Happy October!

My favorite month of the year! My birthday is October 28th and Halloween follows shortly after, so can’t beat that. 😉 Not to mention I’m on vacation starting this Friday night. YAY!

A few personal notes: I recently signed a contract with an amazing practice in New England and I’M SO EXCITED (and terrified)! Life is definitely going to get interesting next July, LOL, but I’m looking forward to getting out there and doing my thing. Also, I’ll finally be getting back to first round edits on VERMILION LIES so you’ll have it on time in the Spring.

Have you watched THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE on Netflix? I am absolutely loving it so far (currently three episodes in), so I figured I’d share my own (TRUE LIFE) haunted house story for your reading pleasure. 😀

Alien

A Haunting in Southeastern Massachusetts

So I grew up in a haunted house as a child.

And I thought it was completely normal.

My family moved into a little cape in southeastern Massachusetts (in the same city where the infamous Lizzie Borden hacked her parents to death) when I was around five years old. They were quite excited to finally have their own home after immigrating from the Azores, Portugal and apartment hopping since I’d been born. The house wasn’t in the greatest condition, but my dad planned to renovate both the interior and exterior over the next few years.

Too bad he couldn’t get rid of the ghosts!

Let me get one thing out in the open first: I’m not super sensitive to the paranormal (certainly not like my sister, who experienced far more in this house than I). Since my family moved out of this house when I was in high school, I’ve literally never experienced another supernatural occurrence. The ghostly presences in this home were so strong even others sensed it. I do think there’s a gradation when it comes to these things, but I’m no expert, so that’s that.

It all started with the persistent pacing. I didn’t notice it at first, since my sister and I were kids running around making noise all day, but it was most obvious at night—someone kept walking up and down the stairs. The house was over a hundred years old, and yes it was creaky and constantly settling, but these sounds were just a little too rhythmic. If I was downstairs, I could hear people walking around upstairs when no one was up there. It was constant, back and forth, then it would stop for a period of time. My mom kept pawning it off as an old house, but I wasn’t convinced.

Also, the entire upper level of the house was always cold, especially the upstairs bathroom, no matter the time of year. One of my cousins (also only a child at the time) would completely flip out if he was left alone upstairs, screaming about the evil up there. Even though I didn’t think my ghosts were evil, I knew they were real, although I poked fun at him a little.

My sister and I would often hear voices at night. We both shared the same room and sometimes someone would whisper right along with us. We would both shut up immediately, holding our breaths and listening hard. The voices weren’t loud at all, barely audible really, and usually in different languages we couldn’t understand. One night, we heard a baby persistently crying. It terrified my sister so much, she dragged my mom into the room, and yes, even my mother heard it. She checked all the windows, and although it was the middle of winter, she told us it came from a neighbor’s house down the street. Bullshit! But she seemed entirely unsettled before she went back to bed.

Our ghostly residents liked to play tricks on us, too. Again, this all happened on the upper floor, where the blinds randomly dropped with a terrifying crack. This happened constantly. My mom kept saying it was because the blinds were old, but c’mon, really?! I think not. I used to sit at my computer, listening to a cassette tape on the radio, when suddenly it would shut off. I would hit play again and literally stare at it, waiting. Right before my eyes, the “stop” button was pushed, as if by an invisible hand. I guess my spectral roommates didn’t care for the music!

What else? My father (a believer) later told me he once heard a tremendous crash downstairs one night, as if someone had knocked over the hutch filled with glasses and porcelain dishes. Terrified, he went downstairs to investigate, thinking someone had broken into the house. To his relief, he found nothing—everything was in its place and all was silent. He was positive he hadn’t imagined it, and it still stumps him until this day.

And last, but certainly not least, when I was ten we adopted an adorable German Shepard named Legend. She was sweet, playful, and loved to run around the house, like any happy dog. However, she often leapt over the front gate (a standard chain-link fence) and would do so if riled up enough. She lived five glorious years before she one day leapt over that fence, chasing a motorcycle, and ended up struck by a car.

I was fifteen at the time and devastated. My dad was even moreso, because he loved Legend very much. There were a few days of silence after her death, but then we started to hear it.

Her running.

