Introduction

 

In late 2012, I was putting together a group of short stories for possible publication in early 2013 by Sunbury Press. The collection was an eclectic assortment of various stories, which did not really fit into a specific theme although the genre was most definitely suspenseful horror. Some of the stories were ghost stories; some were a mix of technology and the supernatural; some were demonic in nature, some more psychological thrillers, and some didn’t quite fit into any particular category. A few were somewhat short while others had become quite long.

Several of the stories were brand new, having never been previously published anywhere and were written specifically for this collection. A couple of them previously appeared as part of other multi-author anthologies by a variety of publishers but have never been published in any of my Sunbury Press collections. Two of them appeared in a special Sunbury collection called Malafarina Maleficarum Volume II. Each of them has been revised, reworked, and rewritten by me for the purposes of this collection.  

That being said, I was in need of a title and cover for this new collection and I still needed a few more stories to finish it off. At the same time I had started two or three new novels which for now will remain secret as I hope to finish and publish them in the near future. What to do . . . what to do . . . . Then the inspiration came to me unexpectedly one day in December 2012 when my wife, JoAnne, came home from work with a photograph she took with her iPhone of a shadow on a window at her place of employment.

In October 2012, her department and several others in the company where she worked had moved into a newly renovated office building in the town a few miles down the road from her main office. Apparently sometime, perhaps while the renovation of the building was taking place, no one really knows for sure, a bird must have flown against one of the windows, broken its neck, and died. Since that time, the outsides of the windows had not been cleaned.

One day in early December when JoAnne was getting ready to leave for the day the sun was just at the right position to strike the glass and allow the image, which is shown on the front of the cover of this book, to appear. We assume the image resulted from the collection of dust stuck to the bird’s body transferring from the bird to the window at the time of impact. For months it had gone unnoticed until just the right set of natural conditions existed for it to make its presence known. Since the initial photograph was taken she has tried to numerous times photograph it using our Nikon 35mm, but the conditions have never been good enough to get a proper shot. Even though I wanted a black and white photo on the front cover I put the original color version of the image on the back cover.

Anyway, after she saw the photo, she emailed it to me and I immediately loved it as she knew I would. I was inspired and knew I would use it in one of my future works but that it might take a day or so for me to figure out exactly what I would want to do with it. In the meantime, she sent it to the Weather Channel Web site and they posted it up on their animal photo section where it received some nice comments. We also shared it with our Facebook friends to many positive reviews.

JoAnne told me some of her coworkers said the image almost looked like an angel to them while others thought it looked like a demon. One person said it appeared that the bird had left an imprint of its soul on the window. Hearing those impressions I was instantly motivated. I realized I had found the answer to my short story collection title issue. The title, Ghost Shadows jumped right into my mind and made perfect reference not only to the bird’s shadow in the photo but to the ghostly shadows I hope my writing casts upon the minds and souls of my readers. I was also then inspired to write a short story about the image based on what JoAnne had told me about the various interpretations of the shadow, which became the short story “Ghost Shadow.” Before the end of December 2012 I had the cover completed, two thirds of the stories in place, and the remaining stories laid out and ready to write and or rework. My goal was to have a collection of thirteen tales ready for Sunbury Press for publication by March 2013.  

My publisher, Lawrence Knorr, had the great idea to release the collection on 3/13/13 at 13:13 hrs. I loved the idea and began to work my backside off to meet my self-imposed deadline, which I obviously did, as you are now reading the results. Ghost Shadows is a not so nice collection of thirteen haunting tales that I hope you enjoy as much as you have enjoyed my other works. I look forward to continuing to bring you the best horror stories my twisted little mind can conjure up for you in the years to come.  

 

Thomas M. Malafarina, March 2013