Coast to Coast AM with George Noory - Haunted Hospitals

I'm pretty pumped to be returning as a guest to Coast to Coast AM with George Noory.

Coast to Coast AM airs on more than 600 stations in the U.S., as well as Canada, Mexico and Guam, and is heard by nearly three million weekly listeners. With hosts George Noory, George Knapp (weekend), and guest weekend hosts, it is the most listened to overnight radio program in North America.

A media phenomenon, Coast to Coast AM deals with UFOs, strange occurrences, life after death, and other unexplained (and often inexplicable) phenomena. Coast to Coast AM is overnight talk radio with daytime ratings.

The show I'll be on runs three hours and airs from midnight to 3 AM Eastern on Friday June 5, 2020.

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!!!

Guest on the Phantom Faction Podcast

Last week Liz and I took at drive up to nearby Harriston to meet up with the boys (Dan, Danny and John) from the Phantom Faction Podcast.

The interview, which runs about an hour long, was recorded in the Crown Theatre (an allegedly haunted building), in Harriston, Ontario.

We chatted a lot about my co-authored book Haunted Hospitals, but also talked about several of my other books on the paranormal and unexplained and eerie phenomenon.

My skeletal companion, Barnaby Bones, came along for the ride and sat in the theatre while we recorded the show.

I describe myself as having a believer's heart but a skeptic's approach.

So, just prior to the interview began, when Dan mentioned that he was seeing floating orbs through the lens of his iPhone camera, I was curious to take a look. I'd never witnessed orbs in person myself (though have seen hundreds of different ones in research done on hauntings).

A pair of streaks of light shooting up from the ground over Barnaby's head in a left upward direction (from Dan's camera)

I had expected to see little blurry flashes of light, which I'd always suspected were light from the flash reflecting off of dust or water particles in the air. (I'm not all that knowledgeable about science, but do understand some of the basics at least)

I was surprised to see that whathe was seeing through his phone weren't little floating specs of blurry light (ie, what could be dust particles floating about), but, instead, odd thin streaks of light seeming to shoot up from the ground and towards the ceiling. Some straight, others on odd angles.

Again, I'm not much of a scientist, but do like to understand what I'm seeing. I comprehend how gravity works and that dust might not float down all the time - movements in the air as we walk around stirs them up.

One of the streaks of light in front of Barnaby's head (from Dan's camera)

But I couldn't figure out what might cause the streaks of light to be shooting up at such speeds.

I pulled out my own iPhone and spotted several of the same type of phenomena through my own viewfinder. None of the pics I snapped captured them.

Liz did the same thing on her android phone but didn't see any of the lights at all. Only Dan's phone and my phone seemed to show them.

Does this mean there's something in the iPhone that is picking up some sort of electromagnetic element in the air? Some sort of electric charge shooting up? (Again, I'm not a scientist, but I always like to explore all of the possibilities - like I said, I'm an open-minded believer with a skeptic's approach).

I've done of bit of looking into the phenomenon, but haven't yet figured out what it is, nor have I found any videos showing the odd fast streaks of light zipping in an upward direction.

I will, of course, keep looking as I'm sure there has to be some sort of explanation for it.

Dark Tales on the Street

Thanks to the support of my publisher (Dundurn) and the Ontario Media Development Corporation, I was able to accept the request from the good folks at The Word on the Street Halifax to read from and discuss my latest ghost story book, Haunted Hospitals, co-written with Rhonda Parrish.

I love the city of Halifax and haven't been here since a little over three years ago. (Okay, I was back in the area a couple of years ago, but drove past Halifax on the way to Hubbards, a beautiful community on St. Margarets Bay)

It was wonderful to be back. Halifax is a gorgeous city to walk around, and this time, the weather (a bit seasonably warmer than normal for mid Sept), was glorious.


I attended the pre-event reception on Friday night, getting a chance to mingle with other writers, including hanging out with Nicola R. White. Then, on the walk back to my hotel, I took a slight detour to check out the Halifax Citadel National Historic Site. It was, of course, closed, but the fog that had rolled in off the ocean created a delightfully eerie view, and I marveled in it as I walked quietly through the dark fog.

The Word on the Street itself, which is a single full day of bookish goodness, was wonderful. I had the chance to mingle and chat with wonderful publishers, authors and booksellers, and even ran into my old friend and fellow horror and ghost-story writer, Steve Vernon.

For my author appearance, I shared the stage with another Dundurn author, Lorna Poplak, author of Drop Dead: A Horrible History of Hanging in Canada for a session called "Dark Tales." Lorna's book is fascinating, and the readings and talk she did on it were stellar. I also think that our books and the things we discussed were quite complimentary and over-lapped nicely.

 

Below are a few pictures of WOTS Halifax as well as the absolutely beautiful Halifax Central Public Library location (where it was held).

After WOTS was over I had the chance to do some more walking around. This time I sought out the Victoria General Hospital where I did a Facebook Live video sharing one of the stories from Haunted Hospitals about the ghost of the Old Grey Nun, and then proceeded to explore a few of the newer wonderful breweries that Halifax has to offer.

In all, a wonderful trip filled with bookish delights and wonderful Halifax sights.

A Haunted 5K Run in Hamilton

Almost by accident this morning, I discovered a neat way to turn a run into a historic haunted run.

It started when I left my apartment, wanting to go on a relatively short run that had a bit of a challenge to it. So I decided to head south on James St S. towards the Hamilton Mountain where there's a path and set of stairs (part of the Bruce Trail).

Once I got to the top of the stairs, I thought it might be fun to keep moving along the upper edge of the escarpment and run out towards Century Manor. A week earlier, I took a short hike up there to do a Facebook Live video to help promote a new book (Haunted Hospitals) that includes a chapter on the beautiful old abandoned and boarded up building that used to be an insane asylum.

One of the spectacular views looking down on the city from Hamilton Mountain (ie, Niagara escarpment) on this run

When I reached Century Manor and lifted my iPhone to do a selfie (because apparently I'm a teenaged girl), I noticed that it was approximately 2.6 KM from my place to that spot.

While I'm not a math whiz, I knew that the full route would end up being approximately 5K, which is a decent short run.

Century Manor

So, considering the beautiful and picturesque landscape I'd gone through (not to mention the fun challenge of the hill and the stairs), I wondered it if might make a thematic run. A Haunted Run, I imagined.


So I mapped it out and created a "Haunted Runs in Hamilton: Winking Judge to Century Manor" route.

The Winking Judge to Century Manor & Back Route

I figured one haunted location might not be enough, and so, since I live near my favourite bar to haunt, The Winking Judge, I figured I'd add that into the route and have a fun haunted destination at both ends of the run.

Of course, after I finished, I realized that the route is pretty close to a few other haunted locations (Augusta Mansion on the mountain and Whitehern House down in the city). But I figured incorporating them into a slightly longer route might be more fun.

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)