Don't Go Into The Woods

On Saturday March 13 I'm going to be participating in a live virtual storytelling event with the folks from The Haunted Walks.

Eerie & unexplainable tales from Northern Ontario, isolated spots, and haunted locales! Beyond the safety of our city streetlights, and the flickering of our warm and comforting campfire, the darkness is always waiting.

Join paranormal author and raconteur Mark Leslie as he shares a combination of hair-raising true tales of ghosts, spectres, and other unexplainable phenomenon alongside a pair of tales written specifically to be shared around a campfire. If you go into the woods with us, you’re sure of a big surprise.

Haunted Canada Road Trip (Virtual)

If you have young ones in the home looking for something fun (and a little creepy) to do, why not check out this great series of videos from my friend and fellow horror author, Joel A. Sutherland.

(In all honesty, you don't have to be a kid to enjoy them - you can be, like me, a kid at heart. Because I've been loving this series)

Click here to see the Playlist of YouTube Videos

Joel is the Silver Birch Award-winning author of the Haunted Canada series and has been called Canada's answer to R. L. Stine by Quill & Quire.

To top it off, he's a great guy, and a librarian. C'mon, how COULDN'T you love the guy?

Joel, who was born in Ottawa, kindly wrote the introduction to my adult non-fiction book Creepy Capital: Ghost Stories of Ottawa and the National Capital Region.

As of today (March 26, 2020), there are 9 segments of Joel's daily Haunted Canada Road Trip.

Definitely worth checking out.

Here's the first one in the series about a haunted hospital in BC.

 Enjoy!!!

The Mysterious Little Boy Ghost at Indigo Montreal

This past weekend, I was in Montreal to launch Macabre Montreal, which I co-authored with Shayna Krishnasamy. We did two events at two different locations. Given that, at both events, we sold all but a single copy, I'd call the events a success.

THANK YOU to everyone who came out to see us, to hang out, to chat, and to get books signed. Thanks to the awesome staff at both the Chapters Pointe Claire and the Indigo downtown Montreal.

Our event on Sunday Oct 7th took place at the Place Trust Indigo in downtown Montreal and was followed by a mini ghost walk of three nearby locations from the book conducted by the good folks at Haunted Montreal. (Seriously, if you go to Montreal and DON'T check out their wonderful historic ghostly tours, you are really depriving yourself of some fun)

At the end of the mini-ghost walk, where we were all left with chills, our guide warned us to be careful when returning home in case a ghost might follow us back.

What she should have warned us about was the ghost that might have already been following us.

Let me explain.

When I returned home to Waterloo last night (Monday night) around 9 PM, I received a disturbing text from Shayna.

"Question about our signing yesterday." She wrote. "Who the hell is that in the mirror?"

She included a picture that her friend Naz had taken of the two of us and Barnaby.

Who is the mysterious child in the mirror behind us?

In the image you can see, in the reflection of the mirror of an Indigo display behind us, what appears to be the spectral image of a child, perhaps a little boy, with dark eye sockets whose disembodied head is overlooking the scene.

Zoom in on the mysterious child with sunken eye sockets staring out from the mirror

"That's awesome." I texted back. "Ha Ha. Who doctored the image to add the ghost kid?"

"Naz swears up and down she did nothing to the photo."

"Well, then, THAT'S a story to share!!!"

We messaged a bit back and forth while I showed the image to Liz. Liz was looking at the pic to determine if there was someone maybe standing behind Naz or off to the side whose reflection was appearing in the mirror. We couldn't find a match, nor did a little boy (I decided it was a little boy) who looked like that ever seem to have been around that evening.

Shayna and I joked about it possibly being Mary Gallagher, one of the most famous Montreal ghosts - a murdered Griffintown prostitute who allegedly returns every 7 years to look for her head.

Liz then asked if I had taken any other pictures that evening, reminding me of the selfie I had taken of a woman who we wished Happy Birthday to on Instagram.

When I looked at that photo I felt my face going pale.

The mysterious vampire-like child appears in another photo from different camera

Sure enough, the mysterious ghostly boy face appeared in that photo too.

"What the hell?" I said. I knew I hadn't touched up the photo, with the exception that I added an Instagram filter. So who the heck was that little boy with the haunted sunked eyes?

