I AM the haunted house…
If you know me personally, or have read my previous blogs, you know that I have always been haunted.
Mostly in the best ways—by the spirits of my grandmothers, by my soul family, by my guides who stand watch in the quiet hours and walk unseen by my side. Their presence is a calming hush in the room, a hand on my shoulder, a whisper of old wisdom, the fleeting glimpse of a familiar face.
On a few occasions the haunting has been darker, chilling, maybe a little scary. The shadow man who tormented me for years—and tormented my son when he was only three. Or the fluorescent bulb that shattered against the door when I tried to escape.
And then sometimes—I feel like I myself am the haunting, rattling my inner walls with old grief—carrying rooms inside of me that no one else has the strength to witness.
I have this recurring dream that shifts and changes ever so slightly over the years as I shift and change. In this dream, there is always a beautifully decayed gothic house with endless hidden rooms, winding passages that no one knows about but me, and a myriad of ghosts tucked away in every corner.
I love these dreams. I crave them. They never scare me…though anyone else might wake up screaming.
Instead, I am filled with an possessive feeling—this is MY place.
There’s a deep sense of relief in being there, like coming back to a childhood home—though there’s always a slight edge to it.
I wander through these secret passages almost every night. Mostly alone, though sometimes there are others with me—friends or family members from the other side that come to visit. And when there is someone with me, I always warn them before entering, I tell them they can’t go into certain rooms, or open certain doors.
“A violent ghost haunts the top floor. Never go up there—ever. He is pure rage.”
Or a ghost they wouldn’t understand—one I don’t want them to frightened away.
I tell them: “He’s a strange one, always looping through tragic memories. If you see him, just stand very still and don’t make eye contact.”
Or the shy ghost in the basement that won’t show itself unless I’m alone or with someone I trust deeply.
“I’m here,” I call to it when I go down into the shadowy depths below the house. “You can come out,” I call out. I bring a candle, I open the door, and I offer my company. This one is so quiet that you wouldn’t even know of its existence, if not for the occasional shuffling footsteps in the shadows. But I still visit, forever trying to coax it from the dark spaces.
The violent ghost upstairs is my favorite though. He throws things, he cracks mirrors, howling and warding everyone away—except for me. He is absolutely terrifying to anyone else who sees him. They see only violent fury in his dark eyes, malevolent chaos… but I see something different. In those obsidian depths, I see the haunted, the broken, the sorrowful eyes. I see myself. I see the deep wounds that only I will ever truly know and understand. And when he sees me, he stops. He calms. He remembers who he really is, looking into the mirror of ourselves.
The house is also fiercely protective. Do not enter without the caretaker.
In one dream, I was outside of the house gardening when someone tried to sneak up behind me. Before they could reach me, I heard them scream. I turned, just in time to see them being attacked by vines that coiled around them, pulling them down into the earth. The house itself was protecting me. I wasn’t scared even for a moment as i witnessed this horrific scene, because I knew—I always know—that I am safe here.
“Sorry,” I tell them as they take their last breath and disappear beneath the moldering leaves.
These dreams are not nightmares. Oddly, they are beautiful to me. Like a private sanctuary—a place where only i know the way out of the labyrinth—the dangers, the hidden shadows that no one else could survive or even bear to look upon. The dark, the damaged, the grieving, the raging—but also the fragile, the beautiful, and the brilliantly sunlit spaces where I bask in a collected treasure trove of joys.
I’ve had these dreams for years, and more and more I’ve come to realize that this house—this gloriously haunted place—is ME. The rooms are all the parts of who I am.
The ghosts, the emotions that dwell in that space, the fractures of myself, wandering the corridors in silence or violence. Old griefs that hide in the darkest corners of the basement, where I go to visit and bring offerings— My anger and rage on the top floor where no one is permitted to enter, for their own safety and sanity—And then there are my ancestors and guides—my beautiful grandmothers waiting at the kitchen table or on the front porch to sit with me for a while. I love that more than words can say.
My house is fierce and loyal and dangerous in all the best ways. It is a beautiful inheritance—a space that holds all the most wonderful and horrific parts of myself. The guardian of all that I hold sacred and fearful. It keeps the unworthy out as it welcomes me again and again, it’s eternal caretaker.
