Ye Olde Beaumaris Hotel

By Martha Reed

My previous blog entry on a spooky theme concerned a ghost I couldn’t see. Today’s entry is the polar opposite: I saw something that wasn’t there … anymore.

I grew up going to Muskoka, Ontario, Canada for the summers. My family had a cottage there on the lake and before you get any grand ideas the cottage was pretty much well-loved and beat all to pieces. Pine needles stuck out from between the ceiling boards in the bedrooms and every cupboard door had a corner nibbled out of it to make an escape route for one of the numerous hungry chipmunks that roamed freely about the place. But we loved it, and since I went up to the cottage every summer, it was my home.

We also had access to an old wooden runabout boat, which my sister Boo-Boo could drive. I never learned, mostly because it was so creaky and old that trying to drive it made me crazy. The gearshift came up through a slot in the floor, and you had to press your right foot against it to keep the gearshift in place while the boat was running. The throttle was a chrome handle on the steering wheel and it liked to stick, too, so if you weren’t paying attention and you turned the boat hard right the accelerator went right along with the turning wheel and suddenly you were going right really FAST.

Anyway, so the story goes: my sister Boo, my cousin Nancy, and I were crossing the lake to visit a friend. We were crossing the main channel and right in front of us was the old lake steamer Segwun. Originally there were about a dozen lake steamers cruising up and down the lakes delivering mail, but the other eleven blew over, burned, or sank at some point over the past 100 years. Only old faithful Segwun keeps on plugging away. If you go to Muskoka, she’s still there, and I encourage you to go for a ride and see traveling the way it used to get done before they invented roads.

So there we were, crossing the lake, and as we crossed the Segwun’s wake, we got bounced around a bit and I looked up and realized that if I had been a passenger on the Segwun 100 years ago and looked to my left I would have seen the old Beaumaris Hotel still standing on the bluff where it had stood until 1947 when it burned to the ground before I was born.

So, I looked left and there it was.

I remember thinking: Holy crap, there it is! And I was amazed because to my recollection I had never even seen a picture of the old Beaumaris Hotel before, I had only heard stories about it from my grandparents generation. I know no one ever mentioned the long rows of dormer windows I saw or the boardwalks along the shore or the pennant that was snapping in the wind from the single tower. I also knew that I was going to lose the image of the hotel as soon as I blinked and so of course, I did blink and Poof! It was gone, just like that.

This time my cousin Nancy caught the surprised look on my face and she asked me: What did you see? And I stammered: I just saw the old hotel, the old Beaumaris hotel.

She laughed and told me to have another beer but she changed her mind when I pointed out something that none of us could have known and that was where the hotel was located because I saw the hotel standing further down along the shore where the golf pro shack was instead of on the shore where everyone always said the hotel had been. When I went back and asked my grandfather about the location he confirmed that where I had seen it was correct and that in general people were wrong about where it had once stood.

So, the next time I stand on the putting green of the 18th hole, I'm going to pause and remember that I'm standing on the location of the old hotel veranda and I'm going to look out across the gorgeous lake vista and keep an eye out for the old Segwun and then I shall see what I shall see!

Lights, Camera

by Gina Sestak

The theme of the month is scary things.  Polls consistently show the one thing that scares most people more than ghosts or vampires or even death itself is having to speak in public.

Luckily,  I've never had much of a problem with that.  I chalk that up to having absolutely no self-esteem.  When you expect to screw up and look like a total nincompoop, there's no risk of letting yourself down.   Besides, I've developed a practice of imagining the worst case scenario:  what is the worst thing that can possibly happen if I forget this speech midway and start to giggle?  The worst thing is that some terrorist or other hostile person will choose that moment to blow up the building.  Compared to that, whatever comes to pass is much, much better.  See?  No reason to be afraid of looking like an idiot if you are still standing up and in one piece.

This way of thinking about speaking in public has gotten me through standard speeches and acting on stage.  It has held up for courtroom appearances and even appellate argument.  Now, though, it has started to break down because I'm doing a different kind of public speaking.  A scary kind.

I'm taking a class on Acting for the Camera.   Every week, students are expected to prepare a short script and perform it while being filmed.  That is horrifying.  Not so much the act of speaking the script itself.  No.  The scary part is seeing the playback.

Most of you who know me know that I don't look all that great in person.  I look 100% better in person, though, than I do on videotape.  Yikes!   This is what I usually look like:
On videotape, I look about a gazillion years old, with bad skin and hair, and a truly bizarre-looking nose.  Luckily, I don't have an example to attach here.

It's some consolation that the younger people in my class, most of whom are very attractive, look pretty awful on screen, too.  I'm blaming the lighting.  In class, we are lit by a single bounce light coming from the right.  It makes our teeth look big and bright and our noses seem atrocious.  This is not how most people are lit on screen.

