Having a Drink with Hemingway

Posted on July 13, 2013 by dlmarriott

Last night I went to Shaker’s Cigar Bar in Milwaukee. The bar, once a speakeasy and brothel, built over the site of a cemetery, is said to be haunted. They have discovered quite a few spirits. There is eleven year old Elizabeth, thought to be pictured below, who broke her neck in a fall from a tree when it was a cemetery in the 1800’s (ladies, be careful – she’s known to haunt the woman’s restroom).

There are two ghosts of unnamed women who worked the brothel and committed suicide on the property, and one of Molly Brennan, a woman of the night who was murdered by her lover. With two murder victims buried in the basement, and an unknown number of bodies that were not moved when the building was constructed over the cemetery, there are plenty of restless spirits roaming the property.

The building was also once owned by Al Capone. He even left behind a safe. The current owner has elected not to break into said safe. Probably a good idea, just ask Geraldo Rivera.

Any of you who know me, know this is right up my alley. Just check out my other blog posts “Spiritual Journey” and “Life Imitates Art, Art Imitates Life, Life After Death“. I am not a skeptic when it comes to ghosts and the spirit world. Despite my desire to meet someone from the other side, we did not have any supernatural experiences while on the tour. As the tour guide will tell you, ghosts don’t perform on command. The history and architecture alone were interesting and worth the ticket price.

Another attraction of the bar are their cocktails featuring, the once illegal, absinthe. For those of you who don’t know what absinthe is, it’s a liquor made from anise, fennel, and wormwood. Once called the “Green Fairy,” it was first produced in Switzerland in the late 18th century. It became very popular in Switzerland, France and the United States, especially in the early 1900’s. Unfortunately for absinthe, it got a bad rap. There is a chemical in wormwood called thujone, that is not only poisonous, but thought (at the time) to be a hallucinogen. It’s no wonder that J.K. Rowling made one of the main ingredients in her Draught of the Living Death potion.

Of course, serving hallucinogenic alcohol to the customers, has nothing to do with anyone possibly seeing ghosts on the tour!

During it’s heyday, absinthe became the drink of the creative crowd; the writers and the artists. French poets Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, and Arthur Rimbaud were absinthe drinkers. So were artists Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Amedeo Modigliani, and Vincent Van Gogh. The authors that favored the licorice flavored beverage included Oscar Wilde, Alfred Jarry, and Ernest Hemingway. These are just a few of the artistic minded that preferred to partake in absinthe.

Hemingway loved absinthe and even created his own cocktail. He mixed absinthe with champagne and called it “Death in the Afternoon” after his book of the same name.

I have to admit, I have yet to read Hemingway. I know… his books are Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winning classics, but I was initially turned off by the idea of over 100 pages of an old man sitting in a boat. That being said, his books are on my list of books to read, but I have a lot on that list, and I’m still in the midst of the entire works of Charles Dickens. Sometimes I feel like Henry Bemis in the Twilight Episode Time Enough at Last.”

“Witness Mr. Henry Bemis, a charter member in the fraternity of dreamers. A bookish little man whose passion is the printed page, but who is conspired against by a bank president and a wife and a world full of tongue-cluckers and the unrelenting hands of a clock”

I can understand Mr. Bemis – so many books, so little time! So Hemingway, along with many other greats, are on the ever increasing, impossible to complete, “to read” list.

Regardless of the fact that I cannot call myself a fan of Hemingway, as an author, the man is an icon. So I raised a silent toast to his creativity and success (and secretly hoped his spirit would bestow just a bit of it on me) as I sipped on a glass of the cocktail he created. I do hope I enjoy his books more than I did his cocktail. Just a note, I did try a sip of absinthe served the more traditional way, with water and a sugar cube. I found that to be much more palatable than Hemingway’s drink.

Unfortunately Hemingway, along with absinthe, met a tragic demise. Hemingway committed suicide, and absinthe was made illegal. It was blamed for crimes, immoral behavior, and murder.

Here is a quote from Oscar Wilde on the effects of absinthe.

