A Glimpse of the Ghostly: E. Michael Lewis

The Black Beacon Book of Ghosts will send shivers up your spine this Halloween. The Kindle version is already available for pre-order at just $1.99 instead of $3.99 and you can add the anthology to your Goodreads "want to read" list today. The anthology will be officially released on the 11th of October 2024. To get you in the mood and give you a little insight into the workings of their minds, our contributing authors are sharing their own haunting experiences with you. Read on, if you're not fainthearted!

Alfred’s Café - E. Michael Lewis

When Cameron asked us to write a blog post about a haunted location, I immediately thought of Alfred’s Café, a place I’ve visited but that has flown under the radar of most haunted location websites and ghost tours in Tacoma, Washington—coincidentally, where my story, A Passage in Time, takes place.

The building that houses Alfred’s Café was built in 1888, two years before Washington was even a state. It probably started as a dormitory for railroad workers. Tacoma was (and still is) a railway town, being perhaps the only municipality in America to own its own railroad (Tacoma Rail). In 1907, the building was rolled on logs down the hill to it’s present location, to make room for an expanded freight depot. By 1918 it was known as the Brunswick Hotel. The space on the first floor has long held bars, restaurants, barbershops and the like. In 1959, Alfred G. Perella opened Alfred’s Restaurant, which over the years became known as Alfred’s cafe. While the downstairs has been renovated several times over the years, the upper floors have been relatively untouched. Several rooms upstairs are described as small and narrow, with, according to one owner, only room for a twin bed and a box of Kleenex. This plays into the suspicion that the building may have once housed a bordello.

Some people have seen, looking out from an upstairs window, a young girl in old fashioned clothes, gazing out over the parking lot next to the restaurant, her face a tableau of infinite sadness.

The story goes that the working girls who lived in the upper floors would send their little girls to school in a house next door, located where the parking lot is today. One day, a little girl was kept home because she was sick, and a fire broke out at the school. It burned down, killing everyone inside, while the little girl and all the working mothers watched helplessly from next door. How much truth there is to the story is unclear, since the event can’t be confirmed. However, across the lot is the Bullseye indoor gun range, which in recent memory was the home of Bullseye Gunshop, notorious for, among other reasons, as the origin of the rifle used by The DC sniper, John Allen Muhammad, and his accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo.

But it’s not just the shade of the little girl that haunts the place. Past owners and employees will tell you about coffee pots flying off the shelf, or people’s hair being pulled, or the figure of an old woman said to haunt a dark corner around closing time.

The current owner hopes to renovate the upper floors and turn the space into an AirBNB. The location, only a few blocks from the Tacoma Dome, would provide a great landing pad for anyone traveling to see a concert there.

Alfred’s café has seen much and survived much, including the pandemic, which created it’s own ghosts. I recommend the Eggs Benedict or the Monte Christo.

A Glimpse of the Ghostly: Lawrence Harding

The Black Beacon Book of Ghosts will send shivers up your spine this Halloween. The Kindle version is already available for pre-order at just $1.99 instead of $3.99 and you can add the anthology to your Goodreads "want to read" list today. The anthology will be officially released on the 11th of October 2024. To get you in the mood and give you a little insight into the workings of their minds, our contributing authors are sharing their own haunting experiences with you. Read on, if you're not fainthearted!

The Barrows of Whittlesford - Lawrence Harding

In-keeping with The Gospel of Abbot Wulfbald’s themes of leaving the past well enough alone, there was a similar case in Whittlesford, Cambridgeshire, in 1826. When certain barrows in the area were levelled by the local squire, human remains were unearthed. One foolhardy labourer by the name of Matthews took a skull as a souvenir.

That night, Matthews was woken by a hammering at his door. When he went to investigate, he saw a headless skeleton patrolling his garden, loudly demanding the return of its stolen head in a deep, hoarse voice. In a fit of common sense, Matthews grabbed the skull from his shelf and threw it down to its rightful owner. Who knows what would have happened if he had not?

