Among the Headstones - Interview with Pamela Turner

I’ve interviewed fellow contributor to Among the Headstones: Creepy Tales from the Graveyard, Pamela Turner, as part of the preparations for the release of the anthology early next year. Full details about the haunting anthology are provided at the end of the interview.

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How do you feel about cemeteries? Do find them creepy?

When I was growing up in my hometown, I believed the local cemetery was haunted. No one had told me it was. I believed it because I read horror anthologies in elementary school, and it fed my imagination. I remember thinking how scary it must be for those living near the cemetery, especially after dark. Now cemeteries are some of my favorite places to visit. I like learning about the different symbols, looking at the statues, and even discovering a unique headstone.

How would you like to be buried?

Since my husband was a veteran, I will probably be buried with him in the veterans’ cemetery. On Veterans Day this year, I met a veteran who told me that when a spouse dies and is buried with the veteran, his or her information is engraved on the other side of the veteran’s headstone. Next time I go to the cemetery, I’m going to look for this.

What scared you when you were a child?

Dolls. Believing my dolls would steal my soul, I made them face the wall before I went to bed. And one was a Raggedy Ann doll. At the time, I didn’t know about the infamous Annabelle, which was probably a good thing. I’ve since read Algernon Blackwood’s short story and watched the Night Gallery episode.

What’s your favourite horror book? What do you like about it?

The Shining by Stephen King is my favorite horror novel. A family is trapped in a hotel during the winter with the father/caretaker slowly going mad and threatening his wife and son. But his wife fights back to save her family.

Who is your favourite Gothic author? Why?

Shirley Jackson is my favorite Gothic author. Her novel The Haunting of Hill House is, along with The Shining, one of the creepiest stories I’ve read. It impresses me how she made the house itself a character and a sinister one. Also, I’ll never forget the ending. What I’m curious about is what happened in Hill House to cause the haunting, although I don’t think that’s ever explained.

For readers who are new to your fiction, which of your books would be a good start?

My novella The Ripper’s Daughter, which takes place ten years after the Ripper’s murder spree. Prostitutes are showing up dead in Louisville, Kentucky, and a former detective inspector turned vampire/tavern owner fears Jack is responsible.

ABOUT PAMELA TURNER

Pamela Turner’s love for the paranormal began in elementary school, where she discovered anthologies filled with ghosts, witches, vampires, and other creatures that go bump in the night. Then there was Rod Serling’s Night Gallery and that creepy doll. Fearing her Raggedy Ann doll would steal her soul, Pamela made the doll face the wall before she went to bed.

Despite this, her interest in the supernatural continued. In middle school, she penned her own tales of terror. Fellow students enjoyed them, and she dreamed of becoming a published author.

After a short stint as a freelance magazine writer, she decided to return to writing fiction. She's also an award-winning screenplay writer.

Currently, she writes paranormal suspense featuring vampires, dragons, angels, and demons. Just don’t expect her angels to always be good or her demons to always be evil.

Many of her stories are set in Louisville, Kentucky where she lives with her daughter and herds three rescue cats. When not writing, she enjoys anime and manga, weaving, aviation, cemeteries, and abandoned buildings.

You can find her at https://pamturner.net

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PamelaTurnerAuthor

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pamturner97/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/pamelaturner

ABOUT THE BOOK

AMONG THE HEADSTONES: CREEPY TALES FROM THE GRAVEYARD

This anthology, edited by Rayne Hall, presents twenty-seven of the finest - and creepiest - graveyard tales with stories by established writers, classic authors and fresh voices.

Here you will find Gothic ghost stories by Robert Ellis, Lee Murray, Greg Chapman, Morgan Pryce, Rayne Hall, Guy de Maupassant, Myk Pilgrim, Zachary Ashford, Amelia Edwards, Nina Wibowo, Krystal Garrett, Tylluan Penry, Ambrose Bierce, Cinderella Lo, Nikki Tait, Arthur Conan Doyle, Priscilla Bettis, Kyla Ward, Edgar Allan Poe, Paul D Dail, Cameron Trost, Pamela Turner, William Meikle and Lord Dunsany who thrill with their eerie, macabre and sometimes quirky visions.

