It’s generally thought to be a good thing when you are listed on a top ten list. Top ten most likely to succeed. Top ten places to live. Top ten movies in the year 2016. A good thing, right? But, Loomis Street in Naperville, Illinois is listed on a maybe not-so-great top ten list –…
Category: Freaky Friday
When the Nightmare is Actually a Ghost
As a very young child, about the age of four, I had a nightly visitor to my room that terrified me. I remember lying awake in the dark, waiting. For a few nights in a row, this specter would walk through the door of my bedroom, slowly and deliberately, and head straight for my bed….
Happy Halloween – Manic Monday!
How could I not do a ghost story on Halloween? I have to admit; it was really hard deciding on which stories to tell. I wanted a couple of stories that would send goosebumps up your arms, because that’s what a good Halloween ghost story should do. So, I decided that I would tell you…
Joe the Electrician
Joe was under a tight deadline. He had married the woman of his dreams and now he, his wife and her school-aged daughter were anxious to start their lives together. They had all shopped for the right piece of property to build their new home. And they all fell in love with it as soon…
Your Mawmaw would have loved you
I often think that as I rock one of my three grandchildren. I never met anyone so in love with their grandchildren than my kids’ Mawmaw. Mawmaw was born in Mississippi and lived there for most of her life, with brief stops in Louisiana and Illinois. She had beautiful blue eyes, a happy smile, and…
Close the Closet Door
This week’s Freaky Friday is “ghost-written” 🙂 by my very own sister – Maureen Tan. It freaked me out! I hope you enjoy it too!!! As much as I hate to admit (because it sounds silly, doesn’t it?) I can’t fall asleep in my bedroom if the closet door is open. It’s not like I…
More Gettysburg
Several years ago, I had the distinct pleasure to speak at the Illinois Paranormal Society Annual Conference. I met quite a few very interesting people, and I’ll share some of their stories in later Freaky Fridays, but today I wanted to share one of the stories told by their keynote speaker, Mark Nesbitt. The cool…
My House is Haunted
I asked my good friend Ophelia Julien to share one of her own ghost stories for Freaky Friday. Enjoy! He began dating her during fall term of their Freshman year in college. Neither he nor she was looking for a serious or exclusive relationship at the time, so they were content with the occasional date….
Penny Candy
It was a dark Halloween night. A cold drizzle soaked the leaf-covered sidewalks and extinguished jack-o-lanterns that perched on porch railings and steps, their cold, dark, empty faces even more frightening than their candled-glowing ones from earlier that night. The year was 1964 and this Chicago neighborhood was a combination of single-family homes, apartment buildings and,…
Gettysburg’s Legacy
The Civil War battle at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania was a turning point in the war and the war’s bloodiest battle with about 10,000 men killed within the space of three days. I’ve traveled to Gettysburg a few times and it’s a solemn place. It’s not surprising that there are a multitude of ghost stories from the…