The ghostly image zoomed in

I wondered about contacting the store, to see if anyone else had spotted this little boy ghost? I was curious about it not just as an intriguing Montreal ghost mystery that we could share on our Macabre Montreal Facebook page, but also one for my Tomes of Terror: Haunted Bookstores and Libraries page too. Also, we had to call Donovan from Haunted Montreal to let him know about a new tale they could share.

My heart was racing.

My skin was continuing to get more and more pale.

And, a chill running down my spine, my phone ping'd

Another text.

From Shayna.

It read: "It kind of looks like Audrey Hepburn."

Then, a few minutes later. "The image is clearer here." And she sent me a photo.

And, finally: "This is indeed Audrey Hepburn."

Audrey Hepburn does possess a haunting beauty

Liz and I looked at the image. And we laughed. It was Audrey Hepburn.

It was likely part of the display of the mirror for the products Indigo had on display.

We laughed, but I still felt a delicious shiver over the experience.

And I love that Shayna and I approached writing this book with the same sense of open-minded skepticism. I'm the true believer. She's the skeptic. We did our best to balance that as we researched, read about and then presented the facts in order for the readers to decide for themselves.

Of course, in this particular case, the mystery is solved. It's not the ghost of a little boy. It's an image of Audrey Hepburn. Although, if one admits, she DOES possess a haunting beauty.

In the initial slightly blurry image, I saw a creepy dark shadowed boy staring at us with his eyes open; when in fact, it was the timeless classy beauty of Audrey Hepburn with eyelids closed or down-turned.

Evidence that sometimes you see what you want, or you see what you are looking for. Like one of those psychology/Escher style prints where you see either an old woman or a young woman, depending on how your eyes focus.

A mystery solved, but still a fun one nonetheless.

Don't Judge My Love of Sharing Ghost Tales

In my weekly Free Friday Frights adventures I have enjoyed the combination of sharing live videos of reading my fiction or just sharing a ghostly tale from the research I have done for many of my non-fiction books on the paranormal.

 

And last Friday (Friday April 13th), while I was enjoying a couple of pints at The Winking Judge in Hamilton, as part of a quick teaser video that I had originally posted live to Facebook, I walked about the 2nd floor of this haunted bar and shared a few of the ghostly tales I had heard over the years.

I re-edited the original live video to add in a few fitting visuals as well as some haunting background music.

Here is the revised and enhanced video:

You can read more about this in a post on my Spirits Untapped blog entitled "Ghostly Tales From A Hamilton Bar," which also focuses more on the "beer" and "beer culture" aspects. (IE, if, after seeing the beer I'm holding and wanting to know what it was)

A Recipe for Author Collaboration

Because I do so much writing for the Kobo Writing Life blog as well as Spirits Untapped, I haven't been updating this blog as often. (I know, I know, there's always SOME excuse, isn't there?)

But I wanted to share an excerpt from a recent guest blog post that I wrote for Dundurn, the publisher of the newly released Haunted Hospitals, a book that I co-authored with Rhonda Parrish.

The article is entitled A Recipe for Author Collaboration and talks about the origin of this book project and how the proper "ingredients" need to all be lined up for a collaboration to happen.

In much the same way that fire is created from the combination of the three elements of oxygen, a fuel source and heat, the ingredients necessary for a writing project are Inspiration and Commitment and Timing.  - From "A Recipe for Author Collaboration" on Dundurn's Blog

At When Words Collide, the Calgary conference where we met and decided to collaborate, we recorded a quick Facebook Live video that was originally posted to the Haunted Hospitals Facebook page.

If you're a fan of video over text, there are a few other videos on the Facebook page as well that I recorded at two of the locations from our book (The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, West Virginia and Century Manor in Hamilton, Ontario)

The Ontario Triangle

With the recent release of my latest book, Creepy Capital, I spent some time on the road doing various promotions. I started in Ottawa to launch the book, then hit Niagara Falls with a table at Niagara Falls Comic-Con, then Sudbury for Graphic-Con.

In fact, given my penchant for the paranormal, you might call the recent trips part of visiting three points of The Ontario Triangle, in a "Bermuda Triangle" sort of way. (Am I the only one who remembers the fun late 1970's "In Search Of" TV series narrated by Leonard Nimoy - "In Search of the Great Lakes Triangle"?)

That thought made me think about the content of three of my books from Dundurn. And the fact that they might represent The Paranormal Ontario Triangle.

