Live and Spooky 2021 - Halloween Hijinks from Flame Tree

 

Polish up your crystal balls, stir that cauldron, and dust off that broomstick

It's THAT time of the year!

A whole bunch of Flame Tree authors (me included) and friends, lined up to entertain you with a veritable punchbowl of assorted scary fun

Join us for fantastical creatures, creepy stories, out-of-this-world scares and much, much more...

You can catch us all now:

THE HELLISH HELTER SKELTER

Fascinating fireside tales from some of today’s top short story writers featuring John Everson, Dan Coxon, Gwendolyn Kiste, Lucy A. Snyder, and Maria Haskins.

Watch on You Tube

THE GHASTLY GHOST TRAIN

Creature creation with master storytellers Hunter Shea, Glenn Rolfe, Jonathan Janz and Gregory Bastianelli.

Watch on You Tube

THE WICKED WHITE-KNUCKLE RIDE

Drawing inspiration from real-life stories with otherworldly authors Tim Waggoner, J.H. Moncrieff, Catherine Cavendish and Steven Hopstaken & Melissa Prusi.

Watch on You Tube

THE HIDEOUS HALL OF MIRRORS

Aliens, otherworlds, the apocalypse, horror in space! A chilling chat with spooky sci-fi scribes Brian Pinkerton, Daniel Bensen, Anne Tibbetts and J.D. Moyer.

Watch on You Tube

THE SPINE-CHILLING CAROUSEL

Female Leads & Final Girl Tropes: a breakout panel to highlight the evolution of fearsome female leads with the devilishly talented Anne Tibbets, Catherine Cavendish, V. Castro and Nadia Afifi.

Watch on You Tube

THE FEARSOME FERRIS WHEEL

A chilling conversation between genre luminaries Ramsey Campbell & S.T. Joshi, covering Lovecraft, Stoker, roots and directions in horror writing.

Watch on You Tube

THE TERRIFYING TUNNEL OF LOVE - LIVE!

An infernal live-to-air interview with leading critic and influencer Sadie ‘Mother Horror’ Hartmann & master of modern horror Jonathan Janz.

Watch on YouTube

Images:

Flame Tree Studio

Shutterstock

The Ghosts That Will Not Leave

 

Hospital. The mere sound of the word can send shivers running up and down the spine. From our first mewling whimpers to our last breath, a visit or stay in a hospital can represent the most traumatic experiences of our lives. From the greatest of joys to the darkest of despairs, every hospital has seen it all repeated innumerable times.

Small wonder then that unquiet spirits make themselves manifest within their walls. It seems every hospital has its stories of unexplained sightings, sounds, feelings, and atmospheres. This is one such story. So, sit back, put another log on the fire, and get ready for a series of unexplained events in a hospital located in Britain's capital city:

In Woolwich, in the southeast of London, stood the Queen Elizabeth Military Hospital (QEMH) Before its closure in 1996 – when it was rebuilt as the Queen Elizabeth Hospital – it housed a plethora of ghosts in a number of departments. Interestingly, when they built the new hospital, they retained some of the original features. In my latest novel – In Darkness, Shadows Breathe – the Royal and Waverly Hospital is also built using material from the old structure. This opens up a whole can of dark and sinister worms, allowing evil forces from the past to infect those in the present day.

Back to the old QEMH. In the Oncology Unit – Ward 10 – the ward keys had a habit of going missing but only on the night shift, even though the nurses in charge would be certain beyond any doubt that the keys had been in their pockets. A systematic search would be made, taking care not to wake the seriously ill patients. Time and again, those keys would stay missing until mysteriously reappearing right at the moment a patient needed urgent medication in the middle of the night. The keys would turn up in plain sight – on the office desk which had been painstakingly searched earlier – on two separate occasions. One Nursing Officer became so infuriated that she demanded the ghost return the keys immediately. It did. And this demand worked every time thereafter.

