My Favorite Halloween Monster

free photo from Dreamstime

October is one of my favorite months, aside from it being my birth month. I live in Central Pennsylvania and the fall foliage hits its peak during the tenth month. The mountains are ablaze with reds, golds and oranges. The weather also becomes pleasant. Summers in Pennsylvania are usually hot and humid, but the fall, particularly early October, is refreshing—and because of this lower humidity, October’s sky seems to become a brilliant, deep, blue. I love that shade and even make mention of it in A Hunter’s Angel by calling Ian’s eyes “October blue.”

But there’s another reason I love October. I love Halloween. I spent this past weekend decorating my front porch. I do a haunted house/witch theme and dress up during Trick or Treat as a witch to hand out candy from a large, black cauldron I have over a “flaming fire.”

But despite this tribute to my inner witch... I love ghosts. I hate watching horror movies, which let’s face it are fake and fictional, but I love watching the shows on the History Channel or the Travel Channel about the most haunted places in the world. I love the story about the Winchester Mansion and how there are rooms that lead nowhere simply because the ghosts of the people killed by the Winchester Riffle told Mrs. Winchester to build them.

Or the stories of the ghosts in New Orleans and on some of the southern plantations.

I’ve actually worked in a two haunted places. The hospital I used to work at (which was no longer used as an inpatient facility when I worked there) had all kinds of stories. There are two in particular that stand out.

When the building was renovated and turned into doctor office space, the workers swore they would hear babies crying where they ripped out the old maternity ward area. The other incident happened while I was working there. Several X-ray techs had chilling experiences with a more sinister specter in the radiology department, which just happened to be in the basement where the morgue had been. One of the scariest things happened when all the department doors were opened, even the locked ones, all the garbage cans were strewn in the halls, and chairs were stacked on top of the desk in the office. This all occurred within in a ten-minute period while the tech had come up stairs to do an X-ray in the urgent care unit where I worked one evening. No one had access to the downstairs office but the tech. Needless to say, she never wanted to work alone in the evenings again, and I avoided the basement of that building like the plague!

Carlisle Historical Photo

I’ve since left that little hospital and now work on an old Army post. There have been entire books written about the ghosts that haunt Carlisle Barracks. The most scary stories come from the old Hessian Museum. This old stone building was built in 1777 by Hessian prisoners of war as a powder magazine during the Revolutionary War. But it was also their prison. Many of these mercenaries died in that small stone building. I’ve been in there, and it’s a creepy place. It’s dark and dank and cold, even though it’s not meant to be. And many people have claimed to have seen the emaciated bodies of the prisoners working on the building or inside the cells.

Yes, if this looks at all familiar it's where I had my photo shoot in March. Here's my picture standing at the very door pitured above.

Of course, the most haunted place around here is Gettysburg. In fact, one of the fun things to do in the town isn’t touring the battlefield, but taking a ghost tour. I’ll be talking about some of the most famous ghost stories from that beautiful little town on Friday on the Inkslingers Blog.

Do you have any ghost stories? And what is your favorite Halloween monster?

The serial killer stalking Clayton, Pennsylvania, isn’t all that has Chief of Police Grace Wallace worried. For a year, she’s tried to forget Special Agent Ian McHenry and now he’s the expert the FBI sent to catch the killer. She can’t stay away from him, but something primal is telling her to run to save much more than just her heart. Despite the strict code of ethics Ian vowed to follow as a vampire hunter, he craves Grace’s blood above all others. If he chooses to stay, Ian risks losing his chance at divine forgiveness. But if he leaves Grace unprotected from the evil he’s hunted for over a century, he loses more than just his soul…

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Brigit Wolfe, a born werewolf, hasn’t killed a human in over a hundred years, although now, she wonders if the animal attacking people in Silver Creek, Colorado, isn’t her. But she might have bigger problems when her cowboy neighbor, Austin Calhoun, ambles into her bar. Austin hasn’t been a vampire for long, but he is determined to prove to himself that he’s worthy of his hunter’s dagger. Brigit’s rare beauty and blade-sharp tongue enchants him. She ignites a passion he thought was dead, but is she the killer his master sent him to destroy? During Austin’s investigation regarding Brigit’s involvement in the deaths, an old crime surfaces connected to her human best friend. These two immortal enemies have to join forces to solve the mystery before someone else dies. But can they survive the heat of their own desire?

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Pike House is it Really Haunted?

This location is not to be confused with McPike Mansion. Located on Belvin St. in San Marcos, Texas, Pike House started out as part of The Cornwell Institute, a Methodist school, in 1903. The school closed sometime time later and became Old Soldier and Sailors Memorial Hospital. When a new hospital opened down the road in 1956, the house converted in to a dormitory for the San Marcos Baptist Academy. It received it's now famous name when it was acquired by Pi Kappa Alpha in 1968 and turned in to a fraternity house for 40 years. In 1998, it was bought by developer Terry Gilmore with the intentions of being converted in to a private residence. Unfortunately, Pike House will never serve a purpose anymore.

In 2007, Nicholas Ryan (25) and a 15-year-old male for undisclosed reasons committed an act of arson, burning the house to ruins. What was left of Pike house was later demolished. Where a grand mansion once stood now occupies an empty lot. This one act may add to the other legends which swirled around it.

One in particular is most known. During the pledge process, some pledges were killed. The fraternity brothers had the remaining initiatives write down the events of that night in the pledge book. The book was then burned and nailed to the wall. Blood smears, Polaroids and police tape were left as monuments of the tragedy when the building was abandoned. Other tales state the building was a hospital for Civil War soldier and later an insane asylum ran by a doctor who performed strange experiments on the patients. There's even one detailing its previous encounter with fire and the children who died as a result of it. Is any of it true? Who knows. Maybe some of it holds a degree of honesty.

Ghosts were believed to roam the layout of Pike House. Now, they have open space to explore.

The house was a hot spot for urban explorers. Urban Exploration Resource site has several photos of Pike house before and after the fire if you would like to see it in its former glory:http://www.uer.ca/locations/show.asp?locid=24506.