Haunted Hamilton, Spooky Sudbury & Creepy Capital: The Paranormal Ontario Triangle

Interesting. Perhaps I should collectively call the three books The Paranormal Ontario Triangle or Mark Leslie's Paranormal Ontario Triangle.

Spring 2016 Promotional Travel - Part One - Ottawa

This is the first Saturday in the past three weeks where I haven't been traveling to promote my books. This will be the first of a series of three posts outlining some of the adventures had during that travel.

It started on the last weekend in May where I visited Ottawa for the official launch of Creepy Capital: Ghost Stories of Ottawa and the National Capital Region.

For that, I did two radio program interviews and three bookstores. And, along the way, Liz and I had fun exploring Ottawa, and even taking Barnaby Bones for his first taxi-cab ride, his first visit to a bar patio and his night-time visit to Parliament Hill.

Barnaby's first cab ride in downtown Ottawa

Book signing at Chapters Rideau

Barnaby enjoying a brew on a hot evening at Lowertown Brewery after our Chapters book signing

Barnaby stopping to take in the beautiful Parliament Buildings at night

Barnaby enjoying haunting Perfect Books

Dom from Ottawa Ghostbusters posing with Barnaby at Books on Beechwood

A great morning chat with Giacomo Panico of CBC's In Town and Out

Liz and I had fun visiting with friends and family while in Ottawa as well as walking through various downtown neighbourhoods and finding fun along the way in the manner we do so well together. We also quite enjoyed the wonderful time we spent in the CBC studio with Giacomo Panico, host of In Town and Out as well as the thrill of hearing a customer at Costco (where I was buying a few copies of the book) point at the book and say: "I heard that author on CBC yesterday morning!"

That, of course, was just the beginning of the series of weekend adventures (and heck, I didn't even mention the incredible fun we had the night before arriving in Ottawa, exploring Kingston, partially for my next book on haunted hospitals, and partially for a project that Liz and I are working on together.

The Eerie Elevator at Waterdown Public Library

It was a slightly rainy, windy and overcast night at Waterdown Public Library

Last night I did a talk and reading from Tomes of Terror: Haunted Bookstores and Libraries at Waterdown Public Library. The location is included in a chapter of my book and talks about the eerie elevators there and the fact that, despite being checked for mechanical error, they often have a life of their own, opening for no reason when nobody has pushed the call button and even trapping people between the two floors.

A #horrorselfie in front of the tombstones at WPL

The elevators started acting in this manner shortly after a pair of tombstones from Waterdown founders Alexander Brown and Merren Grierson were found and placed on display at the library.

One of the many signs advertising this talk/reading

I had a blast with the staff of the library, who were all awesome. But I mean, really, how could bookish people not be amazing? The library was decorated with all kinds of great Halloween displays, appropriate spooky-themed reading for adults and kids alike, and they had wonderfully creative signs hung all over the store announcing the event, which took place on the second floor in the children's section.

Barnaby, all set up and ready for the talk and reading

I casually relayed several of the stories from my new book, as well as from Haunted Hamilton, then I read from two short chapters and wrapped up the evening with the tale of "The Legend of Prospero's Ghost" - a story about my own personal experience with this ghost at McMaster University.

The awesome Waterdown Library staff posing in front of the elevators/tomestones

The interesting thing is that, even though the library was closed and all staff and patrons were upstairs listening to me tell my tale, the elevator door to the second floor opened twice on its own. Sara, one of the staff members there, told me this took place during my talk - it's a good thing I didn't notice it myself, otherwise I might have run screaming from the building.

Sara and Kari posing with Barnaby

I am a big chicken, after all . . .

50 Shades of Hamilton

An article I wrote for Hamilton Magazine called "50 Shades of Hamilton" was just published in the magazine's fall 2013 issue.

"Hamilton is rich with history and a diverse sense of culture. It is also a city rich with ghosts. Fifty or more of them, in fact."

The article outlines the 5 different types of ghosts that haunt the Hamilton area as covered in my 2012 Dundurn book Haunted Hamilton, by breaking them down into the following categories.

• Historical Ghosts
• Truly Eerie & Creepy Ghostly Tales
• Sad & Forlorn Ghosts
• Ghosts in Public Places
• The Practical Joker Ghosts

I originally riffed on the "Fifty Shades" idea of counting the ghosts in Hamilton, on my blog last year. I didn't realize that the editor of Hamilton magazine (Marc Skulnick) was a fan of ghost stories - but when he contacted me to see if I'd put something together for the fall issue, I pitched the concept.