Another instance of haunting on Ward 10 concerns two cancer patients – both serving soldiers. One was a male senior non-commissioned officer and the other a female of junior rank. The two were expected to make a full recovery and used to meet for a chat. They would joke that – as they were in adjacent rooms at the bottom of the ward, near to the main corridor - if one were to die, the other would come and ask if they were ready to join them in heaven.

Unexpectedly, the male officer died in the early hours while the other patients were all sleeping. As the nurses were preparing his body for transportation down to the morgue, they heard a scream from the next room. The female soldier was cowering by her bed, terrified. She said. “Tell him I’m not ready. I don’t want to go.” Her friend had done as he said he would – and come for her.

Following the rebuild and opening of the new Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH), parts of the old hospital building were still being utilized. Wards 3 and 4 housed elderly care, Wards 1 and 2 ( formerly a closed ward and rehabilitation ward respectively) were minor injury and orthopedic clinics. Ward 10 remained as the oncology unit. No other wards were in use and were chained up for security purposes. Physiotherapy, nuclear medicine, microbiology and phlebotomy remained, along with a newly refitted canteen. All other treatment was carried out at nearby Greenwich District Hospital.

By now Ward 10 was only half in use. The rest of that ward lay in darkness. It was in this darkness that something was busy, making banging noises. The occurrences were so frequent (and unexplained), that staff had grown accustomed to them. They gave the perpetrator a name, “Jimmy” and wisely let him get on with it.

Around six months after the changes had been made, an auxiliary nurse from Ward 4 went out of the ward and down to a small office area to have a smoke at around 1a.m.. but instead of a few precious moments to relax, she had the fright of her life. A huge, smoky black shape drifted through the wall to her left, floated in front of her and disappeared through the opposite wall. She raced back to the ward, frightened half out of her wits.

Some time later, a patient of Ward 4 was looking out of her window into the garden and saw what she was certain was a nun, dishing out soup. Needless to say, there were no nuns on the premises – and no soup kitchen either! As for what may have happened in the past…

Ward 4 seems to have been a veritable hive of activity – and from a variety of causes. One elderly lady reported that she had heard and seen little children running around the corridor and her room. Thinking maybe she was having a mental episode, the nursing staff ignored her comments. But soon after, another patient reported exactly the same occurrence. She told the staff that children had been in her room at 5a.m. The two patients were not in the same room and had not met up, yet both reported the same events – in two different locations.

In the ten years that followed, the hospital was extensively remodelled. New buildings were added. Old ones demolished or repurposed. Some, like half the corridor leading to wards 1,2,3, and 4, were retained. Where the old building has been kept, it has been given a facelift. But the original bricks and mortar remain. Is this the reason that ghostly activity is still being experienced there?

Two occupational therapists both witnessed a clock fly off the wall in the new therapy services assessment unit on the ground floor. It didn’t simply fall straight to the ground – it landed n the middle of the room as if it had been thrown. In the old QEMH, in a similar location, army ward stewardesses had reported the same incident years earlier. In the same room, a stool wobbled, fell over and slid across the floor. When one of the occupational therapists doubled over in pain and fell to the floor, she said it was as if someone had punched her hard in the stomach.

It was then they decided to bring in a professional to psychically ‘cleanse’ the room. Since then, all has been peaceful. 

But, for how long?

You’re next…

Carol and Nessa are strangers but not for much longer.

In a luxury apartment and in the walls of a modern hospital, the evil that was done continues to thrive. They are in the hands of an entity that knows no boundaries and crosses dimensions – bending and twisting time itself – and where danger waits in every shadow. The battle is on for their bodies and souls and the line between reality and nightmare is hard to define.
Through it all, the words of Lydia Warren Carmody haunt them. But who was she? And why have Carol and Nessa been chosen?

