Ghost Story Weekend, by Eric Witchey

I love Ghost Story Weekend!

In fact, I love it so much that I hope to haunt it long after my passing has caused WordCrafters to pass it on to another writer-in-residence. After all, don’t you think a Ghost Story Weekend should have a few ghosts-in-residence?

I’m preparing to travel to the Oregon coast to act as writer-in-residence for Ghost Story Weekend. Every year on the last weekend of October, writers get together to pound out 24-hour spooky stories then read them aloud to one another on Saturday night. Sunday morning, we do a round-robin in which each author says one thing they liked and one thing they think will take the story closer to publication. Elizabeth Engstrom founded the program in the 90s, and she handed it off to me and WordCrafters in Eugene in 2014.

Two anthologies collecting stories from Ghost Story Weekend are available by ordering from your local bookstore or by purchasing on Amazon:

Dead on Demand: Edited by Elizabeth EngstromGhosts at the Coast: Edited by Dianna Rogers, whom we all miss and who is with us in her ghostly form.

The current ghosts-in-residence are Stephen T. Vessels, who passed away at the end of August, 2021, and Diana Rodgers, who gave up the mortal coil in 2018. I hope they are there with us again this year. I have no doubt that once I join them in the beyond we will do a respectable job of keeping the spooky alive. For now, Dianna and Stephen will have to bear that responsibility.

As I approach the weekend, I can’t help considering the possible prompts that might help me and others reach through the veil between the world of the living and the world of beyond. What questions, comments, or objects will help us all scare the bujeezus out of the other writers who attend?

My good friend, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, attends every year she doesn’t have a calendar conflict, and I, in turn, attend her Science Fiction and Fantasy weekend in the spring. She brings prompts to both events in the form of “roll-ups” she has created. They are always much appreciated and useful. We also dip into a small library of strange and wonderful books for ideas. Between Eric the Younger, a horror writer named Eric Lewis, and me, Eric the Elder, we manage to bring along a pretty hefty library of horror story material. My current favorite is a calendar given to me by Kim Hunter, who is also an attendee. Every year, she augments the experience with a swag bag of spooky paraphernalia, including wind-up ghosts, glowing pens, pop-up mummies, and general boo-foolery. Becky Christine, one of the essential support people without whom the event could not take place, always creates an amazing collection of story support material. Her swag bags include things like individual pages taken from spooky source books, tarot cards, spooky dice, images, and evocative objects.

Add the above to the fact that we are already staying right across Coastal Highway 101 from a rocky shoreline where crashing waves spray a brass plaque commemorating the deaths of teens who thought they were strong enough to beat the power of the sea, thus warning others of the dangers of getting too close to a watery spirit that can sweep away a life in moments, and you have a recipe for endless creativity and wonderful terrors appropriate to Samhain. Don’t even get me started on the nearby haunted lighthouse…

As we approach the night when the veil between the mortal realm and the beyond is thinnest, I search out little tidbits of craft and motivation to email to the group of would-be horror writers. My hideous plan is to get the ghostly muse percolating behind the scenes before anyone shows up for the event. I paraphrase case study ghost investigation entries from the huge book, Ghosts: True Encounters with the World Beyond, by Hans Holzer—my personal go-to for strange. I send out links to web sites of spooky settings all over the world. I pull concepts and locations from travel books dedicated to the strange. There’s an entire travel industry around exploring spooky places. I even dig into my own photo stores of ghost towns and haunted places I’ve visited, including abandoned mines, asylums, sanitariums, and in one case an abandoned old-west haunted hotel.

Of course, none of these are useful if the minds receiving them don’t harbor some innate curiosity about what could be, might have been, and would be fun and spooky.

This morning, I pulled some ideas from the spooky Page-A-Day calendar Kim sent me early this year. The email that went out looked like this:

From the Kim Calendar, boo date 10/22/22. Haunted Objects Sold on eBay:

A wristwatch that cannot be changed from 11:29, the exact time the original owner was murdered.Sold items and furnishings from a demolished haunted mansion in Clovis, CA.A self-refilling ceramic water bottle.A haunted Ziploc bag that has healing and restorative powers for foodstuffs and even for people.

And now I’m thinking of a ghost wearing the watch, haunting a mansion being demolished, carrying a self-filling bottle, and their body preserved in restorative Ziploc body bag sealed in the wall of the foundation…

Are you a ghost if you were murdered at 11:29 then put in a healing Ziploc bag that revives you, but then you suffocate, but then you revive, but then you suffocate?

Is the water bottle haunted by the spirit of an extreme runner who died of dehydration on a desert ultra-marathon?

Did a Peruvian Incan runner live in a mansion in Clovis, CA?

Did some writer buy the Clovis writing desk?

Were the Clovis people of ancient America responsible for the haunting of the mansion?