You'll visit graveyards in Britain, Indonesia, Russia, China, Italy, Bulgaria, Thailand, USA, Australia, South Africa and Japan, and you can marvel at the burial customs of other cultures.

Now let’s open the gate - can you hear it creak on its hinges? - and enter the realm of the dead. Listen to the wind rustling the yew, the grating of footsteps on gravel, the hoo-hoo-hoo of the collared dove. Run your fingers across the tombstones to feel their lichen-rough sandstone or smooth cool marble. Inhale the scents of decaying lilies and freshly dug earth.

But be careful. Someone may be watching your every movement... They may be right behind you.

Purchase Link: mybook.to/Headstones

The ebook is available for pre-order from Amazon at the special offer price of 99 cents until 31 January 2022. (After that date, the price will go up.) The paperback is already published.

Guest Post: Footsteps on the Stairs

Creepy Memories of my Haunted Childhood Home

By Tylluan Penry

The house where I grew up was haunted. It also was dark, cold, and some rum things must have happened there, judging by the number of airgun pellets embedded in the doors and the great knife stuffed up one of the bedroom chimneys. My mother, whose perception was dodgy at the best of times, declared it a wonderful house, full of laughter, and said that her own father had moved into it and out again on the same day. That should have warned her, but apparently it didn’t.

Still, by the time she died (my mother almost made it to a hundred, which surprised me, as I thought she was going to live to be three hundred and six just to annoy everyone) a lot more horrible things had happened there. If it was haunted back in the 1950’s, I dread to think what it must be like now. I wouldn’t go into that house now, not for a king’s ransom.

Haunting wise, as a child, I hated going to the toilet in the middle of the night because of the footsteps. These always began halfway down the attic stairs, continuing along the landing then halfway down the next set of stairs towards the downstairs hall. There they stopped.

‘You probably heard the people next door,’ said my mother, when I told her.

Not unless they had a pogo stick, Mum.

‘You’re just looking for attention,’ she said, when I screamed because I’d seen a ghost in the doorway of my brother’s bedroom one day. I was only about eight.

She didn’t admit, until years later, that the same ghost regularly appeared to one of my brothers in exactly the same place and dressed in the same clothes. (That was the room where the knife was found in the chimney.)

When it all got too much, even for her, she claimed we had somehow ‘driven’ the laughter out of the house.

It was never there, Mum. Trust me. Not a chuckle, not a giggle, just remorseless darkness.

However, it was my father who finally made me realise I wasn’t going mad. One day he cautiously asked me if I’d ever heard footsteps on the landing.

When I said I had, he looked relieved, telling me, ‘So have I. Last night. They started halfway down the attic stairs, came along the landing…’

I waited for him to say they’d gone halfway down the stairs into the hall but he didn’t. ‘And then, next thing I knew, they put the bloody light out in the toilet!’

Mum told my Dad it must have been the people next door but he wasn’t impressed.

‘Then they must have had bloody long arms to reach through the letter box and up the stairs to the toilet.’

‘Why doesn’t she listen, dad?’ I asked.

He shrugged, looking mystified. ‘Well… you know your mother.’

He was right. We did.

And some of us fervently wished we didn’t.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tylluan Penry is a pagan solitary witch who has devoted much of her life to teaching about the Craft. She was born and brought up in a family of witches (on her mother’s side) although all they ever did was hex. It was a horror story in its own right! When she managed to leave this tradition (and her family, though it wasn’t easy) she moved on to develop her own solitary path which she called ‘Seeking the Green.’ Over the years she has developed this further and written about many topics including Ice Age spirituality, the Anglo-Saxons, knot magic and magic on the breath.

She is married, has a large family, including grandchildren, dogs, and lives in a rather ramshackle home with an overgrown garden, together with ghosts, spirits and the Gentle Folk. There is a huge cemetery opposite her home which ought to be scary but is actually very serene and peaceful. She has always loved writing, and wrote her first (very) short story when she was six, soon progressing to full length stories. She has now written almost thirty books, both fiction and non-fiction. Most of them can be found at The Wolfenhowle Press.