Tucked away in the beautiful bones of this ancient structure there are legions of tales, yet untold. Stories, like vines that creep into every space. Fictions and truths tucked away like precious relics, immortalized outside of time and waiting for the stroke of my pen.
I am never afraid in this place, because I AM the haunted house
Behind the scenes - Beneath the Black Oak
Rush
I have lived most of my life in the South, surrounded by a very intriguing family history. I grew up listening to stories from my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncle—but my grandmother’s tales from her childhood have always been my favorite. Perhaps that is because she spoke them so often, up until the day she died. She shared many experiences with me that she lived through, as well as those that had been passed down from her own grandparents. Over the years, she would tell me these stories so many times that they became part of my own story and something that I tell my children now. Generational tales of horror, humor, romance, and most of all, the perseverance of the many who came before us.
The tragedy of my great-great-grandfather, the bit of family history that originally inspired Beneath the Black Oak, was one of her stories that has always stuck with me. The details of his life as an iron worker and farmer, and how he never owned a vehicle and walked everywhere that he went. He was an indigenous man who came to be the victim of a known racist—a murder that was publicized as an accident, though my family always knew the truth. His story has been told and retold over generations in our family, from 1935 to the present day—a story that has haunted my family for nearly a century.
The house in Beneath the Black Oak, where they lived, is still in our family and has been for well over a hundred years. In my story, there’s mention of an outhouse still on the property years later, and that is just one of the many truths tucked into this book. Around 1995, as a teenager, my family all gathered for a reunion in Alabama—cousins as far as the eye could see! After the gathering, some of us went to the family homestead to see my great-uncle Fred, who still lived there at the time. I was absolutely enchanted, walking in my ancestors’ footsteps: the property that surrounds the little ranch-style cottage, the old peanut fields, the remains of a wagon that had been left to fall apart right where it last sat, the old well, and yes, the outhouse. I asked why it was still there, along with a big metal wash tub on the back porch. My grandma told us that up until a few years before—around 1992—there had never been running water in the house. Uncle Fred still took baths on the back porch, used the deep well, and the outhouse. I was shocked.
Inside the house, we walked over the creaking wooden floorboards into a living room that had doubled as my great-great-grandma’s bedroom. There was also a small kitchen with a wood-burning stove, a newly added bathroom, and two small bedrooms. I could almost see the shadows of generations moving through the space, remembering my grandmother’s many stories that had taken place right within those walls.
One room in particular caught my imagination. We walked through the door, and the first thing I noticed was a high shelf that went all the way around the room, lined with various preserves in old mason jars. My grandma explained how they had used every bit of space in that house, and that preserves had been a very important part of keeping food safe, since they didn’t have a refrigerator back then. She also told us that these preserves had been there since her mother had died, the same year that I was born, 1978. No one would eat them—but apparently they couldn’t throw her hard work away either.
When we visited, no one mentioned anything about the place being haunted—and unlike my book, no bodies have been buried on that property—at least not to my knowledge. Though there have been jokes behind hands about the possibility.
There was something else buried in that place though: a deep vein of family history, scattered relics from our past, the spirits of our ancestors, and the story of my great-great-grandfather still echoing like a tune on the record player, captured in the very bones of the place.
I don’t know what ever happened to the man who killed him. The newspapers gave very little information on that subject. He probably went on about his life as if nothing had ever happened, while my great-great-grandfather took three days to die, leaving my great-great-grandmother to go on with her broken heart, raising their six children all alone.
My visit there was in 1995, but I didn’t start writing this story until 2022. I was always intrigued by the details I’d collected, but it was never enough— until my curiosity was sparked further by seeing it all printed in black and white years later.
A dear friend of mine who was studying genealogy asked if she could use me as a guinea pig in her research, to which I excitedly agreed. I gave her my great-great-grandparents’ names, asking if she could focus mostly on them, though I didn’t expect her to find much. She surprised me though. She found actual census reports, newspaper articles about the incident, as well as his obituary and an article about my great great grandmother suing the man responsible for $100k—though I don’t know what the outcome of that was.