Horror, Steampunk, and Mystery

A quick post to remind all the wonderful authors out there that the extended submissions window for The Third Black Beacon Book of Mystery closes next Monday, the 30th of September, and that the window for Steampunk Sleuths closes at the end of October. Get cracking... those cases! ;)

Also, because we love you so much, The Black Beacon Book of Horror will be free to download for Kindle on Friday and Saturday this week. Put an alert on your phone or a note on your calendar (or whatever you do) and take advantage of this giveaway, and remember to leave a rating and review once you've finished the anthology. :)

A Glimpse of the Ghostly: Karen Keeley

The Black Beacon Book of Ghosts will send shivers up your spine this Halloween. The Kindle version is already available for pre-order at just $1.99 instead of $3.99 and you can add the anthology to your Goodreads "want to read" list today. The anthology will be officially released on the 11th of October 2024. To get you in the mood and give you a little insight into the workings of their minds, our contributing authors are sharing their own haunting experiences with you. Read on, if you're not fainthearted!

Haunted place in Calgary

- Karen Keeley, July 2024

According to Calgary’s Most Haunted Places there are oodles of spots to go looking for ghosts and eerily creepy experiences. I’ve sat in the Stampede Grandstand, been to the Rose & Crown, the Fairmont Palliser Hotel and the Zoo Bridge. I’ve stood on the steps of the Knox United Church, had dinner at the Hose & Hound, and enjoyed a scrumptious meal at the Bow Valley Ranche. I’ve never personally experienced the unexplained but others have, according to the Calgary Guardian.

The Bow Valley Ranche is not far from where I live. The ranch itself dates back to the 1870s when it began as a cattle ranch. Subsequent owners came and went until the last, the Burns family, sold the lucrative business in the 1970s. The ranch and the land became part of Fish Creek Park, the second-largest urban park in Canada. The architecture of the main house is in the Queen Anne style with its gingerbread motif—steeply pitched gable roofs, towers and turrets, and large wrap-around front porch. The interior is brightly lit with its many chandeliers, crown moldings, charming tables and chairs. Meals are served on exquisite English bone China accompanied by authentic linen napkins and the best crystal. According to Wayne Meikle, a retired park planner, Charlie Yuen, a longtime cook at the ranch back in the day, was killed in a car accident in 1938. He wanted to be buried at the ranch. His wish didn’t come true. Instead, he was laid to rest in China but some people say his spirit still resides at the ranch. He’s the one responsible for the eerie happenings—dogs barking at something unseen, lights turning on and off despite the power having been disconnected, motion detectors setting off alarms, this happening when the building is empty.

I’ve had lunch at the ranch with its quaint Victorian appeal, a delightful outing with friends and family. Nothing eerie about any of it. The food, the drinks and the atmosphere were however, to die for.

Link to the article: https://calgaryguardian.com/calgarys-most-haunted-places/

A Glimpse of the Ghostly: Em Starr

The Black Beacon Book of Ghosts will send shivers up your spine this Halloween. The Kindle version is already available for pre-order at just $1.99 instead of $3.99 and you can add the anthology to your Goodreads "want to read" list today. The anthology will be officially released on the 11th of October 2024. To get you in the mood and give you a little insight into the workings of their minds, our contributing authors are sharing their own haunting experiences with you. Read on, if you're not fainthearted!

The House in Charlotte Street

I often wonder if writers are literary conduits for the other side, like an antenna that's tuned in to the whispers of those who came before. If the muse is found by lifting the veil, glimpsing life through another's eyes, piecing together the jigsaw puzzle of a semi-shared reality—that would make us the ultimate ghost writers, right?! 