The answer lies deep in the darkness…

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Flame Tree Press

Simon and Schuster

Images:

Pixabay

Flame Tree Press

The Haunted Halls of Rolling Hill Asylum

 

If you needed to enter an asylum (or mental health facility), surely it would be because you had a mental health problem of some kind, right? Wrong. In the past, all you had to be was poor. Desperately poor, or old, disabled, or suffering from alcoholism. People afflicted with dementia, or with physical infirmities could find themselves behind the walls of places such as Rolling Hills Asylum in Bethany, New York. If they were indeed mentally ill, they could look forward to the very latest treatments, which read like a catalogue of methods of torture that might have been favoured by the Spanish Inquisition. Over the years these included – but were not restricted to – lobotomies, and electric shock therapy (without anaesthesia).

Rolling Hills Asylum can date its history back to 1827 when it opened as the Gennessee County Poor House. A newspaper report from the time stated that it was open to: ‘“habitual drunkards, lunatics (one who by disease, grief, or accident lost the use of reason, or from old age, sickness, or weakness was so weak of mind as to be incapable of governing or managing their affairs), paupers (a person with no means of income), state paupers (one who is blind, lame, old, or disabled with no income source) or a vagrant.’

All inhabitants were referred to as ‘inmates’, implying that whatever their reason for being there, they were all the same and all, essentially, prisoners.

Rolling Hills has operated variously as poor house, orphanage, asylum, and tuberculosis hospital. Around 1700 bodies are believed to be buried in the grounds – all in unmarked graves. Its last function was as a nursing home, but it only lasted for ten years in that guise mostly because of official code violations. It was then closed permanently. Most of the dorms and old buildings were torn down at that point.

Now, it looks like Hollywood’s ideal of a haunted asylum and hospital. The four storey brick building needs little imagination to ‘see’ ghosts walking there. Its echoing walls and corridors wreak of stories of inhumane treatment, despair and pain. Set foot in this place and you know you are not alone. Walk – and the unquiet spirits walk with you

And there have been plenty of reported incidents. Shadows, footsteps, ghostly touching, disembodied voices. It’s a ghosthunter’s delight. Not that all the ghosts are hostile.

Night-time ghost events are run at the facility. One of the most frequently seen ghosts is believed to have been Roy Crouse, who died in 1942. He spent most of his life here, was around seven feet tall (it is believed as a result of gigantism) and his afterlife is spent wandering as a very tall shadow who follows visitors, weeping. He may have been captured on camera, as one female visitor on a tour said she heard footsteps coming up behind her. Flashlights revealed no one there but then she turned around and took a photo. Sure enough, if you look closely, there is a tall shadow.

On the first floor of the main building, is Hattie’s Room where an old woman has been recorded saying, “Hello”. Roy’s room is also in this vicinity and he seems to have a soft spot for ladies in distress. The current owner, Sharon Coyle, was terrified by a rat in the infirmary about two months after moving in. She ran from there, screaming, and the next day found the rat dead on the stairs with blood oozing from its mouth as if its neck had been broken. On the wall above it, the clear mark of a large, bloody handprint led her to believe Roy had done this for her. These days, Roy is a much-loved figure of Rolling Hills. What would have been his 130^th birthday was celebrated in true style in April 2020.

On the second floor of the East Wing, shadow people move silently about in shades varying from pale grey to pitch black. The shadows creep along the floor or walk as humans. They can be amorphous shapes or human-like. Sometimes they appear as an appendage – an arm or a single leg.

In the basement, the Pysch Ward and Solitary Confinement cells show evidence of shackles having been used to restrain those deemed to be unruly. The Morgue, as might be expected, is a particularly uncomfortable place to visit. An embalming table stands near two large walk-n refrigerators for the storage of corpses. Visitors have heard ghostly voices and seen things moved about by unseen forces. People have also been shoved and even knocked off their feet here.

Outside, the exact location of the cemetery is unknown. Nature has taken over and any gravestones have crumbled or become so heavily overgrown as to be indistinguishable. No site map exists or even a burial record.

For some, Rolling Hills will have been the only home they ever knew.

Sharon Coyle has developed a thriving business onsite – with ghost evenings, tours, shopping, dining and much more. Rolling Hills is frequently used for filming and has been featured on a number of television ghost hunting shows.