Inquiring minds want to know. Next Saturday night, perhaps we’ll find out the answers to these and other questions.

Boo!

Eric

I think of this sort of questioning as spinning up the silly generator. If I have to draft a story in 24 hours then present it orally to 15 or more other writers, including some highly accomplished professionals, I’m going to need to get my free-association brain working at peak levels. To do that, I start practicing a week or two beforehand by looking at images, concepts, stories, and objects then asking the questions that might lead to a spooky story.

Personally, I think in terms of the now defunct Weekly World News. I try to find that sort of mindset and brainstorm as if I’m going to write a fictional news article for that magazine. You know the type: “Batbaby and Bigfoot Team up to Defeat Canadian Carnivore Aliens.” That kind of story.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that’s the kind of story I’ll be writing at the event. It might be. I kind of like the idea of ancient Clovis People haunting a mansion and carrying refilling ceramic water bottles. Imagine the impact on modern archeology if those bottles and body-preserving Ziploc body bags were discovered in the foundation of a demolished mansion.

“Archeologists Discover Clovis People Magic Still Working”

The interview with the ghost would be glorious!

Right now, sitting at my desk, I see a Tupperware container with three pulp novels in it. I also see a bottle from my pharmacy, and on the floor there’s a receipt from Costco.

Engage Silly Weekly World News headline maker. Archeology is already loaded into the system.

Pre-Noah’s Flood Novels Preserved in Plastic.Costco is the Reincarnation of Clovis People’s Marketplace.Construction Workers Uncover Pre-Columbian Tupperware. You won’t believe what they find inside!Clovis People Invented Anti-Depressants. Ancient Pharmacy Uncovered.RCMP Finds Hidden Sasquatch Library. Clovis People Ghost Librarians Curse Canadian Cops.Ghost Librarian Sells Tupperware.Ghost at Little Lending Library Busted for Distribution of Stolen Pharmaceuticals.Clovis People Ghost Racks up Debt at Costco. Police Want to Know Where She Got her Card.She says she can’t get Kirkland anywhere else and the meat department is great.Zombie Selling Tupperware Door-to-Door in Clovis, CA. Residents too Afraid to Say No.Archeologist Possessed by Clovis Librarian. Science Shattered.

You get the idea.

An explicit change to my filters will give me different results.

Add a different set of items, objects, images, or concepts: a musty rag, cobwebs, and a broken cell phone.

Phantom Caller Only Connects on Broken Phone.Cobwebs on Cleaning Rag Open Portal to Afterlife.Mother Returns from the Afterlife to Clean Son’s Apartment.Magnet Fisherman Finds Broken Phone. Deceased 911 Operator Still on the Line.

If I choose to take away my favorite filter, the Weekly World News, replacing it with, say, a pseudoscientific journal filter like The Journal of Irreproducible Results, everything changes. As my father used to say, “There’s no such thing as supernatural. There are only natural phenomenon science can’t yet experimentally explain.”

Note: You can find collections of articles and original editions of The Journal of Irreproducible Results on Amazon.

An article about a conversation with a ghost might look like this:

Dialogs with Six-Dimensional Intermittent Manifestations of Transtemporal Spatial Phenomenon.

Add a different filter, war news from Ukraine.

Colonel from the Crimean War Returns as YouTube Pundit.

This endless process of variations on themes, application of filters, and the spouting of total nonsense as fast as I can manage it inevitably leads to opportunities for a ghost story that I can write in a few hours. Because we have 15 or more people to read stories, we keep the length of the stories under 2000 words. Years when we have more people, which has not been possible since Covid began, we limit the word count even more.

Some years, I only manage one story. One year, I produced five, two of which I later sold. We have others who produce three-to-five stories in the 24-hour period. Universally, the people who produce that many stories step back from the idea that then need a “good story” long enough to spin up their brainstorming brain and kick out ideas they draft into rough form very quickly. Once they have a few stories in rough form, they pick one to refine a little bit before they read. Composing at around 2,000 words an hour, more-or-less, leads easily to three or four possible bad draft candidates from which to choose for one set of revisions prior to presentation.

This year’s Ghost Story Weekend was sold out the week it was announced, so you might not be with us via Zoom or in the room. None-the-less, you can be with us in spooky spirit. Friday, at about 7 pm., start spinning up ideas and pounding out pages. Saturday morning, keep the process going. Around noon, pick one of your story starts/drafts and finish it as much as possible before dinner. For fun, and in all its early-draft flawed glory, read it aloud by candlelight to someone. Sip some wine. Chat. Hand out candy to tick-or-treaters. Whisper gratitude for having known those who have gone before us through the veil.

When the candy is gone and the hangover has subsided, ignore the stories for a week.

The next weekend, rewrite your scary story, polish it, and send it out.

Have a glorious Samhain!

-End-