“After the first glass of absinthe you see things as you wish they were. After the second you see them as they are not. Finally you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world. I mean disassociated. Take a top hat. You think you see it as it really is. But you don’t because you associate it with other things and ideas.If you had never heard of one before, and suddenly saw it alone, you’d be frightened, or you’d laugh. That is the effect absinthe has, and that is why it drives men mad. Three nights I sat up all night drinking absinthe, and thinking that I was singularly clear-headed and sane. The waiter came in and began watering the sawdust.The most wonderful flowers, tulips, lilies and roses, sprang up, and made a garden in the cafe. “Don’t you see them?” I said to him. “Mais non, monsieur, il n’y a rien.”

Now absinthe is back. Yes, thujone is poisonous, but you cannot consume enough absinthe to reach toxic levels without first dying of alcohol poisoning and the new liquor contains less thujone than the early versions. As to it’s hallucinogenic properties – despite Van Gogh and Hemingway’s known mental instability, and regardless of Oscar Wilde’s tulips, it is not proven that it has any hallucinogenic effects at all. I certainly didn’t see any ghosts after imbibing my “Death in the Afternoon” cocktail.

Absinthe is not all innocent though. It has a very high alcohol content (110 to 144 proof) which may have enhanced the genius and creativity of those who used it , but also, most certainly, aided in their eventual deaths. Besides Hemingway and Van Gogh’s suicides; Wilde, Lautrec, and the other artists I listed, (with the exception of Rimbaud who died fairly young of bone cancer) all suffered from poor health that was attributed at least in part, if not completely, on drug and alcohol addiction. So although absinthe is not the creator of visions that drove men to kill, it still had the ability to kill. To be honest it still does, but only as much as any other alcoholic beverage. One only needs to practice moderation, as with anything else to avoid it’s curse. At Shaker’s there is a three absinthe drink limit for any customer on any given evening.

As for me, I’m glad I tried it, but I think I’ll just have to find my creativity on my own. I may not win a Pulitzer, or recreate the magic of a starry night, but I may live long enough to enjoy the things I do create.

Besides, I want to remember, in vivid detail, any ghost sightings I may have, and not wonder if it was just a hallucination! And if the ghost of Hemingway himself ever visits me? I will thank him for a pleasant evening, sharing his drink, even if it wasn’t to my taste.

Road Trip Day 5 and 6

Posted on May 31, 2013 by dlmarriott

The reason I’m combining these two days is not because I was too busy to post, or I forgot – day 5 of our road trip was nothing but road. Well – road and sand and dust and wind and sand and cacti and sand and … you get the idea. We left San Francisco and drove through the Mojave Desert to Barstow, CA. What’s in Barstow, you ask? Dust and sand and wind and sand and … yeah, not much. It had a hotel to sleep in and a Walmart where we could pick up supplies.

Day 6 was much more interesting. Not that we weren’t still traveling in the desert, but we actually had some points of interest along the way. Our first stop was Lake Havasu City, Arizona. There was a time when Lake Havasu had only one thing more than sand and dust and cacti, and that was water (Lake Havasu is a reservoir on the Colorado River).

Once owned by the government, the abandoned air strip was given to Robert P. McCullough at no charge, with his promise to develop it. McCullough, a wealthy oil magnate, was looking for a retirement spot and decided to develop the piece of land into a retirement village. One problem – it was in the middle of nowhere, and he couldn’t sell the real estate. So in 1967, with the encouragement of his real estate agent and partner, McCullough bought London Bridge. The hope was that it would become an attraction and would bring in buyers, and it worked. McCullough bought the bridge, had it dismantled and shipped at a reduced cost by a shipping company that needed to get a new vessel over and would have made the trip empty. He then had a concrete bridge built, and the London Bridge granite slabs which had been numbered, applied as facing to the new bridge. The reason London sold the bridge was because the 1831 structure was no longer sound to hold modern traffic and it had begun to sink. London Bridge really was falling down! Today the bridge does not span the Colorado River or Lake Havasu, rather McCullough put the bridge on a point, then dredged under the bridge creating a channel and an island. Despite spending $2,460,000 on the bridge itself, plus $240,000 to ship, plus another couple of million to rebuild, McCullough made back all his money and then some.

