Happy Halloween!!!

In honor of the occasion - and since I don't have a day-job I can talk about; I write full time, in addition to handling the kids, the dog, and the husband's real estate business - I figured I'd chat a little about my favorite spooky books instead.

To be honest, I've never been big on paranormal phenomena. Vampires are creepy, werewolves are hairy, and demons are scary, not to mention scaly, and as a mystery writer, I tend to think that evil is wrong, anyway.

I do, however, have a fondness for ghosts. Not because I've ever seen one personally. I haven't. I keep hoping that maybe one of these days I will - we vacation in St. Augustine, Florida, every year, and there's a restaurant there with a haunted ladies room (swear to God!) which I make it a point to visit - but so far, no dice.

But I do love a good ghost story. I even wrote one myself once. It was the second DIY book, called Spackled and Spooked. It concerned a supposedly haunted mid-century ranch where murder had been committed seventeen years previously, and a skeleton buried in the crawlspace, among other cool things.

One of my favorite ghost stories was released 43 years ago, back when I was but a gleam in my mother’s eye, practically speaking. Barbara Mertz, writing as Barbara Michaels, wrote Ammie, Come Home in 1968, and it has one of the most chilling examples of ghostly possession ever penned. Like all of Mertz/Michaels/Elizabeth Peters’s books, it’s also marvelously written, quite funny at times, and with a very satisfying love story or two.

Since we’re on the subject of Mertz/Michaels/Peters, she also wrote Devil May Care, and House of Many Shadows, and Witch, and The Crying Child, and a slew of others, all of which handle ghosts and spirits in various incarnations, and all of which are stellar. 

More recently—like last year—Jennifer Crusie’s latest, Maybe This Time, arrived in stores. She’s an autobuy for me, and you can imagine my excitement when I not only found the expected humor and fantabulous love story, but also ghosts and—yes—even an instance or two of possession.

Not that I have a particular thing for possession, you understand, but ghostly possession can be a lot of fun. To read about, I mean; like the ghost-sightings, I’m not so sure I’d like it if it happened to me.

And then there’s Lillian Stewart Carl, whose every protagonist generally deals with ‘ghost allergies.’ You can’t really go wrong with a Lillian Stewart Carl—she’s been compared to both Barbara Michaels and the brilliant Mary Stewart—but if I had to mention one book in particular, it would have to be Shadows in Scarlet, a paranormal romantic suspense romp in which Amanda, a tour guide at a historic home in Virginia, falls in love with the ghost of James Grant and ends up taking his spirit to his home castle in Scotland. I won’t go into details of the story, but it’s great, and even includes—for those of you who get off on that kind of thing—a ghost/human sex scene. There may be more of those out there, but this was the first I’d read, and quite well done, I might add. (And in case you wonder about the feasibility, as does a certain character in the book, to quote Amanda, who ought to know, “he had plenty of substance.”)

I could keep going, but I won’t. Instead, why don’t you leave a comment to tell me about your favorite ghost book, and help me add to the TBR pile.

Have a safe and happy Halloween!

Jennie Bentley is the New York Times bestselling author of the Do It Yourself home renovation mysteries from Berkley Prime Crime, as well as the Cutthroat Business mysteries, written as Jenna Bennett. You can find out more about both of them at www.JennieBentley.com

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! from Cathy Pickens

Cool day to draw for a blog -- Halloween. Except it's the night before and I've made myself sick on Halloween candy. (I allegedly bought it for the tricker-treaters, those I won't be home to greet, so might as well get an early start on bloating myself with sugar).

I LOVE Halloween -- which led me to write a ghostly walking tour of Charleston, South Carolina, one of my favorite "haunted" cities ... and which led me to include some ghost-hunters I lovingly refer to as "ghosters" in my latest mystery, Hush My Mouth (out in paperback in November).  

One of my favorite travel treats is to find a really good

ghost tour. My long-suffering husband rolls his eyes dramatically, but he always comes along. I've never heard him scream, but he's jumped a time or two.

One needn't wait for Halloween to partake in a ghostly tour because, my goodness, one wouldn't have time to see very many. For whenever you have time, may I suggest some delights?

In Wilmington, NC, they have some wonderful storytellers who conduct walking tours around this historic seaport city. A little farther south, try the harbor boat/ghost tour in Georgetown, SC (check the times and dates, though, because they're usually closed in the winter). 

Charleston, SC is, of course, awash in ghosts, as is Savannah. And don't forget the Jekyll Island Club, on a sea island on the Georgia coast. Spend the night there and imagine all sorts of hauntings. While you're traveling, continue on down to St. Augustine, which has a fun tour.