Some of her fiction is on Kindle under the name T P Penry. Her chapter in the anthology, Among the Headstones is based firmly in Wales, with a smattering of golf balls, gravestones and the Highway Code. She has always believed that creepy stories need a good pinch of humour in order to work well (at least, in her experience.)

Tylluan also has a YouTube Channel, with over two hundred videos about solitary witchcraft.

ABOUT THE BOOK

This book, edited by Rayne Hall, presents twenty-seven of the finest - and creepiest - graveyard tales with stories by established writers, classic authors and fresh voices.

Here you'll find Gothic ghost stories by Robert Ellis, Lee Murray, Greg Chapman, Morgan Pryce, Rayne Hall, Guy de Maupassant, Myk Pilgrim, Zachary Ashford, Amelia Edwards, Nina Wibowo, Krystal Garrett, Tylluan Penry, Ambrose Bierce, Cinderella Lo, Nikki Tait, Arthur Conan Doyle, Priscilla Bettis, Kyla Ward, Edgar Allan Poe, Paul D Dail, Cameron Trost, Pamela Turner, William Meikle and Lord Dunsany who thrill with their eerie, macabre and sometimes quirky visions.

You'll visit graveyards in Britain, Indonesia, Russia, China, Italy, Bulgaria, Thailand, USA, Australia, South Africa and Japan, and you can marvel at the burial customs of other cultures.

Now let's open the gate - can you hear it creak on its hinges? - and enter the realm of the dead. Listen to the wind rustling the yew, the grating of footsteps on gravel, the hoo-hoo-hoo of the collared dove. Run your fingers across the tombstones to feel their lichen-rough sandstone or smooth cool marble. Inhale the scents of decaying lilies and freshly dug earth.

But be careful. Someone may be watching your every movement... They may be right behind you. Purchase Link: mybook.to/Headstones

The ebook is available for pre-order from Amazon at the special offer price of 99 cents until 31 January 2022. (After that date, the price will go up.) A paperback is about to be published.

Among the Headstones - Interview with Kyla Lee Ward

I’ve interviewed fellow contributor to Among the Headstones: Creepy Tales from the Graveyard, Kyla Lee Ward, as part of the preparations for the release of the anthology early next year. Full details about the haunting anthology are provided at the end of the interview.

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What are cemeteries like in the country where you live?

The main things that differentiate Australian cemeteries from those in Britain or other British colonies are the dangers of heatstroke and snakes. And spiders - really large spiders that live in holes. The cemetery of Rookwood covers 314 hectares and large tracts have gone quite wild. I know whereof I speak.

What gives you the creeps?

Let’s see – if it’s not graveyards, snakes, spiders, or nightfall, then it must be people. Not all people, but certainly some. What people can do to each other and the scars it leaves, sometimes in the very walls.

What do you like about the Gothic Fiction genre?

To me, the Gothic is about coming home. That’s one of its key tropes – the young outsider who enters the crumbling mansion, discovering its secrets and those of their own heritage. Think of Anne Rice’s The Witching Hour and Tanith Lee’s Dark Dance. Finding a place where you belong, even if it is stained with murder and full of ghosts and bats. Especially if it’s full of ghosts and bats, and people behaving very, very badly. That’s history - the present is just a tiny, shiny ticket booth at the entrance to that old pile. You can’t understand who you are until you enter.

What’s the scariest story you’ve written?

Oh goodness, how do I answer this? The two Stoker nominees, “And In Her Eyes The City Drowned” and “Should Fire Remember the Fuel?” must be considered officially good as well as officially scary. The former has been translated into Japanese, which may give it an edge – but that story of mine which has been most reprinted is a very short and wry piece titled “The Loquacious Cadaver”. It is also included in The Macabre Modern and Other Morbidities.

How do you go about research for the fiction you write?

I read a great deal of history, myth and legend, custom and tradition. Past endeavours have found me in the Special Collection of the Mitchell Library, teasing out a description of Memphis written by a Persian adventurer in the 12th century, from a book printed in the 19th century, in my extremely shaky French – now that I think about it, there had to be an easier way. But when you’re dealing with a place that still exists, there is no substitute for having visited it yourself. I have been privileged to travel and find that some places present me with stories on platters, while the memory of others may lurk for years in the back of my mind before the right tale presents itself.

