Guest Post with Author Marley Gibson and CONTEST!

Today I'd like to welcome author Marley Gibson whose latest novel, Ghost Huntress, Book 2: The Guidance is scheduled to be released September 7th 2009. Ghost Huntress is an exciting series about Kendall Morehead, a seemingly typical teen who moves to the historical town of Radisson, Georgia, only to find that her psychic abilities have awakened. Together with her new BFF, she forms a ghost hunting team. Ghost Huntress Book 2: The Guidance is the second installment in the trilogy.

Marley Gibson grew up in a southern town very much like her fictional Radisson. She never saw any ghosts growing up—that she knows of—although she has been on a few ghost hunts recently with the famed New England Ghost Project and has gotten some verrrrrry interesting pictures. Marley is a member of the New England Romance Writers of America (RWA) and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. She is the creator and founder of Chick Lit Writers RWA. She lives in the Boston area with her best friend, personal webmaster, and hubby, Mike.She can be found online at marleygibson.com or at her blog, booksboysbuzz.com.

I want to thank Kim soooooo much for letting me blog today! Muah!! Thanks so much for all of your awesome support for my GHOST HUNTRESS series and getting the word out.

Since I penned this series, a lot of people have e-mailed me asking me to share some of my ghost hunting stories. Not just stories of Kendall, Celia, Taylor, and Becca’s adventures…rather REAL adventures that I have come across in my research. Wow! That could fill a blog for a year. LOL! But here are a few fun stories I’ll share for Kim’s readers.

Ironically, my very first experience ghost hunting helped me come up with the idea for the second GHOST HUNTRESS book, THE GUIDANCE, which is coming out next week. I went to an investigation with the New England Ghost Project at the Buttonwoods Museum in Haverhill, Massachusetts. The woman who is the psychic/medium for the group was not there that night because of a previous commitment, so we were pretty much on our own looking for paranormal activity with just our meters, cameras, thermometers, etc. Well, we’re in the attic of the museum (which used to be a residence way back in the early 1800s) and this woman in the group starts “channeling” a spirit of a little girl. Now, I put the word channeling in quotes because as I watched her, there was something in the back of my head telling me that it was a complete and total act. In the course of the evening, she “channeled” three times. Her friend said she had been “opening up” lately and that was why this happened. She was totally digging the attention from everyone in the group. After the event, I spoke to one of the people who ran the group and told him what I thought. He totally agreed with me. Then, I said, “wouldn’t it be funny if I wrote that into my GHOST HUNTRESS series?” And you know what…I did! LOL!! In THE GUIDANCE, Kendall’s nemesis, Courtney Langdon, begins to fake psychic abilities and she gets into a whole lot of trouble!

Last July, I was at the Darkness Radio event at Waverly Hills Sanitarium in Louisville, Kentucky. From 1926 to 1961, it was a tuberculosis hospital where over 60,000 people died. This place is amazing. It sits on the top of a hill and looks very ominous as you drive up and see it through the trees. This particular night, it was about a hundred ninety degrees and the air was heavy with humidity and the sound of millions of chirping cicadas. Every now and then, you could hear a UPS plane fly over (as Louisville is the hub for them), but other than that, it was pretty quiet. We were split into groups that night and were free to roam around the five floors of the former sanitarium. At one point, we got separated from the people we’d been wandering around with and ended up on the third floor in the hallway. Now, the third floor was known in the days to be the place where school was held for the children. (Think about it…if mom or dad had tuberculosis, the whole family had to be quarantined, so there were a lot of kids there who weren’t sick, but there as a result of their parents.) Rumors abound at Waverly about there being ghost children there that play on that floor. I was walking along and there was a blue ball on the floor. As I moved past it, it rolled into my leg. Didn’t just roll into my leg…it knocked into me, rolled away and then rolled back like it was trying to get my attention. For the next 45 minutes, we sat there on the floor and played ball with what was supposedly a ghost child. Now, I know what you’re thinking…there was a breeze blowing the ball. No…it was 98 degrees that night and we were praying for a breeze. Okay…so the ball had some sort plug on it that made it roll towards that side. Nope. No stops on the ball at all. Oh wait…maybe the floor was uneven. That’s not the reason either. It’s an institution that was built to code out of concrete. Gurneys and wheelchairs went up and down the hallways all the time…no uneven-ness. This ball was rolling around on its own. Not just rolling around, but changing directions, spinning underneath my finger and shooting into another room. I got eighteen minutes of this activity on video and was fortunate enough to be featured on a segment of A&E’s Biography Channel’s “My Ghost Story” showing the ball video. I can’t share the entire eighteen minutes, but here is a link to my segment:

At the Stanley Hotel in November last year, I saw my first FBA. That’s what we ghost hunters call a “full bodied apparition.” It’s really hard to get across the true emotions of this encounter. I’m a writer, yet I don’t have the words to fully describe the moment. There were several of us walking around on the third floor at The Stanley in the pitch black dark. We turned a corner and I saw someone standing at the end of the hallway about thirty feet in front of us. I thought we had happened upon another group trying to do EVPs or something in that hallway and I called out “sorry.” But when we shined the flashlight at the end of the hall, there was no one there. I turned to the person on my right and said, “Did you see that?” She said, “Yes.” I turned to the person on my left and said, “Did you see that.” He said, “Yes.”

At that moment, I realized that I had seen an FBA. I broke out in chill bumps all over my body and my eyes filled with tears immediately. The rush of emotions was so intense…it was…wow…see, I don’t have the words for it. I mean, in one moment, I thought I had interrupted someone’s EVP session…and then in the next moment when the person was no longer there. Not just not there…but…disappeared. It was…phenomenal. And the fact that other people witnessed it at exactly the same time showed me that what I saw was real.

One last story…when I was in Bethany, New York (near Buffalo) at Rolling Hills Sanitarium, I was in the basement when Jason Hawes from Ghost Hunters asked me why I hadn’t gone down the back tunnels yet. I told him I was a little skeeved out to do it. He laughed at me and said, “What kind of ghost huntress are you?” Okay…he called my bluff! So…I went down the tunnel with a few other people. They were standing about half way down the tunnel, stopped and looking at the room at the very end. Apparently, there are three rooms at the end of the tunnel that were used as treatment rooms when Rolling Hills was an operating sanitarium. The moon was providing us with back lighting and casting shadows. But not of real people. Shadow people. There was no one in those rooms, yet we saw the shadows of people moving around in the moonlight. I wasn’t exactly buying this, but I stood there and watched the shadows moving around and crossing from one room to the next. As an experiment, I called out to them. No response, but they continued to move around. I thought…okay…let me try something else. I lifted my hand over my head and waved back and forth. To my surprise, a shadowy hand lifted…and waved back at me. I was in awe. It waved to me! Now…what is a shadow person? It’s thought to be an anomaly that appears as a human-shaped shadow, but without any other body definition. Some researchers believe they’re not human ghosts, but non-human entities. All I know is that it looked like a person and it waved back at me, like I was a long-lost friend.

Well, there you have it! Some of my most incredible moments of ghost hunting. I have to say that I have been fortunate to go on investigations with people who really know their stuff…Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson from Ghost Hunters, Patrick Burns from TruTV’s Haunting Evidence, Chris Fleming from Biography’s Dead Famous, Mark and Debby Constantino, EVP experts, John Zaffis, the nephew of the famed couple Ed and Lorraine Warren, Chip Coffey from A&E’s Paranormal State and Psychic Kids, and Dave Schrader from Darkness Radio. All of these people have taught me so much about the field and every time I go out and investigate, I learn something new.

I’d love to hear from your readers if they have stories to share or questions to ask. I can be reached via my website – or email me directly.

Thanks again to Kim for this opportunity and for your support!
Hugs,
Marley = )

The Guidance (Ghost Huntress, Book 2) by Marley Gibson
Publication Date: September 7th 2009

Kendall and her ghost hunting team is the talk of Radisson, Georgia, but one person isn’t so pleased. Courtney Langdon doesn’t appreciate Kendall’s new popularity or her relationship with Jason, Courtney’s ex.

So Courtney begins dabbling in the paranormal world. At first it’s all a game to draw attention away from Kendall. But Courtney doesn’t know what she’s getting into—or what wants in her. This is one game that’s about to turn deadly serious.

And for more about Kendall and the ghost huntresses, check out the website!

CONTEST

Marley is giving away a copy of GHOST HUNTRESS, BOOK 2: THE GUIDANCE and a copy of THE OTHER SIDE: A TEEN'S GUIDE TO GHOST HUNTING AND THE PARANORMAL!

To Enter:
Just leave a question for Marley along with your email address-

It can be anything topic related to this post (ghost hunting, her books, questions about your own ghostly encounters, etc). Note: You must leave a question and email address to qualify.

Marley will answer as many questions as possible and we will randomly select winners from all the entries!

Rules: Open to US Residents Only

Contest Ends September 10th 2009
NOTE: THIS CONTEST HAS CLOSED.