THE OTHER KIND OF GHOSTING

 My guest today is author Kimberly Baer. Her YA paranormal The Haunted Purse is great reading for this time of  year, and I will let her tell you about that story and some experiences with the other-worldly.

Welcome, Kimberly!

The Other Kind of Ghosting

By Kimberly Baer

How likely is it that a purse could be haunted? My guess: not very. What self-respecting ghost would choose to be squished  amongst a scratchy hairbrush, a lumpy wallet, that leaky bottle of hand sanitizer, and the dozens of other items crammed into the typical modern-day handbag? Assuming that ghosts get to choose their locale, most would probably opt for the roomy accommodations of a house or the wide open spaces of a graveyard.

Still, you never know. Tiny houses are increasing in popularity among the living. Maybe ghosts like tight spaces, too.

My YA paranormal novel The Haunted Purse is pure fiction, but that doesn’t mean ghosts don’t exist. Ghostly encounters have been reported all over the world, probably for as long as humans have been living and dying. Haunted sites include castles, cabins, houses, apartments, hotels, battlefields, graveyards, caves, mines, ships, schools, tunnels, and probably a bunch of other places.

Many of us know somebody who’s had an encounter with a ghost, and some of us have even had our own encounters. I can’t say for certain whether I’ve ever met up with a ghost, but if I did, it happened like this:

- In 2014 I visited my son in Long Beach, California, and we toured the Queen Mary, which has been named one of the Top 10 Haunted Places by Time magazine. At one point, the tour guide announced that we were standing in one of the most haunted rooms on the ship. Just as I snapped a picture, a strange white blob streaked across the screen of my camera. It didn’t show up on the photo, and nobody noticed anything unusual in the room at the time. I like to think it was a ghost caught in the glare of my camera, like a deer in the headlights.

Okay, okay; that might not be the most enthralling ghost story you’ve ever heard. I have some better ones from people near and dear to me, people whose integrity I can vouch for:

- A few years ago when my sister was out driving, she suddenly felt the presence of a child in her car. The feeling persisted when she returned home, and odd things started happening. For instance, she’d get up in the morning and find the kitchen trash can in the middle of the floor. She did some research and learned that the spot where she’d first sensed that strange presence was the site of a recent car accident in which a three-year-old boy had died. She started talking to the child’s spirit, urging him to move on, and eventually he did.

- A dear and trusted colleague of mine lived in a centuries-old townhouse in Alexandria, Virginia. She often talked about her resident ghost, a benign and playful spirit who liked to move things around. The spirit’s coolest trick: lighting candles.

Have YOU ever had a ghostly encounter? Would you like to? If so, you could try buying an old purse at a thrift store, as my protagonist Libby does in The Haunted Purse. If that doesn’t work, consider visiting some well-known haunted places, such as El Campo Santo Cemetery in San Diego, California; King’s Tavern in Natchez, Mississippi; or various sites in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Visitors to those locations have reported everything from seeing apparitions and hearing strange noises to being pushed, scratched, or pinched by an unknown force.

Now wouldn’t that make for a memorable trip!

Back-cover blurb for The Haunted Purse:

That old denim purse Libby Dawson bought at the thrift store isn’t your run-of-the-mill teenage tote. It’s a bag of secrets, imbued with supernatural powers. Strange items keep turning up inside, clues to a decades-old mystery only Libby can solve.

Filled with apprehension and yet intrigued by the mounting pile of evidence, Libby digs for the truth. And eventually finds it. But the story of the purse is darker than she imagined—and its next horrific chapter is going to be all about her.

Excerpt from The Haunted Purse

Toni asked, “Do you think we should tell my mom about the purse?”

“No,” I said. I wasn’t ready to trust an adult. Not even Toni’s mom, nice as she was. “Your mom is like you,” I added. “Practical. It would take a long time to convince her there’s something supernatural going on.”

We went back to watching the purse. There was a moment when I thought I saw it twitch, but that might have been my imagination.

“You could always get rid of it,” Toni said. “You know, donate it back to the thrift store.”

I considered that. “I could. But I don’t want to. Not yet, anyway. This purse is the coolest thing I’ve ever owned. I want to find out more about it. I want to see what it does next.”

She took her eyes from the purse long enough to glance at me. “Aren’t you afraid it’ll crawl into your bed some night and strangle you with its straps?”

“No. I think it’s trying to get my attention. It’s trying to tell me something.”

“Like what?”

I didn’t have a clue.

About the Author

Kimberly Baer is an author and professional editor who was born and raised in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a town marginally famous for having endured three major floods—and she lived there during one of them. She currently lives in Virginia. Kim has had her nose in a book practically since birth, and she decided early on that she wanted to be on the giving end of the reading experience as well as the receiving end. Her first story, written at age six, was about a baby chick that hatched out of a little girl’s Easter egg after somehow surviving the hard-boiling process. Her recent focus has been on writing middle-grade and young adult fiction. 

 

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Book trailer for The Haunted Purse

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