One fun fact – There were heavy import tariffs on materials like manufactured granite. To avoid adding to the enormous cost of the bridge, Customs declared that the 137 year-old London Bridge was not slabs of granite and iron lamp posts, but an antique, and therefore duty free. This decision set the standard that anything historic over one hundred years old is classified as an antique This standard is still recognized internationally. At the time, the bridge made the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest antique ever sold.

Although the dry heat was something Mr. Dickens was not accustomed to, Charles seemed to enjoy the stroll we took across the bridge. He had been feeling a little homesick and seeing the bridge he’d been so fond of made him feel right at home. For those of you who didn’t know this, Mr. Dickens not only liked to frequent the bridge himself, but it was the setting in several of his stories. In Oliver Twist, Nancy met with Rose and Mr. Brownlow on the steps of London Bridge to pass on information. She was seen by Noah Claypole which led to her grisly murder. David Copperfield, like Dickens, liked to sit on London Bridge and watch the people go by. Gabriel Varden, the locksmith, crossed London Bridge to visit Mrs. Rudge in the book Barnaby Rudge. We were honored to bring Mr. Dickens back to visit this familiar and beloved structure.

From Lake Havasu, we got off of the Interstate and onto historic Route 66. It was more desert, but somehow driving on such a historic road made it more interesting. I will say, I’m glad we didn’t break down anywhere along the way. Other than the occasional Road Runner zipping across our path, there was nothing or no one out there, as far as the eye can see.

Then we came to Oatman. Arizona. Oatman is a former mining town. It is named after Olive Oatman, an Illinois girl, who was kidnapped by an Indian tribe, made to work as a slave, and eventually traded to the Mohave Indian tribe, who adopted her as a daughter. She was eventually released near the site of the town. During the Gold Rush, Oatman was a thriving community. The town survived after mining operations ceased because of it’s location on U.S. Route 66, however in 1953 the Interstate was built to bypass the area. By the 1960’s Oatman had become a ghost town and it’s surviving buildings were all but abandoned.

Recently, new interest in the old Route 66 has brought Oatman back to life. Quaint old west buildings including the haunted 1902 Oatman Hotel, the oldest two-story adobe structure in Mohave County, and wild burros roaming the streets, bring in tourists from all over.

The burros are descended from pack animals let loose by early prospectors. Luckily the burros are gentle, albeit insistent, as long as you feed them. They even let Mr. Dickens take a short ride.

From Oatman we made our way to Laughlin, Nevada. There we had a steak dinner, did some gambling, then settled in for the night. We need our rest as there are more adventures on our agenda!

Road Trip Day 4 and 5

Posted on May 28, 2013 by dlmarriott

These two days are the days we spent in the San Francisco area. On Sunday morning we got up early, picked up our daughter Emily, and took off for downtown San Francisco. After some confusion, (if you take the bus sightseeing tour – the bus stops are NOT clearly marked) we got onto a double-decker tour bus. The bus took us around a loop that included Fisherman’s Wharf, China town, Little Italy, The Ferry Building, etc. Leo, our tour guide was great fun. Mr. Dickens seemed most impressed.

After getting an overview of the city, we got off and walked down Fisherman’s Wharf. Our first order of business was lunch. We stopped at Lou’s Cafe and sat street-side. The fare for the day was crab bisque and clam chowder in a San Francisco sourdough bowl. YUM! We found out that even if you take sourdough starter home from here, the yeast that gives it that distinctive flavor, will not survive. It can only live in San Francisco.

After our lunch, we wandered amongst a plethora of shops, artisans, and street performers. Not to mention a pier full of sea lions!

The day was ended with a pizza dinner with Emily and her friends.

The next morning we got up bright and early to catch a boat out to Alcatraz. It was a windy crossing. Luckily Mr. Dickens is not prone to seasickness.