It would always happen randomly at sundown. We’d be sitting downstairs in the basement, watching TV or playing video games, when a loud gallop would suddenly resonate all around the house from outside. The noise was thunderous in the basement, and it sounded just like Legend running circles around the perimeter–the way she used to when she was alive and well. This went on for weeks. My dad was stunned and a little scared, but soon it stopped. Oddly enough, my mom never experienced it.

My sister also had an incident with the ghostly Legend, where she was folding laundry upstairs (where else?) and sensed something four-legged racing at her. When she looked up, something pushed her, like a dog’s front paws and she fell back. Of course, nothing was there, but she sought me out, terrified and in tears. At first, I didn’t believe her—none of us had ever been physically touched by anything preternatural in the house. But her tears quickly convinced me otherwise—why would she lie about something like that?

So that’s a quick overview of my haunted house experience (although looking back at this blurb, maybe not so quick, ha!). My sister later saw a psychic medium who told her a young boy of about eight and an elderly woman were our ghostly residents. The elderly woman died in the upstairs bathroom (where else?) but the psychic wasn’t quite sure about the young boy. The medium believed the pacing and cold patches were thanks to grandma, while the blinds/radio stints were the little boy’s shenanigans. The medium apparently knew all about it, which is a curiosity in itself, but hell, I could believe that.

Why not? After living in this house, anything seems possible!

Halloween Giveaways!

Check out these fun giveaways I’m participating in. 😀

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Check out the October KU Giveaway! Our Romance Authors are sharing KU Books. Read for FREE! Even better, we’ve pooled our funds to offer an awesome giveaway! It’s just our way of thanking our loyal readers.

ENTER HERE

Halloween Pumpkin With Lights And Sparkle Bokeh Background

Who doesn’t love Halloween? Scares from ghosts and winds rattling branches, and urban legends abound, the perfect excuse to cuddle with a significant other, even a boyfriend of the book variety. Oh, and let’s not forget the candy! Which is why we’re celebrating with a CHOCOLATE & BOOK BOYFRIENDS HALLOWEEN GIVEAWAY!

ENTER HERE

Until next time…

HAVE A HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Best,

Linda

The Adventures of Medical Internship: Special Halloween Edition

THE HAUNTED ICU

For two weeks, I was the lone night float intern in the ICU. We had some crazy cases, as you can imagine, but what I want to write about are the stories the staff told me about how our ICU is haunted. Yes, you read that right—haunted!

Us interns and residents hang out in the quietest corner of the unit, studying/sleeping/goofing off/etc. I noticed the nurses and staff would stay away from our end of the unit and remain gathered on the opposite side (our ICU is split into two, separated by the entrance and all the break rooms, stock rooms, and bathrooms). So I came over to them one night and asked what the deal was. That’s when they spewed a barrage of ghost stories at me that they swear are true. I have yet to experience anything paranormal in this hospital (my house was haunted growing up, but that’s a whole other blog post), but here are some of the stories they told me…just in time for Halloween!

ROOM 910

Room 910 is like any other bed on the unit, roomy with huge glass doors and windows revealing a gorgeous view of the city. A cardiac monitor and various medical paraphernalia are hooked to the wall opposite a flat screen TV. A white board identifying who your caretakers are sits on the wall in front of you. Obviously, lots of people die in the ICU, and sometimes their deaths can be quite traumatic. Motor vehicle accidents (MVAs), exsanguination, codes, attempted murder; you name it, we’ve seen it. The young man in this post was in room 910. So you can imagine my reaction when the nurses told me this room was one of the creepiest in the joint.

From eyewitness accounts, an attractive middle-aged man in a suit haunts this room. As to what happened to him, no one knows, but people have caught glimpses of him standing there, beside the bed, staring out the window. His apparition isn’t “ghostly” in the sense the media portrays it; he looks like a real life person, just standing there, before he vanishes into thin air. He’s never actually looked anyone in the eye, always keeping his gaze locked on the landscape. I wonder how he died and if he had been so critical that he wasn’t able to look out the window before his death. Now, it seems, in the afterlife he can take in the view all he wants.

