely sincere. Sure, they’ve probably told their stories a thousand times so that even false details might become like real memories. But I find it hard to believe they’re faking a lingering fear. And many of these people are still very afraid.

Most of the stories go this way: Single mom finds the PERFECT run-down, historic house (complete with Silence of the Lambs basement) to rehab. She moves in with her young daughter and begins to tear down walls with sledgehammer. Daughter strikes up a friendship with invisible friend named “Cornelia.” Spends a lot of time whispering in her room with Cornelia. Rooms trash themselves when no one is home. Houseguests can’t sleep in the basement guestroom because of miasma of creepiness. Daughter starts drawing pictures of Cornelia—who happens to have long teeth and empty eye holes. The cat hisses at things that aren’t there.

Mom—who can’t afford to move out—calls in a medium. Or a priest. Or a friend who is “very spiritual.” The house gets blessed by someone reading random words from the Christian bible. The medium tells her a “very evil man” lived there. Mom does research and finds out the house used to be…a mental institution built on a Native American burial ground! (At which point I would sue my title company.)

Then end of the story usually goes one of three ways: 1) Mom never finishes the rehab, but the daughter moves in with a boyfriend just as soon as she’s old enough to have one. 2) Mom sells the house to people who never have a problem with ghosts.  3) Rarely, the blessing will work and all ends well and Mom opens a B&B.

I watch these shows with my grown daughter, whom I raised on frightening fare. One of our favorite games is to compare the actors to the original people. Sometimes the comparison isn’t flattering—either way. And it’s always fun to note when real spouses or significant others from the original events are significantly absent from the show. Boyfriends come and go, wives are divorced. We always wonder if they no longer believe in what happened, or they weren’t offered enough money, or the relationships ended badly. We also ask ourselves questions like, “Why didn’t they talk to the neighbors the first time the walls cried blood?”

Recently we got rid of satellite tv (too expensive, poor service), and I swear that these shows are the only thing I miss. Weather Channel? Internet. Local news? HD antenna (as long as it isn’t raining or there are no sunspots or whatever). Game of Thrones? I refused to pay for premium channels, anyway. Netflix carries a season or two of Paranormal Witness, and I can pay eleven or twelve bucks to Hulu to get a season of A Haunting. In fact, I could buy every single episode for less than a month’s satellite bill.

But there was nothing like having my girl come home for the weekend and settling onto the couch with her to watch four DVR’d episodes in a row of people running screaming through their half-demolished houses or perfect antique-stuffed living rooms yelling, “Mom! Mom! There’s something in the basement!” (We do not, by the way, have any sort of basement at our house. On purpose.)

Do I sound crazy to you? Perhaps I’m just one of those suckers who was born  in one particular, supernatural-leaning minute. It’s just too fun not to believe, at least a little.

What about you? Do you have a ghost story that we should all believe?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I *will* go down into the basement. But I DO consider it. And I do think there is more on heaven and earth than we have dreamed of in our philosophy.  I'd say: possible.

How about you? And a copy of the fabulous BLISS HOUSE to one lucky commenter...

Laura Benedict’s latest dark suspense novel is BLISS HOUSE (Pegasus Crime), praised as “Eerie, seductive, and suspenseful,” by Edgar award-winning author, Meg Gardiner. Laura is also the author of DEVIL’S OVEN, a modern Frankenstein tale, and CALLING MR. LONELY HEARTS and ISABELLA MOON, both originally published by Ballantine Books. Her work has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, PANK, and numerous anthologies like Thrillers: 100 Must-Reads (Oceanview), and Slices of Flesh (Dark Moon Books).

A Cincinnati, Ohio native, Laura grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and claims both as hometowns. She currently lives with her family in the southern wilds of a Midwestern state, surrounded by bobcats, coyotes, and other less picturesque predators.

Tomorrow on Jungle Red: What makes good YA?

And the winner of TRUTH BE TOLD is Bev Fontaine

The winner of TERMINAL CITY is Plum Gaga

The winner of SMALL PLATES is Brenda Buchanan

The winner of WOLVERINE BROTHERS is Lynn in Texas

Contact Hank via her website to claim your prize!

My Roxanne

JUNGLE RED: Today JRW is thrilled to feature one of our regular contributors, Laura Benedict, who is just launching her new book CALLING MR. LONELY HEARTS (Ballantine.) We're talking SO new, none of us has had the chance to read it yet. But Publisher's Weekly called it a "spellbinding" second novel (after Isabella Moon) and said this "sad, erotically charged update of a classic horror theme offers a cautionary moral: pacts with the devil seldom result in happiness."

We welcome Laura here to talk about the inspiration for her new book!

LAURA: When I was a preteen, we lived in a rather anonymous sort of townhouse complex surrounded by middle-class homes. At the time I didn’t understand that living in the townhouses meant we were a social rung down from the people in the houses, but even the 1974 suburbs of Louisville, Kentucky had their class rules. Then there was the other apartment complex across the street….My parents thought that the apartment complex was, well, risky.

The apartments were filled with unmarried people. My friends from “over there” lived with their single parents. The swimming pool lifeguards blared the Top 40 radio station over the sound system, and there were wine-sodden parties in the clubhouse every weekend. The guy who dressed up as our local Ronald McDonald lived there. It was a fabulous place and you know I spent as much time as I could there—especially with my friend, Roxanne.

Roxanne fancied herself a witch. Actually, she said it was her sister who was really the witch—she was just in training. Roxanne was the first person I did the Ouija board with, and, underneath her bed, she kept a headstone that she said her sister had stolen from a graveyard. It was old and you couldn’t read what it said anymore, just the word “died” in lowercase letters. She had books on Satan worship and bags full of roots and things. Roxanne was Goth before Goth was Goth. Roxanne was cool. But she cried a lot. And her sister never came to visit her. And in the year that I knew her, I never met her mother, who lived in the same apartment.

My own mother would’ve had a heart attack if she knew I was practicing spells to—well, who knows what we were trying to do. Get boyfriends? Better grades? Mostly we giggled a lot and tried to levitate one another at sleepovers. There was a darkness behind it all, though. A terrifying darkness that at once attracted and repelled me.

The Roxanne in my novel CALLING MR. LONELY HEARTS has much in common with my childhood friend: they both tried to use a kind of witchcraft to get attention and transform their lives, they both had great hair, they both lived with a single parent, they were both artists. I tried, but no other name worked for the character in the novel.

Both Roxannes are very different from me: I visit the dark places in myself, in my imagination, in the news, and in films and literature. But I don’t hang around there long. I’ve always been kind of a chicken when it comes to that stuff. I think that even way back then, I knew it was just an experiment and that I could go back to my cozy townhouse with my June Cleaver mother, annoying younger sisters, hardworking dad. I could go to sleep at night knowing I would wake up and nothing would have changed. I could eat my hot breakfast and go to school and come home and do it all again.

I’m like that now. I live a very quiet, middle-class life. If I ever catch one of my kids using a Ouija board, I’ll turn him or her over my knee and give them a good spanking because some things shouldn’t be messed with. (Note: It would be the second or third spanking they ever got. I’m more a yeller than a spanker. But I’m that serious about it.) I spend my days exploring the darkness in the pages of my manuscripts, and surface in time to make tuna noodle and hug my kids when they get home from school. I cry mostly when I’m hormonal or I get a really bad review. I feel very blessed in that things have worked out this way.

I wonder if you’ve had a Roxanne in your life? Or were you perhaps someone else's Roxanne?

Jungle Red: Let's hear from the gang!