The buildings, stories, and history are amazing. Some of the buildings are mere ruins, but the prison cell block stands as strong as ever. A guide was kind enough to close us into a solitary cell, which was effectively creepy. We were able to see the cells where prisoners had carved away at an air vent with spoons to escape. We also saw bullet holes and grenade damage from where other prisoners attempted escape, but were caught. In the history of Alcatraz only three prisoners were unaccounted for, but it is assumed that they drowned in the rough, icy waters of San Francisco Bay.

The other fascinating story behind Alcatraz is of the 70 workers and their families that lived on the small island. Besides the warden’s house, there were apartments where the families raised their children. The children played in the shadow of the imposing high security prison. There were even extensive gardens planted there. Alcatraz means “Pelican” and it was named that because of the vast amounts of birds on the island when it was first discovered. Today Alcatraz has again become a sanctuary for birds. It was good that we took Mr. Dickens along as he has always had a fascination with visiting prisons as well as wildlife. We even met some fellow Dickens fans along the way. Charles didn’t even mind being locked in a cell for a short time.

After returning on the ferry, we had lunch in one of the many restaurants along Fisherman’s Wharf. Did you know that there are so many restaurants in San Francisco that you can eat breakfast, lunch. and dinner at a different restaurant for three years, and never have to eat at the same place twice?

Our next stop was the Maritime Museum where we learned that during the Gold Rush, over 700 sailing vessels came into the harbor. The crews abandoned the ships to find gold. Now those hundreds of ships and their cargo, are the fill under the financial district. Where else could you dig a hole, and almost certainly find buried treasure?

From there we went to Ghiradelli Square, where of course we had to buy chocolate and eat chocolate sundaes. DOUBLE YUM!

From downtown San Francisco we drove down scenic Route 1. The cliffs, the trees, and the beaches, were beautiful. We stopped a few times to get out and walk a bit. Our final destination was Moss Beach, which was lovely. The area is dotted with cottages. There are tons of imposing cypress trees, draped in bright green moss. Rocky cliffs lead down to the beach.

We ate at the Moss Beach Distillery which was the best dining experience so far. The Moss Beach Distillery gets it’s name from the days in which it was a speakeasy during Prohibition. It is also, reportedly haunted by the Blue Lady. There is a patio that overlooks the ocean where many come to view the sunset. The restaurant provides blankets and chairs huddled around large fire pits, where you can take food or a hot chocolate on cool nights. Unfortunately it was raining, and the fog obscured any chance of seeing the sunset, but it gives us something to look forward to the next time we visit.

After a tear filled good-bye it was time to call it a day, and the end of our time in San Francisco.

Spiritual Journey

Posted on November 10, 2012 by dlmarriott

Spiritual Journey

by D.L. Marriott

My husband and I love to travel. We usually travel with friends, shared experiences are always better. This time it provided witnesses. This story would be hard to believe, even to me, if I didn’t have them.

First a little bit about myself. My favorite time of the year is fall. I love the food, the crisp air, and the bright, yet earthy colors of the season.

I’m intrigued by early American history, and collect early American antiques. My love of all things colonial is enhanced, by the fact that my mother’s family settled on the east coast only a few years after the Mayflower. My family has played a part in U.S. history, my great-great-grandfather’s first cousin was President Grover Cleveland. We were royalty, so to speak, in America.

So I was, understandably, like a five year old going to Disneyland when we took a trip to New England in the autumn of 2004. It was my dream trip. It turned out to be much more than that.

We started in Boston and drove north through every seaside village we along the way, finally landing in Bar Harbor, Maine. It was breath taking. Every view out the car window looked like a picture postcard. I was particularly drawn to the quintessential white clapboard church. They’re all over New England, you can’t drive five miles without finding one. The image of the old white church, surrounded by fall foliage was the epitome of “Autumn in New England” to me. I’m pretty sure I turned from that delighted five year old into an obnoxious little urchin to my companions, as every time we drove past one I pointed out the window practically hopping up and down in my seat.

“Oh, look at the pretty little church,” was my mantra.

At first everyone agreed. By the end, it was usually a groan and a nod. I couldn’t help it they were just so…pretty.

Then there were the antique stores. Now I’m like the five year old in a candy store! You just don’t see antiques of this quality back home. We were stopping at every antique store we could find.

