Month: June 2024

New Ghost Stories

I started reading ghost stories as a child and enjoyed the chill that the best of them sent up my spine. I began writing ghost stories, with a sci-fi and mystery twist, almost ten years ago when I wrote my first Bad Vibes Removal Services story. The series features Lea, a young history graduate student, working in a new service industry. She sanitizes and neutralizes the lingering emotional history from buildings and homes using newly invented equipment. She was drawn to the job because she’s always been sensitive to emotional atmosphere in rooms and has always been able to see ghosts.

The technology she uses in her job was created by a private detective named Montgomery in his quest to create a device to read the subatomic changes in soft materials caused when sound waves pass through them. Montgomery wanted to be able to read the recordings of conversations held in rooms in order to solve crimes. He ended up being able to track the emotional energy left in walls along with the sounds. In order to put his new technology in the public eye, he started Bad Vibes Removal Services to serve as a sister company to his own Montgomery Investigations business.

Lea, with her team of coworkers, soon discovers that she can’t neutralize the lingering emotions in a house if the source, a ghost in distress, is still present. Many of the ghosts she encounters died under questionable circumstances, leading to murder investigations.

The series started with one story. But I liked the characters so much that I wrote more stories, which led me to write a novel, The Walls Can Talk, then more stories, and another novel, Degrees of Deceit, then, more stories. The series currently has 15 or so published short stories and two novels. The latest story in the series, called “Wedding Vibes,” was published in Black Cat Weekly #145 courtesy of editor Michael Bracken. The story features Lea’s wedding reception being crashed by both a ghost and thieves trying to steal gifts. Luckily, her boss, Montgomery, her coworker and Maid of Honor, Kamika, and the rest of her friends are on the case. The thieves chose the wrong reception to crash.

Another one of my ghost stories is rolling out right now, too. “A Lonely Death” is coming out in an anthology of spooky stories from Inkd Publishing called Noncorporeal II. Those who ordered the anthology from the Kickstarter should be receiving their copies shortly, and it will go on sale to the general public soon. The story begins with a cowboy digging a grave in the “middle of nowhere Texas” in the mid 1800s. Soon there after, a little boy whose home was built in what once was the “middle of nowhere Texas” meets a ghost. This story is told from the point of view of the ghost and from the point of view of the people in whose home the ghost appears.

This story was inspired by a three-year-old who was seen in his home talking to and looking up at an adult who the child’s mother couldn’t see. The family had several guests report either seeing a man who vanished or feeling “creeped out” in their guest room. The house was brand new, built on what had been farmland in Central Texas. My story answers the question of why a brand new house might have a ghost.

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N. M. Cedeño is a short story writer and novelist living in Texas. She is active in Sisters in Crime- Heart of Texas Chapter and is a member of the Short Mystery Fiction Society. Find out more at nmcedeno.com

Words on the Page

by Helen Currie Foster

This week I read with great interest a recent essay by Isabella Cho, Harvard undergrad studying poetry, titled “The Case for Indeterminacy.” Harvard Magazine, June 2024. Cho says that, with students anxiously piling into “useful” majors (computer science, engineering), the dismissive attitudes she sees toward humanities reflect an effort to appear to be “in the vanguard of innovation.” She constantly hears the refrain “What are you going to do with that?”

What is the importance of good writing? In publications that may not always occur to you? Don’t we need accurate truthful writing for all disciplines, all activities? Math, physics, biology, biochemistry, medicine, business strategy? And, of course, cooking!

I recently embarked on a personal campaign to resurrect a favorite taste from childhood: salt-rising bread. But after rereading the recipe for potato salt-rising bread several times in my iconic and hitherto unimpeachable cookbook, I had to conclude I could not tell whether the starter had to stay warm for 15 hours–or not. Did I have to rig up the heating pad and my thermometer? –or not? I have finally concluded I must chuck the resulting loaf off the back deck into the bushes. In this case, “indeterminacy” was unhelpful.

The loaf I’m gonna fling…

But as Isabella Cho points out, it’s worth wrestling with indeterminacy as well. And an indeterminate answer can also “do” something !

For example, what about poetry? “What can we do with that?”