From there, my imagination went wild, and a fictional version of the story began to take form.
This tale that I’ve written, Beneath the Black Oak, is a quilted patchwork of both truth and fabrication, facts and gossip. I’ve stitched this family tale together with others and with my own personal and supernatural experiences, embellishing with the shiny black gems of my own imagination. You’ll find so much of me and my family in this book: the mason-jar preserves, the peppermint sticks, the outhouse, the dog, and even the mysterious owl. These are things that really happened. I’d say it’s a fifty-fifty mix of fact and fiction—a quilt of many varied fabrics, worked together into its final pattern.
In the end, I think some part of me has always just needed to travel back there, to walk in their shoes, to sit with my ancestors a while and make sense of something that was so senseless. It feels good to hold space for them, to give their story a conclusion, answering unanswerable questions— even if only through the work of fiction.
Ghosts in the Margins
“Why do you always write that spooky stuff?” That’s what my grandma once asked me years ago—a beautiful Southern belle whose worldview was the complete opposite of spooky; focused on the importance of family, good cooking, and being kind to others… I miss her so much!
When she asked me that question, I simply smiled and said, “I just love the spooky stuff, Grandma.”
But the truth runs much deeper than that.
Ever since I was a child, I’ve had recurring encounters with the supernatural—real experiences that would chill you to the bone.
All my life, I’ve heard my name whispered from the shadows, or felt a feather-soft touch from the other side. The watchers and talkers, the wanderers and the anchored, the strangers and the familiar—all reaching for someone who will listen to them, share their message or heed their warnings.
My favorite encounter has always been the one that came with solid proof and witnesses….
The spirit of an old medicine man began visiting me regularly when I was young. I’d see him in the twilight shadows, or hear him in daylight, and then meet him in dreams. In one particular dream, he held out a ceremonial bowl and said it had belonged to me in another lifetime. I took it and examined the strange design: an almond-shaped eye, with a square iris and a circular pupil. It had two marks that crossed one side of the sclera vertically, and one that crossed the other side in the same way. I’d never seen anything like it. I became obsessed—I started recreating that eye in all of my artwork. It resonated so deeply in my soul, an echo from the other side.
My brother-in-law noticed. He saw this unusual design appearing repeatedly in my drawings, my paintings, my beadwork. Finally, he asked, “Why do you keep drawing that same weird eye over and over?” So, I told him about my dream. He laughed and called me weird. But I was used to that.
About a week later, he showed up unexpectedly on my porch. I opened the door, assuming he was there for his brother, but he wasn’t. He held out his hand and said: “I think this belongs to you.”
That morning, while beach-combing along the bayou, he had found something more incredible than any spearhead or fossil that he’d ever come across in his wanderings—It was a pottery shard, carved with the exact eye from my dream. Every odd detail. Every line. It was MY eye.
That was a pivotal moment for me. The girl with secret ghosts had finally been seen…by a living witness and by something more. The eye was sent as a reminder and it echoed with the label the medicine man had given me—Spirit Walker.
Ghosts aren’t just stories, or things that go bump in the night. Not for me. They are family. They are memory. They are grief and love—woven into porch rails and attic beams, tucked beneath floorboards, curled around the core of my soul. This is who I am and this is why I tell stories the way I do—to honor the ones who walk with us unseen and to understand them a little better. And sometimes… simply to make peace with the fragments of memories they’ve left me with.
The Pottery Eye:
Found on Choctawhatchee Bayou
in Choctaw Beach, Florida
P.S. I still keep this eye with me. It’s been over twenty years now, but that deep resonance has never gone away. It might just be a shard of clay to most people—but I know better.
Some truths are carved before we remember them— a living echo of what was and still is.
Welcome to My Grimoire
Some choose to call them blogs or journals —
but neither of those titles seem to fit the darkness that lives in my inkwell.
So, grimoire it is.
A place where whispers drift in like fog through the pines,
where shadows don’t just follow you…
they tell stories and weave spells that hold you captive.
If you’ve found your way here, you may already be familiar with my writing —
stories that feel like someone (or something) is listening with you.
If so, you’re in the right place