The article opens with the following paragraph....

"Before you think this article has anything to do with an explicit erotic relationship between a recent college graduate and a business magnate, I should remind you that one of the definitions of "shade," according to the Oxford Canadian Dictionary, is simply a ghost."

The magazine spread is filled with beautiful historic pictures of the city as well as a collection of short tidbits from the book regarding haunted places.

No, that's not Patrick Dempsey on the cover - it's Rodrigo Venturelli

It's cool when something like that can eventually be converted into another piece of published writing.  And the extra exposure reminding people of my book doesn't hurt either.

Embrace The Start of Summer With Creepy Campfire Tales

This weekend (which is a long-weekend in the US - Memorial Day weekend), you can get my ebook collection of four campfire tales BUMPS IN THE NIGHT for 30% OFF.

 

BUMPS IN THE NIGHT: CREEPY CAMPFIRE TALES

ERRATIC CYCLES involves a man stranded on an abandoned highway in Northern Ontario, forcing him to face his childhood fears of the wilderness after dark.

ALMOST draws upon one of the most beloved classic campfire tale situations with a bizarre new twist.

In THE PIZZA MAN, four students keep getting pizza deliveries that they never ordered. Is it a strange prank, or is there something more to the mysterious man who keeps showing up at their door?

THE SHADOW MEN was specifically crafted to be read around a campfire. Pay no attention to those strange noises and bumps in the night taking place while this story unfolds. It's likely only the Shadow Men.

Use coupon code:  SPRINGSAVE

The coupon is only good until May 27th and only available in Canada and the United States.

Purchasing this eBook from Kobo gets you a non-DRM ePub file which you can read on any Kobo reader, any of the free Kobo applications available for virtually any smartphone/tablet device using iOS or Android, or on any other reader that supports ePub files (such as Nook, Sony, etc)

You can also get the book via Kindle, Nook and iBooks - or on Smashwords.

And if you want to support your local indie bookstore in the U.S. while buying this eBook, check the list of participating Kobo eBook indies, find your closest local one, and buy it there (you can still use the coupon and save and feel good about buying an eBook AND supporting a local bookshop)

Master IndieBound list of participating bookstores in the Kobo eBook program:
http://www.indiebound.org/ebooks

Example of Bumps in the Night searched on Tattered Cover (Denver, CO) website:
http://www.tatteredcover.com/ebook/1230000011785

Spooky Sudbury

One of the real pleasures of having been doing promotion and book signings for Haunted Hamilton is just how interesting it is when people share their own true ghost stories.

But it is also an amazing thing to research and learn more about my own town.  Thus, since writing the book on Hamilton ghosts allowed me a chance to explore the history and richness of Hamilton (my adopted home-town), I wanted to do the same for the town where I was born and raised.

I have begun soliciting true ghost stories for a book project entitled SPOOKY SUDBURY which I am co-writing with Jenny Jelen.

So if you're from the Greater Sudbury area and have some sort of ghost story, supernatural or eerie/unexplainable true tale related to that area to share, go ahead and fill out the form.

Fifty Shades of Hamilton

Yes, Fifty Shades of Grey has been overwhelmingly popular for several months now. Authors and publishers have been scrambling to take advantage of this huge wave of demand for, well, for literary porn and creating all kinds of interesting spins from the original books by E. L. James.  And there are more knock-offs of this popular series than you can shake a pair of sweaty handcuffs at.

So why should I not try to take advantage of the trend?

Thus, I present:  Fifty Shades of Hamilton (or 50 Shades of Hamilton if you prefer)

First, let me explain the use of the word shade and how it applies here.  One of the definitions of the word is ghost.  Thus, fifty shades = fifty ghosts.

