New Season

Thanks to several of you fellow bloggers out there plenty of competitions have been brought to my attention recently. Plus, with both my writers' clubs in full swing after the summer break and a few workshops coming up there's plenty to be getting on with.

The domestic cricket season has ended and all three cycling Grand Tours are over for this year so there's nothing to distract me from getting down to work.

But wait a minute. The Rugby World Cup has just started, England's cricket tour of the subcontinent will be coming up soon and my own pedal-powered racer is beckoning me from the garage.

Aaaaargh!!!

Searcy State Mental Hospital and The Horror Novel That Has Been Lost in Its Shadows

  

A year and a half ago, I decided to write a blog. I had just signed a contract with Lachesis Press to publish my first novel, Circe, and that was my inspiration for Ghost Stories and Haunted Places.   Circe was inspired by the hospital I did my internship at, Searcy State Hospital in Mt. Vernon, Alabama.   I didn't believe much in ghosts when I worked there, but I knew the place had to be haunted.  The very walls oozed with some unseen presence and whispered of ghosts.   My book, Circe, has had a long and complicated road.  It was the first book I wrote and I've had three books published between the writing of Circe and its publication, but it looks like it might actually be published this October.  I'm thrilled and terrified, because Circe is my darkest work.   I always have to love it, no matter how the book does, because it inspired this blog.  Yet ,Circe is a book that haunts me.  It has been  struggle to publish and took me years to write.  It has been my most difficult book, but here it is, hopefully, ready to be published in October.    So as I get ready to see this lugubrious horror novel in print,  I thought it would be appropriate to re post my blog post about the location that kept me up so many dark nights writing and dreaming of the monsters that might lurk in the shadows of Searcy State Hospital.  

Searcy is one of my favorite haunted places. I did my internship here a very long time ago and I fell in love with it's history and it's white chipped walls. Everything about this old hospital spoke to me. It was even more remarkable because most of those who worked there and lived there every day were oblivious to it's history.  Searcy State Hospital is located in Mt. Vernon, Alabama. Prior to being a state hospital the old hospital has a long and dark history that is very difficult to find, but easy to see upon casual observation. The hospital is encased in long, chipped, white walls that seem as old as anything in the United States. From outside these walls, you can see a battered watchtower that gives testament to the fact that the hospital is in the same location as a 300 year old fort. The fort bears witness to American history. It was originally a French fort and then a Spanish Fort. It switched hands during the Louisiana Purchase and became a US fort. After the US took possession of the fort it was converted to a military arsenal and became known as the Mount Vernon Arsenal.

The Arsenal switched hands again several times and was taken by the Confederates during the civil war only to be passed back over the United States again in 1862. From 1887 to 1894, The Arsenal became a Barracks and was used as a prison for the captured Apache people. The most famous of the Apache people to be held in these barracks was Geronimo. There is a door in the lobby of the old hospital that is labeled as the door to Geronimo's cell.   It is beautiful and intricate.  Sadly, history notes that Geronimo was not kept in a cell during his stay at Mt. Vernon.   He was allowed freedom to wander the barrack, so the door is just a lovely bit of folklore.  The infamous Aaron Burr was also held at this secluded prison at some point after his notorious gun fight.


In 1900 the Barracks were transformed once again and the prison became a mental hospital. Searcy hospital was built as the African American mental hospital in Alabama. Conditions in the hospital were beyond questionable and at one time there were over 2000 patients in the crowded hospital and all were seen by one psychiatrist. All patients were expected to work in the fields.

The hospital was desegregated in 1969, but it’s history is all around it. The hospital is still in used today, and although the residents live in new buildings, many tell stories of ghosts and devils that linger in the white walls and abandoned buildings that surround the new facilities. These stories are usually ignored, because the patients are crazy, but I’m not the only sane person who saw a few ghosts while they were working there.

Hopefully, the book really will be released this fall.  I've had several contracts on Circe and watched them dissolve.  It has been ten years since I started writing this book and thirteen years since I saw the haunting walls of this fog encased institution.  Thirteen is a good number for a horror novel.

Our Dearly Departed

I'm not sensitive to ghosts and I'm not easily spooked, but last night I just about jumped off my sofa.  I was sitting on my couch, watching television like a giant slug.  I heard the dogs barking and looked up at the cat walk.   Both my dogs were chasing what looked like a person walking across the catwalk.  I went crazy.   I was alone in the house very late night with my children and seeing a strange person wandering down the hall being pursued by my frantically barking corgis was enough to set me off.   I went to grab a weapon and pursued the intruder up the stairs.  I was armed and dangerous.   Both my children were upstairs and I didn't want anything touching them.  Suddenly the dogs stopped barking and wandered down stairs.  I did a thorough search and found nothing up stairs.  Both my children were sound asleep and cocooned under a nest of covers.  The house was still and all was quiet.  The dogs slept.