Poetry can “do” on several levels. For example, take the tail end of Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”

We can ask, “What did those words do?” And then we realize the poem did indeed do something. Made us think, made us wonder, made us speculate. Maybe even made us consider own our lives, our own choices. Frost’s words didn’t specify what “difference” the road choice made to the narrator of the poem. (Some “indeterminacy” there.) Instead, you and I may find ourselves wondering, thinking –about what difference a choice made–for ourselves.

Poetry can also present a description that is so stunningly accurate that we may think it could never be put any better. Emily Dickinson, with her 1800 or so poems, gave us unforgettable lines. “A narrow Fellow in the grass”–you’re already remembering that she “…never met this Fellow/Attended or alone/Without a tighter Breathing/and Zero at the Bone.” “Zero at the Bone!”

Yes, zero at the bone even with no rattles on its tail. And what about “I heard a fly buzz – when I died”? Yikes! We can hear that fly, we’re there in the room… Or “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers”…

The impact of such lines goes beyond mere description. Poetic writing can also simply smack us upside the head. We can’t forget Shakespeare’s terse description in Julius Caesar, in iambic pentameter, when Caesar comments to Antony that “Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look,/ He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.”

“A lean and hungry look.” Five little words! –and Shakespeare has told us all we need to know about this character. Cassius is not satisfied, is too hungry ever to be satisfied. The moment we heard those two lines in 10th grade English (or whenever), we knew precisely what Shakespeare meant. The words did something. They showed us what to watch for, when Cassius next walked onstage.

Prose can also “do.” It can make a character (mere words on a page) spring to life. In This Tender Land William Kent Krueger works this magic for Mose, the mute Sioux boy at the “Indian school” where two white boys, Albert and Odie, wound up during the Depression. Since Odie’s mother was deaf, Odie tells us, “even before I could speak, I could sign.” Now Mose has learned sign language as well, and when Odie plays a song like “Shenandoah” on his harmonica, here’s what happens:

“There was something poetic in Mose’s soul. When I played and he signed, his hands danced gracefully in the air and those unspoken words took on a delicate weight and a kind of beauty that I thought no voice could possibly have given them.”

I was instantly drawn to Mose. What a lyrical description not merely of the unsung words Mose puts to music, with his hands, but of the gracefulness of Odie’s duet with a boy who can’t utter a word.

Richard Osman’s fourth Thursday Murder Club novel, The Last Devil To Die, uses dialogue to depict the tender relationship between two characters at the retirement home, Elizabeth the spy, and her husband Stephen, now suffering from dementia. Stephen lies with his head in Elizabeth’s lap:

“I understand this,” says Elizabeth. “For all the words in the world, when I go to sleep tonight, my hand won’t be in yours. That’s all I understand.” “You have me there,” says Stephen. “I have no answer for that.”

But no spoilers here.

Words on the page. So specific that from crisp black and white print, pictures swirl into our minds. Or make us think, make us wonder, raise questions to ponder. Specificity…and indeterminacy…

Rooting around in Emily Dickinson’s poems I saw one I’d never read: “The Brain Is Wider than the Sky.” It explains the values of specificity and indeterminacy in just a few astounding lines. Here’s the first stanza:

The brain is wider than the sky, /For, put them side by side, /The one the other will include/ With ease, and you beside.

There it is. We humans must have both.

Finally–News! Ghost Bones, Book 9 in my Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery Series, set in the Texas Hill Country, will be out this month!

Helen Currie Foster lives and writes north of Dripping Springs, Texas, loosely supervised by three burros. She’s drawn to the compelling landscape and quirky characters of the Texas Hill Country. She’s also deeply curious about our human history and how, uninvited, the past keeps crashing the party. Follow her at http://www.helencurriefoster.com.

 

Prunus Serotina

Prunus Serotina

My Grandfather’s Cherry Tree

by

Francine Paino, AKA F. Della Notte

A 2010 study published in The American Journal of Psychology found that “memories associated with smells were not necessarily more accurate, but tended to be emotionally more evocative.” How true!

From my office window in Austin, Texas, I look at the magnolia blossoms on the tree in front of my house. Pretty and pink, the blossoms are at the top of the tree. Too high up for me to reach and cut, I still enjoy their lovely fragrance when they fall to the ground. And that scent transports me 1,500 miles northeast and more than half a century past, with images of my grandfather’s cherry tree—a key to the portal unlocking memories of my life in an immigrant community.  