The first morning we awoke in a lovely bed and breakfast. Did I mention I just love country inns too? We started out early, wanting plenty of time to enjoy the sites as we made our way up the coast. The first town we came to was Essex, Massachusetts. Started in the 1700’s, it’s a town frozen in time. It’s also dotted with cute little antique stores. What more could I ask for? Unfortunately it was a bit early in the morning and most of the stores were still closed. We didn’t have the time to wait so we chalked it up to fate. Maybe we weren’t meant to stop. There were plenty of other towns, plenty of other shops to see. At the last moment, we noticed one antique shop that was open, but we couldn’t find a parking spot. Fate was toying with us. We had decided to just go on to the next town when we spied one solitary parking space. We pulled in, not believing our luck.

Knowing my family’s history in the area, I had talked with our friends about how fascinating it would be to find the grave of one of my ancestors on this trip. Of course, we weren’t going to take the time to actually wander through graveyards, so it was mostly said in jest. Imagine my surprise when I stepped out of the car and found myself standing in front of a very old cemetery. The only parking spot in this whole town and it is right in front of a cemetery. Is fate messing with me?

I laughed. “Hey! I wonder if any of my ancestor’s are buried here?”

I never got another word out as my eyes fell on a sign attached to the old wooden gate. It stated that the Reverend John Cleaveland was buried there. It turns out the Reverend helped to found the church and the town. I wasn’t sure this was one of my relatives, but I did know that that was the spelling my ancestors had used. We wandered in and found his grave along with the graves of his two wives, Mary and Mary. His first wife had died young and he wed again. Eventually I looked him up, our time was not wasted, he was family.

Already excited by this experience, we made our way into the antique store. It was packed full of wondrous treasures. In Wisconsin, it would have been a museum. My husband and I were both drawn to a cabinet in the corner of the basement. We fell in love with it immediately. Even the price was right, but we had a weeks worth of antique shopping. We couldn’t buy the first thing we saw.

We spent our week reenacting witch trials, hiking, sailing, whale watching, and eating a ton of seafood. I was amazed by the scenery, including all those pretty little churches. We went through dozens of antique shops, but never found another piece that we loved as much as that first one. Something about the fact that we found it in a town of one of my ancestors made me want it all the more. For all I knew, it was once his. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted it. I talked to my husband, and we talked to our friends. In the end the plans were changed and they agreed to go back to Essex. My heart ached with the hope that the mahogany secretary was still there. Fate was still with me, when we got there, it was still standing in the corner. Now for the haggling. When we discussed it amongst ourselves, we had to take in account our finances. The cost of shipping would be almost a third of the tag price. As much as we wished it, even out loud, we could not expect the owner to drop the price by that much. We would be lucky to get the customary ten percent discount. It was with this knowledge that we approached the woman behind the counter. She had quite the story to tell us.

“My goodness, everyone seems interested in that secretary. Three floors of antiques and we’ve had more people asking about that one piece than anything else all week. We even had one couple who had agreed to buy it, but the husband got angry when we had to ask him to move his car that was blocking our driveway. They just drove off, didn’t take it after all.”

Was there some otherworldly force at work? All that interest and it was still here waiting for me? What else did I need to believe that it was meant to belong to me?

We explained that we would need to make arrangements to have it shipped to Wisconsin. We were shocked beyond belief when the owner offered to not only make all the necessary arrangements, but to cover the cost of shipping if we paid the asking price. We never even asked for the discount. This piece was meant to be mine! We were told a little about the piece. It had been acquired from a local estate. It had possibly spent it’s entire life in Essex, and was from the same era as the time the Reverend had lived there. It fueled the illogical idea I had that this might be a family heirloom.