Shade:  A disembodied spirit; a ghost.  (Synonym: apparition, phantom, spirit)

So without further adieu, here are the Fifty Shades of Hamilton that appear in my book Haunted Hamilton (complete with references to the page numbers where these appear)

1) The Dark Lady of Customs House (page 25)
2) & 3) Two little boys - Customs House (page 30)
4) Young woman - Customs House (page 30)
5) Fifteen men (unidentified because they were transients) buried alive in tunnel between Customs House & railway tracks (page 30)
6) Mary Stuart McNab - Dundurn Castle (page 36)
7) Sophia McNab as the wedding guest - Dundurn Castle (page 37)
8) 11 men hung for treason - Dundurn Castle (page 38)
9) The woman with blazing red hair - Bellevue Mansion (page 44)
10) The man and little girl of the front lawn - Bellevue Mansion (page 44)
11) Ghostly soliders moving quietly through Battlefield Park - (page 51)
12) Sara Gage - Battlefield House Museum - (page 52)
13) William Black - The Hermitage Ruins - (page 61)
14) The mysterious two figures of the Hermitage Ruins - (page 62)
15) Alma Dick Lauder - The Hermitage Ruins - (page 66)
16) Strange little girl of Auchmar House - (page 73)
17) Woman in the basement of Auchmar House - (page 73)
18) John Heslop - Woodend - (page 78)
19) Spectral orbs of Burkholder Cemetery - (page 80)
20) Wife of Thomas McQueston's brother -  (page 84)
21) The man in grey - Whitehern - (page 85)
22) Jane Riley - Mount Albion Falls - (page 87)
23) The ghostly figure of 1897 - Mount Albion Falls - (page 88)
24) The banging & crashing ghosts - Dundas District School - (page 100)
25) Russell the prankster custodian - Dundas District School - (page 101)
26) Two angry spirits of the Hamilton Armoury Museum - (page 108)
27) Victor the regimental cat - Hamilton Armouries - (page 109)
28) The ghost horse - Hamilton Armouries - (page 110)
29) Ghostly barks of a drill sergeant - Hamilton Armouries - (page 110)
30) Spiked helmet ghost - Hamilton Armouries - (page 110)
31) Semi-transparent soliders on the balcony - Hamilton Armouries - (page 110)
32) Waterdown Wraith - (page 113)
33) The haunted elevator of Waterdown library - (page 116)
34) Prospero's Ghost - McMaster - (page 119)
35) Disappearing spirit of the basement - McMaster / Keg Mansion - (page 120)
36) Lillian's maid - McMaster / Keg Mansion - (page 122)
37) Phantom footsteps of children - McMaster / Keg Mansion - (page 122)
38) Shadows and voices heard in Downtown Centre basement - McMaster - (page 122)
39) Anthony B. Percy of Wallingford Hall - McMaster - (page 123)
40) Victorian "homeless" ghost of the Tivoli - Tivoli Theatre - (page 130)
41) Spirit of the 1920's Woman - Tivoli Theatre - (page 131)
42) Loren Liberman's doberman & the locked doors - Tivoli Theatre (page 132)
43) Distressed spirit of the boy near Caesar statue - Tivoli Theatre - (page 133)
44) Gus's ghost of 1920 - (page 137)
45) The Tombstone Ghost - (page 145) - read entire chapter online
46) The Westdale Ghost - (page 147)
47) Harvey the friendly ghost - Haunted Pubs - (page 153)
48) The Top-hat ghost of the Winking Judge - Haunted Pubs (page 155)
49) Another ghost of a cat - Haunted Pubs - (page155)
50) Ghost in the Green Overalls - Haunted Pubs - (page 159)

How is THAT for attempting to hitch my ride to a trend . . . ? 

In any case, if you want to learn more about these 50 shades (and a few others that didn't make it to the list -- because, hey, I had to round the number down to the correct figure, didn't I?), check out my book Haunted Hamilton:  The Ghosts of Dundurn Castle & Other Steeltown Shivers.

Haunted Hamilton on Bookends

Last week I had the wonderful opportunity to spend some time at Stephanie Lechniak's fantastic The Haunted Shop in Niagara on the Lake where Justine Lewkowicz of Bookends interviewed me about some of the tales from Haunted Hamilton: The Ghosts of Dundurn Castle and Other Steeltown Shivers.

One unexplainable thing happened repeatedly, causing both interviews to have to repeat multiple takes on the introduction -- the camera mysteriously blurred as the conversation began. It seemed as if we were never going to get through the interview, which is why, when the discussion between Stephanie and I take place, you see us both pretty close to laughing.

Here is a link to the blog post and 11 minute video, which includes Justine chatting with both Stephanie and I in the wonderful must-see shop in Canada's most haunted town.