Another fine method of research is visiting museums (always take a sketchbook and make notes about every photo you take) and engaging in historical re-enactments. I am a part of the medieval re-enactment movement in Australia, and I assure you, it is much easier to describe the sensation of moving in armour once you have done so.

What are you currently working on?

I am currently working on a dark fantasy novel and pulling together the material for my first full story collection. I have written substantial new work for this, including a novella concerning necromancy and the French revolution that makes extensive use of the Paris catacombs.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kyla Lee Ward is a Sydney-based creative who works in many modes, that have garnered her Australian Shadows and Aurealis awards. She has placed in the Rhyslings and received Stoker and Ditmar nominations.Reviewers have accused her of being “gothic and esoteric”, “weird and exhilarating” and of “giving me a nightmare.” Her latest release is The Macabre Modern and Other Morbidities, her second collection of dark and fantastic poetry after 2011's The Land of Bad Dreams. Her novel Prismatic (co-authored with her partner as "Edwina Grey") won an Aurealis Award for Best Horror. 

Her short fiction has appeared in the likes of Weirdbook, Shadowed Realms, Gothic.net and in the anthologies Oz Is Burning and Gods, Memes and Monsters: a 21st century Bestiary. Her work on RPGs including Demon: the Fallen saw her appear as a guest at the inaugural Gencon Australia. An artist and actor as well as an author, her short film, 'Bad Reception', screened at the Third International Vampire Film Festival and she is a member of both the Deadhouse immersive theatre company and the Theatre of Blood, which have also produced her work. In addition, she programmed the horror stream for the 2010 Worldcon. A practicing occultist, she likes raptors, swordplay and the Hellfire Club. To see some very strange things, try http://www.kylaward.com

ABOUT THE BOOK

Among the Headstones: Creepy Tales from the Graveyard edited by Rayne Hall, presents twenty-seven of the finest - and creepiest - graveyard tales with stories by established writers, classic authors and fresh voices.

Here you'll find Gothic ghost stories by Robert Ellis, Lee Murray, Greg Chapman, Morgan Pryce, Rayne Hall, Guy de Maupassant, Myk Pilgrim, Zachary Ashford, Amelia Edwards, Nina Wibowo, Krystal Garrett, Tylluan Penry, Ambrose Bierce, Cinderella Lo, Nikki Tait, Arthur Conan Doyle, Priscilla Bettis, Kyla Ward, Edgar Allan Poe, Paul D Dail, Cameron Trost, Pamela Turner, William Meikle and Lord Dunsany who thrill with their eerie, macabre and sometimes quirky visions.

You'll visit graveyards in Britain, Indonesia, Russia, China, Italy, Bulgaria, Thailand, USA, Australia, South Africa and Japan, and you can marvel at the burial customs of other cultures.

Now let's open the gate - can you hear it creak on its hinges? - and enter the realm of the dead. Listen to the wind rustling the yew, the grating of footsteps on gravel, the hoo-hoo-hoo of the collared dove. Run your fingers across the tombstones to feel their lichen-rough sandstone or smooth cool marble. Inhale the scents of decaying lilies and freshly dug earth.

But be careful. Someone may be watching your every movement... They may be right behind you.

Purchase Link: mybook.to/Headstones 

The ebook is available for pre-order from Amazon at the special offer price of 99 cents until 31 January 2022. (After that date, the price will go up.) A paperback will follow.

Among the Headstones - Interview with Priscilla Bettis

Among the Headstones: Creepy Tales from the Graveyard will be released early next year, and it’s my pleasure to share this interview with fellow contributor, Priscilla Bettis. Full details about the haunting anthology are provided at the end of the interview.

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Hi Priscilla and thanks for agreeing to answer a few questions about your story and inpiration. How do you feel about cemeteries? Do find them creepy?