ROOM 902

Room 902 also has its own creepy history, and a respiratory therapist told me about her experience while she was treating a patient there. The patient was an elderly man who had been brain dead for quite some time, but his family refused to give up on him. The RT (let’s call her Tammy) had been in the room with the patient, going over her notes as she signed out to the next RT coming on shift. Tammy had been sitting down, wearing her glasses, and she had them attached to a cord around her neck. As she was chatting away with the next RT (let’s call her Jane), a cold wind swept over them (“it froze me to the bone”) and they both looked up, trying to figure out the source. The brain dead man was still laying there on his bed, his heart beating away as the ventilator breathed for him. Then Tammy felt an icy hand touch her shoulder as her glasses were suddenly lifted off her face, hovering in the air before her. Tammy saw Jane’s jaw drop, terrified as the glasses then fell around Tammy’s neck, held by their cord. Jane bolted as Tammy sat there, frozen, the hand still on her shoulder. Finally, the spirit let her go, and she got the hell out of there.

The elderly man ended up dying the next day. Whether the spirit was him or not, we’ll never know, but Tammy was convinced he was trying to say goodbye.

THE FOURTH FLOOR

The hospital is kind of strange in a sense that the main elevators never stop at the second or fourth floor; they’re not even options on the panel. The building is old and has been expanded into multiple parts, so I’m sure there are a few areas that are boarded off, private, or for offices only. The ICU is on the ninth floor, the very tippity-top, and there’s a morbid running joke that patients go to the ninth floor to die. Although that may be true, I’m starting to wonder what the fourth floor is all about.

Another respiratory therapist (let’s call him Tom) told me about his experience during the “witching hour” or around 3 in the morning. Tom had been grabbing some equipment with a colleague in an old part of the building on the third floor. The stockroom there had been filled with ventilators and cardiac monitors, and he and his colleague were loading a rack to bring the equipment up to the ICU. While they were chatting away, one of the cardiac monitors turned on—and it wasn’t plugged in. The monitor showed a regular pulse, beep-beep-beep, and Tom even remembered the reading—76 beats per minute at normal sinus rhythm. Both he and his colleague exchanged terrified glances, dropped their shit, and ran right out of there. They quickly got onto the elevator and he hit the button for the ninth floor with trembling hands. However, the elevator slowed down between the third and fifth floors. The doors opened to what he assumed was the fourth floor, boarded up and musty, the air stale and dead. Once again, both he and his friend exchanged horrified glances and a young girl’s laughter suddenly rang out as if she were standing right between them. They jumped, pressing their backs against the stainless steel walls (“I nearly pissed myself!”). The clack of shoes then cut through the air as the invisible little girl ran out of the elevator, stopping in front of it. Right before the doors closed, she flashed into view; a white child wearing a white dress, her hair long and blonde, smiling at them mischievously.

Let’s just say Tom has never used the elevators again and now makes good use of the stairs!

SOPHIA

And last, but not least, there’s Sophia, a dead nurse who stirs up trouble throughout the ICU.

In the past, the hospital had its own in-house nursing school, back when nurses wore the traditional white uniforms. Sophia had been one of these nurses and she’d ended up in the ICU with a severe infection, eventually dying at a young age (nowadays, we’re almost too good at keeping people alive). Her spirit decided to take up residence in the unit, disrupting the peace whenever she can. She pulls charts off shelves, dropping them on the floor, tosses needles, blood collection tubes, and even pens wherever she pleases. If you walk into her, she makes your blood run cold, like an icy draft blowing through your body. Her whispers can be heard at odd hours of the night, and sometimes you can hear her walking if you listen hard enough. She’s been there for years, wreaking havoc and making her presence known. Makes me wonder if she’s still waiting to graduate and is trying to help the other nurses in her own disturbing way!

These are just a few of the many stories the staff told me about our creepy little corner of the world. Funny thing is, not a single physician on the unit has experienced these paranormal encounters…isn’t that strange? I like to keep an open mind, and I’ve actively been trying to find these spirits. I hang out in room 902 and 910 when they’re empty, staring out their windows. I ride the elevator at every opportunity in the middle of the night. I wander around the unit, waiting for Sophia to throw something at me or whisper in my ear.

Nothing. Not one single thing.

I got to admit, I’m starting to wonder if they’re more scared of me!