If you visit, don’t forget to say ‘Hi’, to Roy.

You’re next…

Carol and Nessa are strangers but not for much longer.

In a luxury apartment and in the walls of a modern hospital, the evil that was done continues to thrive. They are in the hands of an entity that knows no boundaries and crosses dimensions – bending and twisting time itself – and where danger waits in every shadow. The battle is on for their bodies and souls and the line between reality and nightmare is hard to define.
Through it all, the words of Lydia Warren Carmody haunt them. But who was she? And why have Carol and Nessa been chosen?

The answer lies deep in the darkness…

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Simon and Schuster

Flame Tree Press

Rolling Hills Asylum

Weird NJ

 Images: Pixabay

Flame Tree Studio

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The Floating Sister and Other Apparitions...

 

My latest novel – In Darkness, Shadows Breathe – is largely set in a fairly modern hospital, but one which has been built using material from – and erected on the foundations of – a much earlier structure. It had been a workhouse, hospital and asylum and one in which patients were treated most cruelly.

Of course, two hundred years ago, even methods employed with the best of intentions, designed to cure people of a range of ills would nowadays cause us to shriek and flee in terror. Any doctor employing such (to us) barbaric methods would be permanently struck off, his/her license to practice medicine permanently removed.

Even with our modern science, hospitals can be traumatic places witnessing every human activity from birth through to death and everything in between - surgeries, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, pain, suffering and, finally, the slipping away of life itself. Add to this, the sheer design of the buildings themselves – especially the older ones – and you have the perfect breeding ground for spirits of all kinds, from ghosts of small babies, through to spectres of people who have met violent, sudden or traumatic deaths.

Then there is another category altogether. That which you could only find in a hospital – the caring ghost who nurtured while alive and now cannot stop simply because they have passed over. Glasgow Royal Infirmary – originally built in 1794 – has all the ingredients for a supernatural hotbed. It doesn’t disappoint.

There are many stories. Some of the most commonly cited are:

The Floating Sister

Should you encounter this lady, you will probably initially think she is just a member of staff on her way from one ward to another. Look down and you will see that there is nothing below the level of her knees. She appears to be floating along the corridor. A nurse working at the Infirmary in the late 20th century, greeted her as she walked past, before seeing the strange lack of lower limbs. Through the years, the hospital has undergone many renovations and it is quite possible that at some stage the floor levels were changed. This ghost is walking on an older floor.

Archie The Whisperer

This ghost manifests in Ward 27 and patients in their last days have reported seeing the same person, who whispered to them. They have said his name is Archie and his aim appears to be to ease their passing.

 He has also manifested on occasions and has been reported as being elderly and wearing a hair bun.

The Grey Lady

There had to be one, didn’t there? This lady has been chased by staff as she walked down corridors, apparently oblivious to their presence. She has then vanished through walls.

Dead Man Walking

One of the more recent additions to the infirmary's catalogue, this one was first reported early this century. On the way to treat a patient who had suffered a heart attack, a doctor was approached by a patient who asked him for directions out of the hospital. The doctor obliged and hurried to help the person he had been summoned to care for. Sadly, he arrived too late. The heart attack victim has already died.

But the doctor got the shock of his life when he looked down at the deceased patient's face and recognized him. It was the same man who had asked him for directions.

At least Glasgow Royal Infirmary's ghosts are benign. The same cannot be said for those who haunt the Royal and Waverly Hospital...

You’re next…

Carol and Nessa are strangers but not for much longer.

In a luxury apartment and in the walls of a modern hospital, the evil that was done continues to thrive. They are in the hands of an entity that knows no boundaries and crosses dimensions – bending and twisting time itself – and where danger waits in every shadow. The battle is on for their bodies and souls and the line between reality and nightmare is hard to define.

Through it all, the words of Lydia Warren Carmody haunt them. But who was she? And why have Carol and Nessa been chosen?

The answer lies deep in the darkness…

 Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Flame Tree Press

Simon and Schuster

Images:

Shutterstock

Pixabay