Not coming South any time soon? The Boston ghost tour is one of my favorite -- complete with a hearse-like bus to chauffeur you around. Seattle has an Underground Seattle tour which is spooky. Or try yet another boat tour -- near midnight in Chicago. Beautiful and mysterious.

While combining beauty and scares, put a night tour of Alcatraz on your San Francisco itinerary. It's the most beautiful view of the city, and the U.S. Park Service (as always) does a spectacular job of storytelling. Book before you leave home -- it's often filled during peak vacation times.

Going abroad? None can beat the haunted Edinburgh tours, unless it's the several mystery walks in London -- the Jack the Ripper walk is a fave.

For me, it's the stories and the unusual views of familiar places and a sense of history that lead me to these tours. So while you're making your Thanksgiving and Christmas travel plans (something to distract the family from a squabble?) or your summer vacation, don't forget to check whether there's a ghost tour nearby. One website includes tours in a variety of states.

Anyone else have any out-of-the way favorite ghost tours? Let us know! I've got to go have a lie-down -- too much candy.

Military Pilot Trained for War is Afraid of....Baby Dolls?

by Sarah Smiley

In honor of Halloween: a tale of fear, dolls with missing hair, and a lesson in what's (not) normal.


Some people are afraid of clowns. I get that. These people don't go to the circus and they don't hire clowns for their child's birthday party. Other people are afraid of birds, thanks to the 1963 Alfred Hitchcock movie. They avoid aviaries and don't buy pets with feathers. My husband, Dustin, the highly educated military pilot trained for combat, is afraid of something else. Dustin is afraid of baby dolls.

"I don't like the way they stare at me," Dustin says, adding that he thinks dolls switch places and run around the place, possibly with knives, each time he leaves a room, only to get back into their original position when he returns. Dustin is especially afraid of antique dolls, the kind that have blinking eyes and are losing some of their wiry hair. Unfortunately for him, my grandmother in Missouri has truckloads of these dolls. We stayed at Grandma's house last week while she was in the hospital recovering from a heart attack, which was not doll-related.

Grandma has two new life-size dolls, held up with metal braces that my son Ford (6) observed were "going up the doll's bottom," standing in her living room. This is how Dustin was greeted upon entering the house. I saw him shudder. But we were with my dad, a retired admiral and once my husband's active-duty superior, so Dustin had to pretend the dolls didn't bother him. He bravely walked past one that came up to his knees.

My mom, an antique collector, also has an impressive (or, "gruesome" if you are like Dustin) array of old, plastic dolls scattered around her house in Virginia. Some of the doll's heads are loose and wobble on their necks. A few of the blinking eyes are stuck closed; the others just look cross-eyed. Most of my mom's collection is so old, the plastic is sticky and there are exposed "pores" on the scalp where clumps of hair have fallen out. There was a least one occasion when my mom traded dolls with another collector on eBay and a set was shipped with the heads in one box and the headless bodies in another. Luckily, Dustin wasn't there to see that.

But my mom is sensitive to Dustin's fear, and she hides the dolls whenever we are visiting. Then, Dustin opens the closet to put away his clothes and finds a pile of naked dolls, with their heads twisted sideways, or worse, backwards, staring at him from the top shelf. He doesn't find this nearly as funny as my mom and I do. In any case, given the fact that most people shield Dustin from baby dolls, he was taken back by all the "staring dolls" in my grandmother's house.

"Your room will be the first one on the right," my mom said as Dustin came through the living room with another load of suitcases. Dustin turned to enter the room and said, "Oh God!" There was a pile of baby dolls on the bed, each of them staring up at him even though their bodies were facing a different direction. But Dustin was going to be brave, and perhaps employ things he'd learn at SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) school. He would not mention the pile to anyone else.

About an hour later, I went with my mom, dad and the kids to the grocery store. Dustin stayed behind to do work. As we were pulling out of the driveway, I had a vision of Dustin bound and gagged in my grandmother's basement. The dolls, of course, would be back in their original places.

When we got back from the store, Dustin was tired (presumably from fighting off dolls), so he headed off to bed. While he was brushing his teeth, my mom took pity on him and moved the dolls. Only she forgot one waist-high girl standing in the corner, next to the bed.

Dustin finished in the bathroom, said goodnight to everyone, and went into the room Mom had said was "his." He closed the bedroom door. A few minutes later, Dustin ran back into the living room and practically jumped onto the couch like a kid running away from an imaginary monster in the middle of the night. By this point he didn't care that my dad was there or that he himself is a grown man. He huddled his knees up to his chest and said, "The doll says that room is hers."

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Sarah Smiley is the author of SHORE DUTY, a syndicated newspaper column, and of the memoir Going Overboard: The Misadventures of a Military Wife (Penguin/NAL, 2005). Read more about Sarah at www.SarahSmiley.com