This left me with a bit of a mystery.  There was clearly someone upstairs.  My dogs saw it.  I saw it.  It was an adult person.   I sat down to ponder whether or not both the dogs and I had accidentally ingested LSD when my husband came home.  He reminded me that his mother had died two years ago last night.  He was sad.   I had completely forgotten about the day because I forget all birthdays and anniversaries by default, but now I had to wonder if my unexplained event and the date were related.  I've heard stories of ghosts that only return on the anniversary f their death.  Perhaps this is what I saw.   I saw my mother-in-law going upstairs to check on the grandchildren she loved so much.   I hope so.  There is actually comfort in that thought.  There is comfort that somehow those who have left us can still come back and check on us and make sure we are alright, that they can love us from afar even if we can't always see them.  It is certainly more comforting than my accidental ingestion of LSD theory.  Either way, I'll light a candle for my mother-in-law today.  She and I had our differences, but I miss her now that she is gone. 

And so it begins...

My classes have started piling up. I'm in far too many organizations. And I've signed up for entirely too many competitions.

I have approximately eight clients in my legal clinics. Of these, the ones I want to call do not and the ones I do not want to talk to do....over and over again.

Additionally, I have a job interview coming up in a place I'd really, REALLY like to work (note I said in a place, not a firm). Cover letter is due by noon today.

But on the up side, it's a lovely 51 degrees outside this morning, I got eight full hours of sleep last night, and I'm relatively good-looking.

Maybe I should repeat that in the mirror this morning three times.

Or maybe I should start my day off right....with a shot of tequila.

Happy Thursday, y'all.

Ethicality....it's all relative

So I passed the MPRE after being pretty damn sure I had failed it back at the beginning of August. And I not only passed it, but I passed it by a pretty decent margin! Before I start bragging though, maybe I should consider how the MPRE is actually scored.....

In states across America, people are required to pass this little test with 50 real questions and 10 questions with which they've designed to torture future test-takers . You are scored on a weighted scale, with 50 being the lowest score and 150 being the highest (because I guess a 0 would be too brutal, right?). The highest score required in our great nation to practice is an 86, for the holier-than-thou states of California and Utah (yeah right). In order to get a 100, you have to get anywhere between 32-37 questions right. There's a five question zone because difficulty of the test determines type of scaled scoring. But just to clarify, this constitutes as a 64%-74% "grade," depending on how moronic the particular people are that are taking the test. This awesome site provides an awesome chart that puts the median at about 97, although it's actually lower for August test-takers. This means that the average person is about 70% ethical. Since I am "math-adverse" and don't like discussing statistics (eye twitching is not a good look for me, folks), I'll leave the standard deviations to this guy. (For the record, I'm actually above the curve in ethicality, although I'm pretty sure that means nothing in the practice of law.)

This does NOT take into consideration that to actually pass this thing everywhere, you only have to make an 86. Based on some of my fuzzy math (100/34=2.941 THEN 86/2.941=29.24), I calculated this to mean that in order to practice law, you honestly only have to be 58.5% ethical.

Which is a failing grade on any test I've ever taken.

But trust us....because we're lawyers.

Is a Person Really Haunted or Are They Mentally Ill?

This is a question I deal with a lot.   Sadly, a large number of mentally ill people suffer from delusions of persecutions by demons, the dead, or other supernatural entities.   The devil and demons torment those that suffer from any number of psychotic disorders and medication and proper mental health treatment can help these people live a normal life and take their demons away.  Modern medicine is a miracle in most cases.  People who might have lived locked up in a mental institution 50 years ago can now live relatively normal life free from the terror of the demons that live in their mind.

As I watched some odd show on TV about a young man being tormented by a demon that researchers thought was connected to his haunted house,  I realized that the line between haunting, possession, and true mental illness is blurry to many.  The young man on the show demonstrated classic symptoms of schizophrenia.  He was at the right age for his first psychotic break.  He was having command hallucinations.  His thought patterns were disorganized and he was no longer rational.  To me, this wasn't a haunting, it was a young man who needed help.   For sceptics, this is the obvious answer to all hauntings and demon possessions.  It is easy to say mental illness is the answer.  However,  I think there are ways to see a difference between the supernatural and the natural affects of mental illness.  Obviously, many psychiatrists and therapists don't feel this way, but I think when diagnostic criteria for a mental illness aren't met and treatment doesn't work, other things could be considered.

