Ghost Stories for the Holidays

By CHRISTOPHER BYRNE

As the song suggests, ghost stories are a beloved part of our holiday celebrations. The “spooky season” doesn’t end with Halloween, and the origins of the tradition date back centuries. On long, dark, cold, winter nights, families would gather close to the fire and entertain one another with scary tales. Some also believe that winter is also the time when the veil between the dimensions thins, and you might be more susceptible to specters during these months.

It was Charles Dickens in 1834 with the publishing of A Christmas Carol, who firmly established the ghost/Christmas connection, and the Victorians loved it. Even Queen Victoria herself became a believer in the paranormal and attended seances and after the death of her husband Albert. Ironically, the rise of spiritualism in Victorian England stood cheek-by-jowl with advances in science and the materialists who thought spiritualism ridiculous.

The belief in the hereafter and the interest in the paranormal persists nonetheless, and today, interest is at an all-time high with TV shows, podcasts, books, ghost tours, and more purporting to lift the veil between dimensions and providing a look for the curious…and perhaps some convincing. You never know.

Author and paranormal investigator Susan Cummins is a believer. She has investigated some of the most haunted sites in the world—and even lives in a haunted house…well condominium, which she says she shares with three ghosts. And she’s seen them—as have guests. Cummins says, at least two guests have reported seeing “a flash of a person walking into my closet,” to which she jokes, “I have a ghost that loves Prada.”

Using technology that has been developed specifically for paranormal investigation, Cummins and her fellow investigators have recorded images and voices, and experience unexplained presences first-hand. While in the 19th Century, mediums sought to contact the dead mysteriously, today, technology allegedly scares up the spirits.

I had the opportunity to go along on an investigation last summer, and I have to say I came away saying, “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy,” to quote Shakespeare.

Using what’s called an SLS camera, we were able to see figures in a haunted theater that were not there physically. The cameras were designed specifically for ghost hunting, and they create skeletal images of everyone in a space. Everyone in the room appears as a stick figure. What we saw were those of us in the room—and two others. Upstairs, we saw a figure sitting in a box watching the stage. I started out skeptical but open-minded and ended up intrigued at the possibility that we had stared across the dimensional divide.

When asked about her fascination with ghost hunting, Cummins says, “We all want to believe in miracles and that there’s magic out there. I love investigating because it’s like finding confirmation that we exist beyond this life. We all want to know if that’s true. It’s been a personal quest to understand if we exist beyond this realm.”

Cummins adds that while many authors have, “twisted ghosts into stories about dark evil. That’s not what we’ve seen. It’s about love and forgiveness, and paranormal investigators want to know the personal stories of the people who are left behind and try to figure it out from the history of a location.”

Cummins has taken her many years of experience—and one encounter in particular—and turned them into an engaging family story…one that just happens to have communication over the dimensional divide.

“The uncle of a girlfriend of mine had died, and the family gathered for his funeral. The uncle had been very wealthy and had a sophisticated security system that could identify movement—and who was moving if they had been entered into the system. As they were at the funeral, they got a message that someone was walking through the house…and it was the uncle.”

At that point, Cummins says, the entire story came to her, and Within the Wake started to take shape. She interviewed technology experts, mediums, and noted paranormal investigator Bill Chappell, who developed much of the technology used in ghost hunting. The resulting story is as heartfelt as it is, at times, delightfully chilling. Cummins is a wonderful storyteller and says the goal was to encapsulate her experiences and beliefs into a story people could relate to.

She believes she had some supernatural help as well. After working her day job in the medical field, she would come home and write into the early hours of the morning. “As I wrote, I would get into this ‘open space,’ and the next day I would read what I had written and have no memory of it,” she says.” “I felt like I was being guided by the other side…or else I was very tired.” Healthy skepticism is part of paranormal investigation, but Cummins adds that creatively, the writing process felt like magic.

The story follows James Allen and his family as they discover a path between dimensions and a way to heal old losses and come to believe that there may be something beyond what they see. Cummins says, the story is “wrapped up in the idea of family being taken from us, and the love of a past existence can still communicate with us.”

“We’re here on this planet to appreciate every single day and to love those people every day without the regret of words not spoken. Those lessons are important every day, but at the holidays, we’re reminded that Christmas is a symbol of love that doesn’t know time.

“So, we have a little spookiness, and some darkness, and the hope that we’ll all be together again, that we’re never far from each other, and we hear each other even if we’re not in the same room.”

Within the Wake is available at Amazon.

Cummins and others note that Connecticut is very active in the paranormal realm. The ghosts here are different—at least some of them. Cummins notes that ghosts who have been around for centuries, like many she’s encountered in haunted castles in Ireland and Scotland, are tied to the places where they lived.

If you’re thinking of embarking on your own ghostly adventure, the Connecticut Tourism Board has compiled a list of some of the most haunted locations in the state. Many of these have tours, and there are self-guided tours for many, if you plan to venture out one day, or, if you’re daring, after dark.

Among the noted spectral spaces are:

The Mark Twain House, Hartford. There have been sightings of a mysterious lady in white walking about—and the lingering smell of cigar smoke where none have been lit for many years.

The Fairfield State Hospital. Though it closed in 1955, this former institution for the criminally insane is said to have many hauntings. Cummins says such places are ripe for paranormal investigation, and she has investigated several closed sanitoriums.

The Shubert Theater, New Haven. Theaters are reportedly full of ghosts. From the Belasco in New York to the Avalon Hollywood, and so many more, one may encounter those who didn’t know when to exit.

The Captain Daniel Parker Inne, Mystic. This Colonial landmark is said to be haunted by Ada Bryon Clift, who died of Scarlet Fever at the Inn in 1874. Visitors say she is still there, and there are even reports of Ada playing with contemporary visiting children.

Whether you’re a believer, a non-believer, or a skeptic who could be convinced, ghost hunting can be a fun way to delve into history—and spend some time exploring historic Connecticut as well.