Friday, April 13, 2018

How I Became Spooky - Ghosts

It's Friday the 13th. Regardless of it being April, there is a chill in the air. Where I live, we've been experiencing high winds and clouds that make the world outside downright spooky. As a result of that, I wanted to write a little something.

For most of my childhood, things scared me. I wasn't the child who grew up watching horror movies. Hell, Nightmare before Christmas scared me from an early age. But for some reason, I was always still fascinated by the unknown. That fascination grew into a love and became a huge part of my life. There were a lot of contributing factors to that, but there are certain things that take direct credit.

Allow me to share one of those with you today. It seems fitting to start at the beginning of the end.

My love of ghosts...

My mom owned a book when I was a child. It was a book all about ghosts. At least, I believe it was my mother's. I like to think it was. Either way, this book resided in my dad's office with a great many other books. But this one...caught my eye. Now. I'd read Goosebumps and Short & Shivery among so many other great ghost stories, but there was something different about this book. These ghost stories were real.

I looked through this book so many times that I can't even remember. There were plenty of pictures, so that always enhanced the words. These stories weren't written to scare someone and I think that was what drew me in so much. I was feeling educated, not terrified. These was one particular story that always stuck with me. It was about a ghost that was called the Smoker of Labrador. Similar to the Gray Man who protects people right before natural disaster, The Smoker of Labrador also saves people from a grisly fate. This ghost also adorned the spine of the book. It looked liked an angel. That image was burned into my mind forever.

Sadly, my mother passed away and I'm not entirely sure where that book disappeared to. Having two older sisters who also have a love of the paranormal, it may well be with one of them. I never asked. When I started to live on my own, one of my favorite hobbies became shopping at second hand stores. This increased by library of books, for sure, but I still never found that book. I didn't know the title or the author, so my search was limited to what my eyes remembered.

It took time, but eventually, fortune shined on me. I found the book.

The title, fittingly enough, was simply just "Ghosts". It was written by Robert Jackson and was part of a collection called Library of the Unexplained or Great Mysteries (Mine is different than this one, as mine is from the UK. I only know this as it has a cost in pounds instead of dollars on the dust jacket.). And, as I knew that it would, the picture of the Smoker of Labrador was right at the top of the spine. Obviously, the book came home with me to sit among my other books. But make no mistake, this book is more than just a book to me.

This book was an introduction. But it was also something I share with someone who is no longer with us. It's comforting in a way to think that the ones we lost are still with us. To know that at the end, there is something else. This book is a comfort, this book is a connection. It means more than I believe the author ever thought a collection of ghost stories would.

There are many more facets to my love of the supernatural and the otherworldly. But those are stories for another time. But I'll leave you with this. As I couldn't find an image online, here is a picture directly from the book of the Smoker of Labrador.

Until next time...