My grandfather’s cherry tree didn’t grow, surrounded by green hills and grass. It grew in a crowded Italian ghetto: a city within a city. Corona, New York. Here, cement sidewalks and concrete streets only allowed for narrow curb strips of weeds in front of houses, separated by narrow alleys. Few residences had any space to speak of; my  grandfather’s house was one.

Now, when I remember and look at pictures, I wonder how he dealt with the adjustment going from the grinding poverty of Sassano, Italy, surrounded by gently rolling hills, farms, trees, and greenery, to a somewhat better existence but encased in hard, cold, and grey surfaces. It’s a question I never did ask. I suppose his poverty-stricken but agrarian roots wouldn’t allow his small piece of the stark, utilitarian landscape to remain solid pavements of grey without a trace of nature. But back to the Cherry Tree.  

Planted in a small patch of dirt in his yard, surrounded by cement, my grandfather’s cherry tree grew straight and tall. Its round trunk was encased in bark that looked so dark it could have been black. It gave off a sweet fragrance in early June, only perceptible in the early mornings before the smells of car exhaust, trash, vent fumes, and the brick, mortar, and wood from the close-together homes crowded it out. Once spring arrived, windows were kept open, and the aroma of cooking wafted out, joining the profusion of smells that swept the neighborhood. As sweet as the tree’s fragrance was, its fruit was mainly sour and enjoyed by the birds more than the family.

According to the charts, cherry trees in the northeast had and still have edible fruits by the third week of June, and I recall birds pecking at them and dropping some of the ripened cherries into the cement yard. My grandmother would sweep them up fast, lest they get under our shoes and dirty her faded but clean linoleum floor. However, the cherry tree’s memories do not stop there. Like tendrils on a vine, places, events, and smells latch on to the Prunus Serotina.

In New York City, public schools in the 1950s were let out by the middle of June. That meant I could help my grandfather tend his little farm two blocks from the house, nestled between dilapidated houses on either side of the property and protected by an eight-foot tall chain link fence that ran the perimeter of the entire lot. The land in his little enclosure always smelled earthy. He’d fertilized it before the planting began. There were rows of corn, cabbage, zucchini, and Swiss Chard. There was an area dedicated to lettuce. The corn always had a slightly sweet and earthy odor. I have no recollection of smelling the growing cabbages or zucchini. Still, when I sauté garlic, I often recall Grandmother doing the same, then frying thick slices of zucchini and smothering them in a rich marinara sauce to finish cooking.

Perhaps my favorite olfactory memory is the fragrances from the herb garden. The lemony aroma of thyme is still one of my favorites, as are the peppery scent of oregano and the sweet, refreshing smell of basil. My grandfather would smile when he handed me a full bouquet of basil. Maybe he already knew the beneficial effects of basil when I’d bury my nose in it and breathe deep before walking back the three crowded city streets to the house with the cherry tree.

As a child raised in this hybrid environment, half city life, half farm life, I took these scents for granted. Didn’t everyone have them?

I’m amazed about how much smell has gained scientific support for its impact on different areas of life, besides memories of days gone by. Scientists at Brown University looked at 18 studies about aromachology. They found that smelling lavender can indeed relax you, make you less stressed, and even help you awaken more rested. Researchers examined studies about other scents like rosemary, peppermint, and orange. They propose that rosemary may help you sleep better, improve memory, and help with hair growth. Peppermint might boost physical performance, and the smell of oranges can reduce anxiety and help you feel more content or happier. Of course, more research is needed, If nothing else, taking the time to enjoy the fragrances is already a step in slowing down and smelling the roses – in this case the aromatic plants.   

When discussing memory stimulants and other benefits of scents, coffee, while not an herb, cannot be left out of the conversation. Scientists would have us smell the coffee to wake up, reporting that the aroma alone of my preferred caffeine brew would awaken us. That can work, but I’ll continue drinking the coffee after its perfume fills my kitchen. Then I’ll smell everything else.

Enjoy!

https://www.bridgeportct.gov/news/whats-smell-it-might-improve-your-memory#:~:text=The%20researchers%20also%20looked%20at,push%2Dups%20or%20running%20faster.

https://www.brownalumnimagazine.com/articles/2008-03-26/scents-sensibility

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5198031/

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/rosemary-oil-benefits

https://www.livescience.com/2614-whiff-coffee-wake.html