On the way back to the airport, we stopped in Rockport to do a bit of shopping. We were returning to the car when I realized that even though I had taken hundred’s of pictures, I had never taken one of any of the “pretty little churches” that I had oohed and aahed over. I could see a white steeple towering over the shops down the street. It was in the opposite direction of where we were headed. I sighed in defeat, following along behind my friends. They had put up with enough of my childlike behavior, I couldn’t ask for this too. Then I stopped. I wanted that picture. It was silly, but I wanted it enough to tell everyone to wait while I walked two blocks out of my way to take it. This time it had to be more than fate. It wasn’t until I got home and looked up the history of the church, that I discovered it was founded by another one of my ancestors, the Reverend Ebenezer Cleaveland. Of all the “pretty little churches” I had seen, I was compelled to take a picture of that one. I felt like my ancestors were speaking to me.

By the time the secretary arrived at our home, I was convinced it had to belong to my family. There were just too many coincidences, too many times fate stepped in to bring it to me. As soon as we had it out of it’s crate, we searched for some marking, some slip of paper that might give us a clue. We never did find any, but what we did find was that the upper cabinet was locked and there was no key. I had to question fate. That was until I remembered the beat up margarine container full of old keys we had taken from my grandfather’s house when he passed away several years before. Why we had taken that, of all the things my pack rat grandfather had collected, I do not know. Fate again? We went through every key, it was the last one that opened the doors. The Cleveland family had the key. I know it isn’t proof. I know some would call me crazy. But I know what I believe. I believe in fate, and I believe in spirits. That was no mere vacation. Those were not just coincidences. The spirits of my ancestors took me on a journey, and I have witnesses to prove it.

Addendum – November 10, 2012

My husband and I had gone through a series of moves, the last one in the fall of 2011. Somehow, during the move, the infamous key was again lost. We were upset, but held out hope that we would find it eventually.

Today, we were organizing some items in the antique secretary and my husband mentioned the key and how upset he was about it’s loss. I was more so, as I had been the one in charge of making sure the key had stayed safe. I found myself silently wishing we would just find that key. I pulled open a drawer in another cabinet to put something away and there, right out in the open, on top of everything else in the drawer, sat the key. Not only had I searched that drawer more than once, but I had just been in that same drawer a week before, and I know the key wasn’t there. So, did the spirits of my relatives hear my plea and return the lost key? I personally think so.

Fiction of Fright…or not…fiction that is.

Posted on October 12, 2011 by dlmarriott

Read “Spirits of the Corn” here as well as other frightening tales.

I’m thrilled to have my story “Spirits of the Corn” featured in the October Issue of eFiction Magazine. If you like a good fright, I highly recommend you read this issue, It’s chock-full of Halloween horror. I enjoy scary stories, and LOVE Halloween. I admit, I have a bit of a dark side.

As much as a fictional tale of terror can inspire nightmares, I have a ghost story to share that is absolutely non-fiction.

When my husband and I bought our first home, there was no history of horrible crime, death, or unexplained noises. Other than us being the tenth occupants in its forty years, there was nothing special about the house.

At the time Duffy, our border collie mix, was in his later years and quite sedate. Sometimes, our neighbors had to step over his sleeping body on the porch to get to the door; not much of a watch dog. So I was quite surprised one afternoon, when he refused to come in the house. Not as in, I’m-napping-in-the-warm-sun-bug-off, don’t want to come in; but tail-tucked-hackles-raised-feet-firmly-planted-not-a-chance-in-heck-I’m-coming-in-there, don’t want to come in.

When I finally dragged the struggling animal in the door, he took one look down the basement stairs, snarled, then turned tail and ran. I finally found the terrified pooch hiding under a table, and when I bent down to talk to him, my normally lethargic dog snapped at me. This was the worst episode, but there were others when our dog seemed nervous, and had a problem with the basement in particular.

A side note, purely for effect, but absolutely factual: our house was a Dutch colonial – the Amityville Horror house, was a Dutch colonial. And in our basement there was a funky little storage room tucked under the concrete front porch. To enter it, you had to climb through a small opening in the basement wall. The opening was covered with a thick wooden door complete with wrought iron latch. The room’s craggy walls and ceiling were covered in cobwebs, and floor was nothing more than dirt. Other than peeking in when we bought the house, we never went in there or used it for anything. It was just too creepy. Only in the movies would someone ACTUALLY go in there, despite the audience screaming not to.

