Tens Years Ago Haunted Richmond Was Released!

My first nonfiction ghost book, Haunted Richmond, Virginia, was published by Schiffer Publishing June 20th, in 2007. Ten years!   

Paranormal Petersburg and Stories in Top Ten of Preditors and Editors Readers Poll 2015!

Final tallies of winners for the Preditors and Editors Readers Poll 2015 are up, and my nonfiction ghost book and two short stories made the top ten of their categories! 

Paranormal Petersburg, Virginia, and the Tri-Cities Area made #3 in the Nonfiction books category.  

My short horror story, "Silence," that appeared in the Nightmares and Echoes II: The Return anthology made #10 in Short Horror Story category.  Nightmares and Echoes II: The Return itself made #10 in Top Ten for Anthologies category.

The erotic horror short story, "Pick Up Date," I wrote under the pseudonym, Sapphire Phelan, and that appeared in the anthology, Shivers and Lace,  made #6 in All Other Stories category. 

My Ghost Book and Short Story Nominated at Preditors and Editors 2015 Readers Poll

Preditors and Editors Readers Poll 2015 is now up through January 14th. 

Paranormal Petersburg, Virginia, and the Tri-Cities Area was nominated at Preditors and Editors Readers Poll 2015. If you read it or even to help, vote for it at http://critters.org/predpoll/nonfictionbook.shtml

An anthology I have a story included, Nightmares & Echoes 2: The Return was nominated. http://critters.org/predpoll/antho.shtml

My story in the anthology, "Silence" was also nominated at http://critters.org/predpoll/shortstoryh.shtml

If you read any of them, please vote for them. Thank you.

Two of My Nonfiction Ghost Articles Nominated for Preditors and Editors Readers Poll

Vote for either or both of my two nonfiction articles that had been on  Colonial Ghosts blog this past year, "Stay Where the Ghosts Stay When Visiting Williamsburg and the Historic Triangle Area"  and "No Picnicking in the Haunted Cemetery Allowed!"  Voting through January 14th. http://critters.org/predpoll/nonfiction.shtml

New Book Release: A Ghost on Every Corner

I am pleased to inform you that a nonfiction  book I am included in, A Ghost on Every Corner, by Dawn Colclasure, is now published. It was just released by Gypsy Shadow Publishing. It is about stories from paranormal investigators who done investigations. The book is currently out as an eBook, but it will come out in print later this month.
You can find it here: http://www.gypsyshadow.com/DawnColclasure.html#GhostCorner

Also on Kindle  and Nook . I am sure the print will be available in a couple of weeks at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

 Book's Blurb:
There’s a ghost town then there’s a “ghost” town! A Ghost on Every Corner is a collection of stories from paranormal investigators who have done investigations in some of America’s most haunted cities. Read about the ghost haunting a restaurant in Galena, Illinois, or about a Gettysburg Battlefield ghost who follows an investigator home! There’s also Marilyn Monroe’s ghost haunting the famous Roosevelt Hotel, a ghost violently attacking an investigator at the Sallie House and the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe’s adoptive father angrily pushing an investigator down the stairs! You’ll also get to read historical (as well as ghostly!) information about places such as The Alamo, Myrtles Plantation and the famous BirdCage Theater. Walk with investigators located across the country as they gather evidence about ghosts and go where no other would dare to tread!

Supernatural Friday: Tribute to L. B. Taylor

A few days ago, I received the news that author L.B. Taylor Jr. passed away on Sunday, February 23, 2014.  This man is one of two ghost book authors that inspired me when I wrote my own nonfiction ghost books.  

L.B. released at least a dozen volumes of his most popular title, "The Ghosts of Virginia,” besides many like “Ghosts of Richmond,” etc… Taylor's interest in ghost stories goes back three decades. According to a short biography in Volume XII of "The Ghosts of Virginia," Taylor was researching for the 1983 book "Haunted Houses" and became intrigued by stories of the paranormal. He began to get more stories, filling the pages of 20 books about Virginia ghosts. His most recent book of ghost stories released in 2013, focused on tales from Roanoke; “Haunted Roanoke.”

I got to see him one last time back in October 2013 when both he and I were authors signing at the Williamsburg Book Festival. He brought over my latest nonfiction ghost book,  “HauntedRichmond II” and I took out my copy of his book, “Monstersof Virginia:Mysterious Creatures in the Old Dominion.”  We signed our books for each other.

His books helped me to find the places I would research for my own books. This is one reason I tell ghost hunters to check out the ghost books—to find haunted spots to investigate. Writers are the modern day shamans. Instead of around a campfire or a roaring fire in a hearth, they put the tales to pen so readers can check the books out of libraries or buy in bookstores, then read them by the light of lamp at night. Thanks to authors like Taylor, the stories won’t disappear into obscurity, but remain with us years down the line.  Isn’t that the point of writing them? That our descendents will learn the legends and stories, too?