It's a theory that I'm yet to dismiss for two main reasons. First, when the muse visits it feels absolutely other-worldly. Second, because I believe in ghosts. I've lived in various haunted houses throughout my life. My first home in Newport was riddled with paranormal activity – my mother still talks about our house in Charlotte Street, that was always cold and had a foul smell no matter how much incense she burned; how the manhole was always open no matter how many times my father closed it, how she woke to a presence so strong by my cradle, she was too scared to breathe. I wonder if those spirits followed us to the next house, where I vividly remember my imaginary friend, Schuey, telling me his mother Magda wouldn't let him play. Was it a coincidence they both had Old Teutonic names, which, as a four year old, I'd never heard before? I'm pretty sure I was experiencing something supernatural. Look into the eyes of this kid and tell me she's not hanging with a ghost or two! 

Since then, I've seen shadowed figures in empty halls, felt breath on my face cold as winter, and fingers on my shoulder as real as my own, but nothing feels more "cross-connected" than tapping into a solid writing sesh. Who knows—maybe my story, Red Dirt, is the afterlife account of a real housewife from rural Australia, who has been waiting for her story to be told.

A Glimpse of the Ghostly: Leanbh Pearson

The Black Beacon Book of Ghosts will send shivers up your spine this Halloween. The Kindle version is already available for pre-order at just $1.99 instead of $3.99 and you can add the anthology to your Goodreads "want to read" list today. The anthology will be officially released on the 11th of October 2024. To get you in the mood and give you a little insight into the workings of their minds, our contributing authors are sharing their own haunting experiences with you. Read on, if you're not fainthearted!

The True Haunting Behind The Spreading Rot

The Spreading Rot is a tale with a darker reality behind it. Firstly, I wish to acknowledge the suspected victims and those still unidentified and to the continued higher rates of violence committed against the LGBTQI+ and other marginalised communities to which I identify. It is to these hidden and unheard voices that I wish to be heard.

Between 1978 and 1983, a grisly series of murders committed by Dennis Nilsen, a Scottish serial killer who murdered between twelve and fifteen young men at two addresses, disposing of the bodies inside the floorboards, cupboards, drains and gardens in North London. The most disturbing factor for me about these murders was not just the dismemberment and disposal of the bodies, but the calm and almost casual manner Nilsen conducted his life and work around these murders and his subsequent confessions which were upfront, clearly without remorse in making "death his new flatmate" as he is reported to have written. 

The Spreading Rot is a haunted house story of a different kind, where the human monster is hidden in plain sight and where, among suburban life, what we see is but a mask for the darker side of humanity. Here, in the liminal place between what is thought to be true and what is true, there is a potential for that darkness, the fear of the unknown to be a haunting all if its own.

For reference to the crimes and still-oblique motivations of Dennis Nielsen there is the biography Killing for Company by Brian Masters. A later extensive retrospective account and self-analysis, the autobiography History of a Drowning Boy by Dennis Nilsen which was prohibited from publication during his lifetime.

Image Credit: https://www.penguin.com.au/books/killing-for-company-9781787466258

Leanbh Pearson (Any) lives on Ngunnawal Country in Canberra, Australia. An award-winning LGBTQI and disability author of horror and dark fantasy inspired by folklore, fairytales, myth, history and climate. Leanbh’s judged numerous awards, an invited panelist and avid book reviewer. Leanbh has been awarded ASA, AHWA and HWA mentorships and 2023 HWA Diversity Grant. Leanbh’s alter-ego is an academic in archaeology, evolution and prehistory. A museum devotee, insomniac and photography enthusiast, Leanbh is always aided by canine assistants.
https://linktr.ee/leanbhpearson

Twenty Thrilling Titles

When The Black Beacon Book of Ghosts is published in October, we'll have twenty titles available to the reading public. For an independent publishing project, that's quite a milestone, and one we hope you'll celebrate with us. How? Well, that's up to you, but here are a handful of simple ways to get excited and spread that excitement. 

1. Read our books. They're very affordable.

2. Leave a rating and review on Amazon and Goodreads.

3. Download and share the promotional image below.

4. Join us (and invite others to join us) on social media.

Thank you. Let the party begin!