There was also the sound of running footsteps, always late in the evening. It’s a two-story house and the footsteps were always heard from the living room on the first floor, so we knew it wasn’t just a squirrel on the roof. Our son was a year and a half old, so when we heard the foot steps racing above our heads, we naturally assumed that he had climbed out of his crib and was sprinting around his room. Every time we’d hear the thump, thump, thump, of running feet, we’d race upstairs to find our son sound asleep. We found this occurrence curious and intriguing, but not frightening.

The event that hammered home that something other-worldly might be going on happened many months later. I’d laid down next to our son, who was now in a big bed and had trouble settling for the night. My back was starting to ache from lying so still. He had been quiet for a while, but I wasn’t brave enough to move yet.

I was longing to go back down to the living room, so I turned my gaze from the darkened room out into the brightly lit hallway. There, in the doorway, stood the silhouette of a man. I assumed my husband had come up to check on us. I held a finger to my lips to warn him not to say anything, lest our son wake up. I turned my head, for just a moment, to check if our son was truly asleep. When I turned back, the man was gone.

Although my original assumption had been that the figure had been that of my husband, the way he seemed to appear and disappear without so much as a creak of the stairs bothered me. The whole episode was so brief, I questioned whether or not it had been real. Had I imagined it? Maybe, I had unknowingly dozed off and dreamt it. But it felt real.

When I was sure it was safe for me to leave, I went downstairs to find my husband sitting on the sofa reading the newspaper. I sat down next to him. “Did you come up to check on us?”

My husband lowered the paper, his eyebrows drawn together. “Why do you ask?”

“I thought I saw you outside the door,” I answered.

Dropping the paper into his lap, my husband shook his head. “Wow, that’s weird.”

“What’s weird?” I questioned.

He paused. “Have you ever had one of those times, when you see something moving out of the corner of your eye, but when you look, there’s nothing there, so you just write it off as your imagination?”

I nodded.

“Well,” he said, “I was sitting down here reading the paper while you were upstairs and I could have sworn someone went up the stairs.”

My flesh tightened into goosebumps so hard it was almost painful.

Now I can hear some of you screaming in your head, “Run away! Get out of the house!” It’s never that easy. Maybe we really just had a senile dog, funky thumping floorboards, and overactive imaginations. We also considered the fact that if there really was a ghost involved, he certainly didn’t seem mean-spirited, rather he seemed friendly, checking in on us, keeping an eye on our child.

Was it a ghost, or did my husband and I have some kind of simultaneous imaginary event, each of us on a different floor of the house? I leave that up to you. But I have to admit, I really like the ghost theory better.

Did I mention how much I love Halloween?

Life imitates art, art imitates life, life after death…

Posted on June 9, 2011 by dlmarriott

I have to start this out with the statement that, although I write a lot of fiction, this story is completely, absolutely, without embellishment, pure non-fiction. This is exactly how it happened, or should I say is currently happening to me as I sit and type this. Cross my heart and hope to die.

Given what I’m about to tell you, maybe I shouldn’t say that.

This week started out with my attempt to write something for this blog. My head was not in the best of places, feeling frustrated with my lack of time to do any quality writing. What I wrote, I decided, was poor at best so I didn’t post it. That made me feel even more frustrated as I am feeling pressure to blog more often. Today, Wednesday, is my one day off of work, devoted to writing. I spent all day at my favorite coffee shop. Although I did some great re-working and editing on my novel, I wasn’t feeling very inspired.

As some of you may know, the novel I’m currently working on is about a young woman, Katherine. While walking through an old cemetery, contemplating the lives of the people buried there, she inadvertently ends up traveling back in time directly into the life of the person’s headstone that she touches, just before their time of their death. This idea was born as my husband and I drove past a small local cemetery (pictured above). Although we’d driven by it many times, on this particular occasion I tried to read as many headstones as I could. I, like my main character, started to wonder about those names. Who were those people? What were their lives like? Did they still have family members that remember them… visit their graves? Or were they lost in time, just names and dates etched in stone? I went back to take some pictures of the cemetery. It seemed small, quaint, with a chapel at the back. There were a mix of newer stones right alongside very old, almost, illegible ones. Perfect for my novel.