So for Supernatural Friday, I felt he deserved to be blogged about. Check out his published works. Reading their books is the best tribute anyone can give any author.

To find L.B. Taylor’s books, so you can order them from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or even from your independent bookstore (new and used), here is the link for them on LibraryThing (includes his non-ghost books): http://www.librarything.com/author/taylorlbjr.

Bottled Spirits and Tribute to Professor Cline's Haunted Monster Museum-Natural Bridge, Virginia Winners in Preditors and Editors Poll

Found out that my nonfiction article, Tribute to Professor Cline's Haunted Monster Museum-Natural Bridge, Virginia, that was posted on Haunt Jaunts Blog  took second place in the P&E Readers Poll! Thanks to all who voted. http://critters.org/predpoll/final_tally_nonfiction.ht

And my short horror story, Bottled Spirits,  took eight place in the Horror Short Story division of P&E Readers Poll. http://critters.org/predpoll/final_tally_shortstoryh.ht

A Nonfiction Article Mine Up on Preditors and Editors Poll

Vote for my nonfiction article, Tribute to Professor Cline's Haunted Monster Museum-Natural Bridge, Virginia (yes, I saw my name, Pamela was put down as Pamels-oh well). http://critters.org/predpoll/nonfiction.shtml

To read the original article: http://www.hauntjaunts.net/2012/04/19/tribute-to-professor-clines-haunted-monster-museum-natural-bridge-virginia/

Haunted Richmond II is a Goodreads Giveaway

My fourth nonfiction ghost book releases August 2012. I am doing a Goodreads.com giveaway of one signed copy to those in the USA until September 5, 2012. So if on Goodreads, go enter to win it! http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/27049-haunted-richmond-ii

Review of In the Footsteps of Dracula by Steven P. Unger

Published by World Audoence , Inc., 2010. ISBN: 978-1935444534

In the Footsteps of Dracula (A Personal Journey and Travel Guide) by Steven P. Unger is a nonfiction book for the armchair traveler besides for those who do really travel and can use this to trace their own path of places mentioned in the novel by Bram Stoker.

As one who has never been to England or Romania (except maybe in my writer's imagination), there are not only photos, but descriptions of places that intrigued me to one day take my own journey. Like a brush with the fangs of a vampire, Unger reveals how he gets to many of the places and what is the best or worse of each place or the travel mode to get there. Not so much England, but from one end to another of Romania where not only did Bram Stoker got his inspiration for his vampire count, but where the real life Dracula, Vlad Tepes the Impaler had existed. The reader will get a sense of another world still there, even while the modern world of te Internet and more is the cloak that hides this country where maybe legends can still survive.

I enjoyed this book of Unger's travel and discoveries, unable to quit reading it. He has done a super job of facts, photographs, and stories I never heard of. Most of all, Unger brings to life a vampire and the real life prince behind this being that ensorcelled people long before the  vampires of Twilight glittered to life.  So, whether traveling for real or from the comfort of your armchair, this book will bite you from the first page on.

The book is available online at http://worldaudience.powweb.com/pubs_bks/Dracula.html.

SUPERNATURAL FRIDAY: THE WRITING OF IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF DRACULA: A PERSONAL JOURNEY AND TRAVEL GUIDE

Author Steven P. Unger is my guest today for Supernatural Friday and he is blogging about writing his new release, IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF DRACULA: A PERSONAL JOURNEY AND TRAVEL GUIDE.

My obsession to travel to every site related to either the fictional Count Dracula or his real historical counterpart, Prince Vlad Dracula the Impaler, grew out of a visit to Whitby, England, where part of the novel Dracula takes place. I stood on the cemetery hill where, in Bram Stoker's Dracula, Lucy Westenra and Mina Murray spent hour after hour sitting on their "favourite seat" (a bench placed over a suicide's grave near the edge of the cliff), gazing out toward the "headland called Kettleness" and the open North Sea beyond—while Count Dracula slept just beneath them.


In my mind's eye, I could see the un-dead Count Dracula rising at night from the flattened slab of the suicide's gravestone to greedily drink the blood of the living.


The graveyard where Count Dracula spent his days sleeping in the sepulcher of a suicide looks the part that it plays, with its weathered limestone tombstones blackened by centuries of the everpresent North Sea winds. That graveyard made the novel more visible, more visceral, to me, and I wondered if the sites in Transylvania and in the remote mountains of southern Romania would evoke the same feelings. As I was to discover—they did.

