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Canada
Ghost to Ghost
An excerpt from this book: Copyright © 1996 Sheila Hervey At first, things appeared to be progressing smoothly. Contact appeared to have been made with the little girl, Becky, and she was able to identify herself to her parents’ satisfaction. Becky indicated contentment with her present situation, but seemed unable to explain where she was or how she had gotten there. Bob and Edith were quite willing to stop at this point. Their main questions had been answered. The child seemed happy. But mutual agreement the Halls decided to leave the board. They had both noticed a deep chill in the room and were growing worried and very uncomfortable at the table. But a Ouija board is something like an old telephone party line; if only one party terminates the conversation by hanging up, another can step in and carry on with the communication. Ideally, both parties should disconnect simultaneously to prevent outside interference from another source. The situation in the Halls’ living room was not ideal! Far from it. When the couple decided to quit their experiment, the "line" was still open at the other end just long enough for something quite extraordinary and unexpected to happen. Becky had gone, and Bob and Edith suddenly found themselves in contact with someone or something quite different. The shot glass began to move in an agitated fashion, almost bouncing across the surface of the tray, moving rapidly from letter to letter. The resulting message indicated that the new "party on the line" was a seemingly unrepentant man guilty of several grisly child murders that had occurred many years ago in London, Ontario! (Disease, not murder, had claimed the Hall child.) Quickly the Halls dismantled their makeshift board, but they were very much afraid that they had delayed too long. Whatever they had made contact with was loose in their home, and it was already starting to poison the atmosphere. The air temperature had dropped noticeably, and there was a sense of foreboding, that strange calm one sometimes feels before a thunderstorm. Bob and Edith finished putting everything away and sat quietly in their living room. They shivered from the unnatural chill, and shook slightly with apprehension. Suddenly, throughout the entire residence, there rang an ear-shattering peal of maniacal laughter. The Halls were stunned and very badly frightened. For the next several months, Bob and Edith Hall were besieged by an unwelcome intruder. The electrical system in the house went haywire; frigid air flowed through the house, accompanied by the smell of decay and loud bangs and cracks during the nights. Slowly, with the passage of time, the effects lessened, until one day Bob felt that their Scarborough bungalow was back to what it had been. At least, if felt that way. Bob sent Edith out of town and remained alone in the house. He admits to feeling that the horrible laughter was "still hanging in the air," waiting for the opportunity to dominate whenever Bob’s resistance felt low. During
that period on his own, Bob Hall slept badly. He came to dread the nights.
In order to overcome the long, ominously quiet periods before sleep,
he developed a system of defence. Every evening just before going to
bed, Bob carefully placed ten long-play recordings onto his stereo system.
That way, he could be well off to sleep before the music ran its course.
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A
wonderful collection of all-new, mostly modern stories from the author
of Some Canadian Ghosts. There are some dreadful ghosts here: a black-garbed,
veiled female apparition who threatened the Farling family of British
Columbia with fireballs and howling winds and was only kept at bay by
the ghost of the family’s grandmother. A "brownish, egg-shaped
form" that terrorized a Toronto family and nearly electrocuted
their cat. Also interesting sections on topics like the different symptoms
of hauntings, reasons ghosts haunt, and who might see a ghost. Hervey
seems to have a nose for negative ghosts; this is a top-drawer book!