acknowledgments

I wish to thank everyone who contributed a story or photograph or their time to this book. Great-Aunt Clara shared wonderful stories of her grandma Wieland (my great-great-grandma) and was a joy to talk to—thanks, Clara, for all the help and the pictures and poem. Great- Aunt Irene graciously gave permission to include her ghost stories and some of her experiences living in the Irish family homestead. My aunt Margie, along with my mom’s cousins Bev and Kay, and my daughter Molly, helped Irene and me with proofing and filling in details.

My mom, Aunt Margie, and Aunt Kathy were a tremendous help with pictures and stories from the Irish side of the family, and my dad provided detailed and entertaining answers to dozens of email queries about the Montana side of the family. Thanks to my siblings and their spouses/significant others, my nieces and nephews, and my kids Molly and Jack for sharing your stories.

I want to extend special thanks to my friend and fellow writer Jennifer Spees for reading my manuscript and for her excellent suggestions, and to my daughter Molly for helping organize and manage the permissions process. To my beau and partner Levi, thanks for the emotional support, the many hours of proofing and reading, and for all the cooking!

Several psychics and other paranormal or metaphysical professionals granted permission to use their names and stories in my book—thank you Robert Baca, Echo Bodine, Lori Bogren, Linda Drake, James Endredy, Ted Hughes, Jodi Livon, Patrick Mathews, Dave Schrader,
C. J. Sellars, Mary Stoffel, and Mary Ann Winkowski. Thank you to Ivy for letting me use the India ghost photo, and Linda and Jim at the Historic Trempealeau Hotel and Roger at Magus Books for letting me include the names of your business establishments in my story. Cindy Thury Smith at the City of Hastings Pioneer Room spent many hours helping me do research for the ghost book that wasn’t ready to be written—yet. Thank you, Cindy, for all the help and for providing the picture of Katrina Hartnett that appears in this book.

I truly appreciate my mom’s cousin Margie’s permission to tell her daughter Stephanie’s story in the chapter on animal spirits and messengers.

Thanks to my friend Vanessa Wright and everyone at Llewellyn who helped make my book a reality, especially Jeanette Jones for doing a great job with all of the interior photographs, Lynne Menturweck for taking the photograph for the White Deer chapter opener, and Kevin Brown for the extra help with the cover photo of Maggie, Dorrie, and Mimi McDonough. A huge thanks goes out to my editor and friend Becky Zins for lending her talent and creativity to this project.

Finally, I’d like to express my deep appreciation to my uncle Larry and aunt Margie, who each gave our family a wonderful and lasting gift: they collected our family stories and wrote them down.

This book is a true recollection and account of ghostly or paranormal phenomena that my family and I have experienced, and it represents, to the best of my ability, accurate retellings of real events. Some of the names in the book have been changed for privacy.