Old Parish Church Cemetery—Whitby, England

At that moment I decided to visit and photograph every site in England and Romania that is closely related to either Bram Stoker's fictional Count Dracula or his historical counterpart, Prince Vlad Dracula the Impaler—to literally walk in their footsteps and to write a book about my experiences.

Goth Girls Adorning Whitby's Bram Stoker Memorial Seat

Eventually I traveled along the Dracula Trail alone, using only public transportation, to some places that I'd seen before and to others I had only dreamed of, trying my best to systematically strip away the layers of myth about Count Dracula and Prince Vlad the Impaler to find the reality within. I discovered in broken stones and parchments signed in blood why Prince Vlad's monstrous deeds in life would brand him forever with the name of Vlad Ţepeş (pronounced Tzeh•pish), Romanian for Vlad the Impaler, soon after his death.

In my research and travels I discovered two fascinating coincidences that link the historical and the literary Draculas. First and foremost is that Bram Stoker chose to name his villain "Dracula," based on the translation of the Romanian word "dracul" into "devil," never knowing that the historical Voivode (Prince) Dracula he had read about was also Vlad Ţepeş, with a horrific and compelling biography of his own.

Vlad the Impaler Surrounded by his Victims

Bram Stoker's Transylvania was the pipe dream of an armchair traveler with a genius for writing: real enough for the 19th Century reader, but bearing little resemblance to any Romania that ever existed. For example, Stoker wrote of "hay-ricks [haystacks] in the trees" based on illustrations of Transylvanian haystacks built around stakes, with the ends of the stakes poking out like branches. Thus, generations of Dracula readers assumed that Transylvanians put their haystacks up in trees.

Haystacks on Transylvania's Borgo Pass

The second coincidence is the uncanny resemblance of the real Castle of Dracula—Vlad Ţepeş' fortress at Poenari, which Stoker had no knowledge of—to Count Dracula's fictional castle in Transylvania. Perched on a remote peak near a glacial moraine in the Făgarăş Mountains of southern Romania and mirroring Count Dracula's fictional castle at the top of the Borgo Pass almost stone for stone, Poenari remains pristine and almost inaccessible.

The Fortress Ruins at Poenari

One of my favorite places on the Dracula Trail is Sighişoara, in Transylvania, the birthplace of Vlad Ţepeş. I was enchanted the moment I entered Sighişoara's Upper Town.

All at once I was in the middle of a perfect storybook medieval village enclosed by thick fortress walls, with cobblestone streets and Easter-egg-colored houses leaning every which way. Guarding the town square was a spire-roofed and turreted 14th Century clock tower replete with carved wooden figures that circle a track to mark the passage of time. In one window, a drummer plays to signal the hours; below the drummer, the angel of the night replaces the angel of the day at the final stroke of midnight. In another window, gods and goddesses appear, changing for each day of the week.

Piaţa Cetăţii—Sighişoara

But let's get back to Poenari, the real Castle of Dracula. I had traveled to other remote, forbidding places before entering the almost lightless forest of Poenari. Near Albania's southern border, I hiked the Vikos Gorge, a dozen miles from the nearest stone-housed village. I baked beneath the unrelenting sun of the Timna Valley close to the Red Sea, where 120º in the shade is considered picnic weather. But never before or since have I felt the apprehension and isolation I did while climbing to Vlad Ţepeş' mountaintop fortress at Poenari. The forest was as quiet as a tomb; I can't recall hearing the song of even a single bird.

The ascent was exhausting. At last I arrived at the lone approach to the fortress, a wooden footbridge (see top left of photo). Of all the places I explored that are associated with Vlad Ţepeş, only at Poenari did I feel that he was somehow still keeping watch. Thousands of boyars and their families had been force-marched there from Tărgovişte to die rebuilding the castle for Prince Vlad; it was here that his treacherous brother Radu stormed the fortress with cannons, reducing the once courtly residence into broken turrets and formless rubble. And it was here that Prince Dracula's wife cast herself from the highest window of the eastern tower, choosing a swift death over the torture of the stake.

Walk along the top of the thick fortress walls of Poenari, look northward, and you can see part of the Transfăgarăşan Road, leading to a glacial moraine and one of the deepest lakes in the world. (According to local legend, a dragon sleeps at the bottom of the lake, and the villagers nearby will caution you not to throw stones in the water lest the dragon awake.) The view south from the fortress is straight down, to the Arges River far in the distance, and even farther, the road to Curtea de Arges.

Footbridge to Poenari Fortress

The Transfăgarăşan Road, as seen from Poenari

Parts of this article have previously appeared in Romar Traveler.


In the Footsteps of Dracula: A Personal Journey and Travel Guide, is published and distributed by World Audience Publishers


In the Footsteps of Dracula is also available at www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.barnesandnoble.com, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.de, and www.amazon.com/Kindle.