In my story, which is a fair way toward finished, I needed the cemetery to be bigger, yet I didn’t want to lose that small old cemetery feel. So I had my character discover a path behind the chapel that leads to a hidden section she’d never known was there. This was already down on paper, or virtual paper I should say, as everything is written on my laptop.

In fact it had been a part of the story for at least nine months when a good friend, Sue, asked me if I’d ever really walked around that cemetery. I said I’d been there once, but didn’t go too far. She said she’d just recently gone on a geocache (a treasure hunt led by hand-held GPS). My first thought was, really? In a cemetery? But that thought was quickly halted when she said “Did you realize there are two more cemeteries hidden in the woods behind the church?” Well, as you can imagine, I was shocked. So today, after my less than inspired day of working on my book, I stopped there.

By my friends recommendation, I parked on the street and walked, rather than drove into the cemetery. I walked up the hill towards the church and around the back. There, winding through the woods, up a steep hill, was a paved road. At this point I heard a loud caw and look up to see a solitary crow in a dead tree, juxtaposed against the scene of the butterfly fluttering around the flowers at the base of the trunk. I made a mental note to make sure to add that to my story.

I followed the road around and up and sure enough, it opened up onto another cemetery. This graveyard also had a mix of older and newer stones and was even smaller than the main one that I had just come from. By this time my heart was beating a bit faster. I’m not sure if it was finding the hidden cemetery of my imagination, or the hike up the hill in the heat and humidity. I didn’t walk around this middle cemetery, instead I searched for the way up to the third cemetery my friend had mentioned.

There in the corner, barely visible, was a narrow path in the woods. This one was not paved, it was merely mowed through the woods. The path wound around a bit, the overgrown trees and shrubs brushing against my shoulders. I made another mental note to include this imagery into my story as it was doing a good job of creeping me out in real life. My only thought was that it was too sunny, the beams of light dancing through the leaves too pretty. In my story I needed to make it cloudy, maybe even an approaching storm. Again I must emphasize, this is REALLY true. Only moments after this random thought, a rumble of thunder echoed in the distance. REALLY!

So, this path did indeed open up into a third cemetery. This one much larger than even the first and looked to be more modern. I wandered a bit but decided I would wait and come back another day, since that rumble of thunder had been the precursor to some approaching clouds that were definitely calling for rain. As I walked back toward the path, I thought to myself that it was that middle cemetery, carved into the woods, that had the ambiance I’d imagined. I started to mentally go through the gravestones and lives my character visits to figure out exactly which one(s) she would find in this back cemetery. Although I already had a description of the cemetery written along with it’s hidden back cemetery, I still hadn’t decided which grave she’d find there. There were certain ones that needed to be clumped together, and in the more visible portion of the cemetery, for reasons I can’t tell you here (sorry, you’ll just have to buy the book when it’s finished). It came to me that the best one for her to find in this hidden cemetery would be the one of an eight year old boy. I would make that hidden cemetery a children’s cemetery. As soon as that idea occurred to me, I knew it was the perfect choice. Just the idea gave me goosebumps.

As I came out of the wooded path back to the middle graveyard, I decided to take the time to look around a bit. I walked up to the first headstone and was shocked by the dates. It was a child. I walked to the next one. No dates, just the word infant under the name. The third stone, another child. I swear to you this is just how it happened. I thought “it should be a children’s cemetery” and it was, or at least the section I was standing in was.

I started to walk briskly back to my car. I had to write this all down. As I passed a bush on the way out, a bird suddenly flew out of it. I think I jumped a foot! I’m pretty sure that will make it into the book as well.

So I sit in my car, laptop balanced against the steering wheel, still parked by the cemetery. Despite the sweltering 90 degree weather and the barely cracked windows because that rain finally came, I’m trembling and have goosebumps. I couldn’t wait, I needed to write this all down as soon as I could. I’ve gotten inspiration, not only for this blog, but also for my novel.

And it seems to have come from the grave.