Things That Go Bump In The Night

Now that my online bookstore, Booksbyfay Book Store, ( www.booksbyfaystore.weebly.com) is up and running, I have found out everything is in working order. I made a book sale. Now I need to get busy and advertise, advertise, advertise.

I proudly tell you my farm house was built in 1899. I've lived here eighteen years in November. My husband and I knew this home and the surrounding land was for us the minute the real estate agent showed it to us.

With Halloween coming up I am reminded as with most homes as old as ours, there has to be quite a history if our house could talk and maybe even a few deaths within these walls. Once in awhile in the dark of night, the groans of this old house settling could easily be mistaken for someone sharing this abode with us. There's what sounds like soft patter of bare feet, step by step, coming up the stairs in the middle of the night, putting a creaking pressure on the old steps The sound of one of the bedroom doors opening or closing can be quite loud because the doors tend to stick. We've gotten used to the noises and our wild imaginations. One of us usually whispers, "Spooks."

I love a ghost story now and then. The stories from the area of haunted homes and cemeteries that are believed to be true are fun to read. Do I believe everything I read? No. Am I going to some haunted cemetery in the middle of the night to prove someone wrong? Definitely not!

"A Teapot, Ghosts, Bats & More" ISBN 1438233698 is a collection of short stories I wrote for contests. Actually, I have written three short story books filled with contest entries that won from second to sixth place. When I was dividing the stories up into categories, I found I had written quite a few spooky stories.

Take for instant, the story about the ghost in the Iowa barn, Jacob's Spirit. That came about because on a summer day years ago when we lived in the trailer house by my parents, two women stopped and talked to my son. They wanted to see this place the older woman had called home. Of course, many of the outbuildings she remembered had been gone along time as well as a grove of walnut trees in the pasture. The old barn, she remembered well, was the reason for a younger brother's death around 1900. He was helping roof the barn, fell off, broke a leg and died of blood poisoning. He was buried at the back of the pasture, but the lady wasn't sure of the exact spot. Perhaps, the parents had thought to start a family cemetery, but years later they retired and turned the farm over to a son. With the passing of time, whatever they used for a marker disappeared, and no one remembered about the grave. How my story plays out is what happened to my husband and I one winter when we had some mischievous sheep. Can't tell you anymore without giving the plot away. Wait until Thursday and I will put "Jacob's Spirit" on my blog for Halloween.