“Do the legwork, visit the locations, research them, format your own conclusions, and share them with the world.”
—RICHARD ESTEP, AUTHOR AND PARANORMAL INVESTIGATOR
The most important thing I’ve learned on my journey writing historical-based ghost books? That I get by with a little help from my friends. The second lesson I learned along the way is that if you play with fire, you’ll eventually get burned. The third? Don’t die.
Two out of three ain’t bad.
On October 30, 2016, I got burned really bad. It happened so fast that it felt like spontaneous combustion. I somehow picked up an attachment after accidentally channeling a spirit at Peirce Farm at Witch Hill in Topsfield, Massachusetts. The entity, later identified as a murderer, eventually possessed me. The terrifying incident is chronicled on the one-hundredth episode of A Haunting featured on the Travel Channel.
It’s a cautionary tale and a perfect example of what not to do when investigating a haunted location.
If it wasn’t for Joni Mayhan, I probably wouldn’t have survived the incident. I’m lucky to be alive.
When I filmed the episode of A Haunting with Mayhan, I thanked her for intervening during the infestation and alerting Michael Robishaw, the shaman who helped bind and banish the entity. After the Travel Channel show interview, I started to have flashbacks replaying the horrifying, week-long ordeal that almost destroyed me. Mayhan identified with the residual trauma because she went through something similar, which inspired her to write her first book, The Soul Collector.
“It was a terrifying experience that a lot of people wouldn’t have mentally survived,” Mayhan said, trying to comfort me. “It’s even harder to get past it because it’s paranormal and not an acceptable tragic experience. People don’t understand how scary and life altering it is. Since the Soul Collector, I still sleep with a night light. I get really freaked out about sleeping in the dark. I need to know what’s around me.”
I confessed to Mayhan that I was afraid the entity would come back if I talked about it on television.
“It just brought it all back,” she continued. “We push those things into boxes in our heads so we don’t have to keep looking at them. Getting them back out of the boxes is hard because they don’t lose any of their power. If nothing else, they get stronger.”
This initial conversation with Mayhan inspired me to reach out to other paranormal-themed writers about the dangers that we face out in the field. I was surprised to learn that most of the contemporary authors featured in Ghost Writers got their start as investigators before penning their first book.
In fact, Richard Estep had many years of experience before writing his first memoir, In Search of the Paranormal, in 2015. The author, originally from the United Kingdom, managed to write fifteen successful books in less than four years.
“Almost all of my dangerous experiences as a paranormal investigator have come from the living, not the dead,” Estep told me. “There was the time when a local resident of a mountain town approached me when I was investigating a historic theater and asked me if I was cooking meth. When I said that I wasn’t, he flashed a handgun and said, ‘Good, because we know how to make people disappear around here’,” he recalled.
Is it important to Estep to investigate the haunted locations before he writes about them in his books like The Fairfield Haunting and Trail of Terror? “I love the storytelling process and that begins with the research and the ‘boots on the ground’ component of paranormal investigation,” he explained. “It’s one thing to tell ghost stories that you’ve gotten from interviewing witnesses; it’s another thing entirely to spend a week living, sleeping, and investigating in the place that you’re writing about. I think it adds credibility.”
Unlike most of the authors featured in this book, Estep tends to gravitate toward single locations—like Malvern Manor in Iowa or Asylum 49 in Utah—boasting enough ghostly material to sustain an entire book. “As my writing career progresses, I enjoy devoting an entire book to a single location,” he said. “It feels as though the story has more room to breathe over the space of fifty thousand words than it does when it’s compressed into a single chapter. I become very fond of some of the locations I investigate, and like to delve into the lives of those who lived and worked there.”
For his single-location books, Estep usually writes the first section at the haunted location he’s featuring. “I feel that it helps capture the atmosphere of the place in some small way,” he explained. “Each book, or chapter of a book, is a reminder of that time of my life, and takes me right back there when I open up the book months or years later. I hope to one day be an old man who can go to the bookshelf in order to relive some of the high points of my life.”
Estep’s advice to future ghost writers? “Investigate first and then write about your findings,” he said. “Do the legwork, visit the locations, research them, format your own conclusions and share them with the world. The paranormal, non-fiction field needs more good books.”
I also reached out to Gare Allen, author of Ghost Crimes and The Dead: True Paranormal Story, to ask him about his journey. “During my early twenties, I studied metaphysics. I couldn’t read enough about astral projection, divination, spirit guides, channeling, and mostly, reincarnation,” he told me. “My experiences inspired me to write a series of short stories called 7 Lessons. All seven books are based on my actual metaphysical and paranormal encounters with fictional insertions to bridge the stories.”
Allen’s first series of books eventually inspired him to write The Dead. “I was often asked if the main character, Greer, was based on me and if the otherworldly events really happened to me,” he said. “After fielding that question dozens of times, I decided to chronicle every metaphysical and paranormal event that had occurred in my life including the purchase of a haunted house.”
In The Dead, Allen comes face-to-face with a demonic infestation in his home. In addition to the lower-level demon, he’s also had to combat spirit attachments. Mayhan, who is good friends with Allen, said parasitic entities are one of the many dangers we face as ghost writers.
“I’ve had attachments latch on to me, but not reveal themselves until a later time,” Mayhan explained. “I believe they hide because they have a mission they want to complete and don’t want us to be aware of them. If we know they are there, we’ll try to disentangle ourselves from them, and they don’t want that to happen.”
“When [attachments] occur, it’s usually a high-level entity, one that has been around long enough to learn the ins and outs. They are also much harder to remove,” she said. “Our shaman friend, Michael Robishaw, calls them ‘ancient ones’ because they have been around for a century or more and have grown powerful over time.”
Much like the experience I had with the crone attachment that I banished in Salem, Massachusetts, Mayhan picked up a parasitic entity while doing paranormal research for a book. “I once went to an investigation at a friend’s rental house. He knew the house was haunted and often invited close friends over to investigate,” she recalled. “The house was located on land that had significance to the Native Americans who lived there centuries ago. While we were outdoors walking around, I picked up an attachment.”
Mayhan said that she didn’t realize it was an attachment until later that night. “As I was drifting off to sleep, I suddenly felt something pop into the room. My chest grew tight as though something was sitting on me,” she said. “I reached out to Michael and he sent his spirit guides to help me. When they arrived, they saw the entity sitting on my chest and trying to push the life out of me. Thankfully, they were able to remove it, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience.”
As ghost writers, why do we continue to put ourselves in the middle of some disturbingly dangerous situations? Like Mayhan and the other contemporary authors featured in this book, I’m investigating extremely haunted locations and then sharing my experiences—the good and the bad—so that my readers will not make the same mistakes.
What I do know is that there is life after death. I believe it with all of my heart. My pursuits are not to prove that ghosts exist. I’m already convinced. My primary goal is to give a voice to the spirits I encounter along the way, especially those marginalized by the status quo. I want to honor the downtrodden people forgotten by history. I want to give a voice to those without a voice. I want to help people, both the living and the dead.
And if I run into a few hurdles along the way, like getting possessed or levitating out of my bed, so be it. What doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger and, ultimately, it makes me a better ghost writer. Period.