First,  lets talk about mental illness.  In order to be diagnosed with any mental illness a cluster of symptoms has to be present.  So someone who is describing the ghosts of the dead tormenting them in the absence of other symptoms could really be seeing them (in my opinion).   Here are some examples of  the diagnostic criteria for some mental illnesses in which delusions of ghosts and demons and paranormal events are common:

Paranoid Schizophrenia:
1.Characteristic symptoms: Two or more of the following, each present for much of the time during a one-month period (or less, if symptoms remitted with treatment).

Delusions
Hallucinations
Disorganized speech, which is a manifestation of formal thought disorder
Grossly disorganized behavior (e.g. dressing inappropriately, crying frequently) or catatonic behavior
Negative symptoms: Blunted affect (lack or decline in emotional response), alogia (lack or decline in speech), or avolition (lack or decline in motivation)

2.Social or occupational dysfunction: For a significant portion of the time since the onset of the disturbance, one or more major areas of functioning such as work, interpersonal relations, or self-care, are markedly below the level achieved prior to the onset.

3.Significant duration: Continuous signs of the disturbance persist for at least six months. This six-month period must include at least one month of symptoms (or less, if symptoms remitted with treatment).

 
Schizotypal Personality Disorder:
A.   A pervasive pattern of social and interpersonal deficits marked by cognitive or perceptual distortions indicated by 5 or more of the following:
1.  ideas of reference
2. odd beliefs and magical thinking that are inconsistent with cultural norms such as belief in clairvoyant, telepathy, or a sixth sense.
3.  unusual perceptual experiences, including bodily illusions
4.  odd thinking and speech
5.  paranoid ideation
6.  inappropriate or constricted affect
7.  behavior or appearance that is odd, eccentric, or peculiar
8.  lack of close friends other than first degree relatives
9.  excessive social anxiety that is associated with paranoid fears rather than negative judgements about oneself.
 
Psychotic features can also be present in mood and other disorders that could lead to delusions of persecution from otherworldly forces.   However, when looking at a functional person who believes in ghosts or the supernatural and sees things haunting him the easiest way to determine if he might be really mentally ill or just haunted is to ask if meets other criteria:  Is the person normal otherwise?  Do they have successful, happy interpersonal relationships?  Do they make sense when they talk to you?  Can they hold down a job?
 
An example I have is of a fellow I worked with some years ago in one of the three cities I've worked in.  I worked with this fellow for a long time and he was completely resistant to treatment.  He was a father of three who had a stable job and a happy marriage.    He had no symptoms of bizarre behavior and had many friends.  Out of the blue, a ghost began to torment him.  He went to seek medical help.  He had been in and out of hospitals and never had any medication worked.  As a professional, I couldn't say this, but I had to wonder if his ghost may not have been real?  He was a normal fellow in every other respect and no treatment worked.   He was not superstitious and didn't believe in ghosts himself so he was confounded and angry as to why the mental health community just couldn't help him.
 
I've interviewed many people who have described persecutions by demons and ghosts and haunting.   I've written their stories and I've believed these people, but skeptics and other professional always ask me how I know these people aren't just crazy.  I always answer with the above.  They were otherwise normal, healthy, balanced people.   They had no history of mental illness and when they left their house or escaped the haunting situation they were able to return to a normal life.  It is simple.   Many sane and normal people describe paranormal experiences and once mental illness and natural phenomena are ruled out,  the alternative has to be considered, and maybe that is the most terrifying possibility of all.

I remember....

Like many others, where I was when the Twin Towers went down will forever be branded into my mind.

I was sitting in my ninth grade English teacher's class chatting with her before the bell rang. She always kept CNN on in the morning, and all of a sudden, there were reports of an airplane crashing into the World Trade Center. I specifically remember saying out loud  "Oh my God; what a horrible accident." When the second plane hit, we both realized it was not an accident. And that's when the entire world changed.

Every television in our school was on that day. No one assigned school work. We just sat. And watched. Quietly. Our entire state was on high alert because of the nearby military bases, and as we saw the buildings fall, knew that there were people still inside, we began to realize that there was more to worry about than what we were wearing for homecoming. We saw true heroism. We saw those willing to risk their lives for others and for their country.

The last three years of law school, I have had the same professor read my class a transcript of what occurred on Flight 93: about the group of people that chose to fight their hijackers and died in a Pennsylvania field, rather than in Washington, D.C., when their plane crashed. The strength of the human spirit never fails to amaze me, and that story has never become trite.

It may have occurred ten year ago, when I was only 14 years old, but I remember.

And I will never forget.