There’s a cemetery at the end of our road. It gets full sun and has a beautiful view of the Blue Ridge Mountains (I live in Virginia), so no, not creepy at all. On the other hand, if there was a dilapidated, Gothic-style house with a family graveyard in the back overrun with dead thorn bushes, then yes, that’d be very creepy!

Has a real-life cemetery, grave or headstone ever ended up in your stories?

One time, to feed my creativity, I explored a cemetery blindfolded. All my other senses were on high alert. I was able to pepper different stories and poems with my observations, how freshly turned soil smells, how a granite tombstone is devoid of warmth . . .

Have you ever seen a ghost? Tell us about the experience.

Does hearing a ghost count? I was home alone, snuggled up on the sofa and lost in a book. The door at the end of the hallway creaked open. We have a cat who nudges doors open, so I wasn’t frightened. Sure enough, the tick-tick of tiny claws on the wood floor grew closer. Then the sofa cushion next to me pulled away from my thigh as if the cushion had been depressed. I patted my lap, inviting the cat to sit. Then I remembered: our cat had died three days prior. I finally looked up from my book. No one was there.

What do you personally, as a reader, like about anthologies?

Anthologies are great, especially if they’re full of ghosts.:-) When I read an anthology, I always find a wonderful, new-to-me author.

As a writer, what are your literary influences?

Andy Davidson because of his poetic Southern Gothic prose. When I grow up, I want to be Andy Davidson. And Jo Kaplan for her atmospheric, contemporary Gothic settings. When I grow up, I want to be Jo Kaplan, too!

What are you currently working on?

I am working on the final touches of a Southern Gothic novelette, The Hay Bale. It will be released on the 10th of January, 2022. (I gave myself chills writing that creepy story!) I am also editing my literary horror novella, Dog Meat, which will be published by the fantastic folks at Potter’s Grove Press in 2022.

Thanks for your time, Priscilla. I'm looking forward to reading your tale.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Priscilla Bettis read her first horror story, The Exorcist, when she was a little kid. Priscilla snuck the grownup book from her parents’ den, and The Exorcist scared her silly. From that moment on, she was hooked on horror and all things deliciously off kilter. As an adult, Priscilla turned to engineering physics, a wonderful profession, but what she really wants to do is write . . . or die trying, probably at the hands of a vampiric wraith. Priscilla shares a home in the Blue Ridge foothills of Virginia (USA) with her two-legged and four-legged family members. 

Website: priscillabettisauthor.com

Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/Priscilla-Bettis/e/B08R97Z63M

ABOUT THE BOOK

Among the Headstones: Creepy Tales from the Graveyard edited by Rayne Hall, presents twenty-seven of the finest - and creepiest - graveyard tales with stories by established writers, classic authors and fresh voices.

Here you'll find Gothic ghost stories by Robert Ellis, Lee Murray, Greg Chapman, Morgan Pryce, Rayne Hall, Guy de Maupassant, Myk Pilgrim, Zachary Ashford, Amelia Edwards, Nina Wibowo, Krystal Garrett, Tylluan Penry, Ambrose Bierce, Cinderella Lo, Nikki Tait, Arthur Conan Doyle, Priscilla Bettis, Kyla Ward, Edgar Allan Poe, Paul D Dail, Cameron Trost, Pamela Turner, William Meikle and Lord Dunsany who thrill with their eerie, macabre and sometimes quirky visions.

You'll visit graveyards in Britain, Indonesia, Russia, China, Italy, Bulgaria, Thailand, USA, Australia, South Africa and Japan, and you can marvel at the burial customs of other cultures.

Now let's open the gate - can you hear it creak on its hinges? - and enter the realm of the dead. Listen to the wind rustling the yew, the grating of footsteps on gravel, the hoo-hoo-hoo of the collared dove. Run your fingers across the tombstones to feel their lichen-rough sandstone or smooth cool marble. Inhale the scents of decaying lilies and freshly dug earth.

But be careful. Someone may be watching your every movement... They may be right behind you.

Purchase Link: mybook.to/Headstones 

The ebook is available for pre-order from Amazon at the special offer price of 99 cents until 31 January 2022. (After that date, the price will go up.) A paperback will follow.