Look at someone in real life.  You will notice that their nose leaves a noticeable shadow on their face.  In movies and on tv, there are no such shadows.  Even in scenes set outdoors in bright sunlight, or in the middle of the night beneath a glowing moon, you will almost never see a strong shadow.    This is because shadows help bring out every flaw in a person's face.  And noses look weird enough already without obscuring a part of them.  [Have you ever actually looked at anybody's nose for any length of time?  They are ALL STRANGE LOOKING.]

Most scenes are lit by more than one light source to get rid of shadows.  One standard set-up puts a strong light - the key light - on one side of the actor's face, with a weaker fill light on the other, and a back light behind the head.  This set-up gives enough weak shadow to keep the actor looking three-dimensional, without creating defined dark areas on the face - a shadow of a pimple makes it look as if it's much, much bigger than it really is, sort of like a mountain on the surface of the moon.

As horrifying as the appearance part of the video is, that is not the worst part.  Ever harder to watch is the camera's way of picking up every flaw in the performance.  A millisecond pause to think of the next line is glaringly obvious.  A split second glance at the instructor ["Am I doing this right?'] completely breaks the illusion that you're talking to the audience.  Every pause seems minutes long.  Watching this is really, really scary and is causing me to develop a profound respect for on-air new readers.  It is harder than it looks.

What about you?  Does public speaking scare you?  Have you ever watched yourself perform on video?

My Scary Story

by Laurissa

This month our theme here at the Working Stiffs is scary or spooky stories. Well the story that I’m going to tell you is a true one, and it happened to me. It was Halloween, and my family had just moved into our house that summer before the start of the new school year. I was fifteen, too old to trick-or-treat, but wanted to do something that made the day feel like Halloween. I had been feeling a bit down that fall and a little like a fish out of water as I was, once again, the new girl at school. At least that’s how I recall it, so I asked my parents if I could pass out the candy. Looking back on that night, I don’t remember where my sisters and brother were. However, I knew that my mother was somewhere in the house as was my father.

Of course back in the seventies, trick-or-treating didn’t occur during daylight hours, but when it was actually dark. We didn’t have many trick-or-treaters that night and I remember feeling disappointed. That was when I noticed a lone trick-or-treater coming up over the slight hill and across our front yard. I felt warning signs go off as I noticed that this wasn’t a small child but definitely a larger child, maybe a teenager, walking on his knees wearing a black ski mask and what appeared to be some sort of a military fatigue jacket. The details becoming clearer as he or she came closer to the glow from the front porch light.

I tried to calm myself by saying that this was a teenager, like me, wanting to eek the last little bit possible out of the holiday, and was trying to appear as a child in order to still get candy, but my heart was still racing. Since we were new to the area, I didn’t have any idea whether or not this was someone from the neighborhood.

I didn’t want to insult this person by closing the door, as he or she had already seen me standing there, although my better instincts were screaming to “SHUT THE DOOR!” Instead I just stood there as they crawled up on the front porch, still on their knees. When he said “trick or treat” in a distinctly deep adult male voice, and held his bag out, I noticed that these were not the hands of a teenager holding the bag, but of a man. My heart pounded into overdrive. It was pounding so loudly that I could hardly hear myself think. I took a very shaky handful of candy and I tried to form the thought that I would hurriedly drop it in his bag so that he would soon leave. All the while, I was thinking don’t let him see that you’re afraid.

As soon as I held the candy out to his bag, he lunged forward, grabbed my hand and wouldn’t let go. I wrenched my hand out of his grasp and ran away from the front door back through the house headed towards the back door. I couldn’t scream. All that I could do was, to run. I tried to scream, but nothing came out. He was now up off of his knees, as I heard his footsteps pounding after mine and his breathing muffled from the ski mask. I remember glimpsing my mother, as I ran by, sitting on the couch in the family room, putting her hair up in rollers with the TV on and a book or magazine in her lap. I remember this so clearly and my not being able to scream or say anything, I was so afraid; I was running for my life. He was after-- me.

I burst out the back door onto the driveway, letting the storm door slam shut, running to who knows where. The back storm door then immediately slammed a second time as he followed. It was then that I distantly  heard my father laughing and hollering at me to stop running, and I turned to see my dad holding a ski mask wearing a previously unseen fatigue jacket.

And people think that the parents of teenagers have it rough! :-)

PSP Citizen's Police Academy: Week 1

Orientation

by Annette Dashofy

It’s been over two years since I attended the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police Citizen’s Police Academy. My certificate, pin, and class photo maintain a prominent spot above my desk. If you’re a writer who isn’t a cop, writing about cops, I doubt there is a better source of information and research than your local Citizen’s Police Academy.

So when I heard about another CPA, this one held by the Pennsylvania State Police, I printed out the registration form, filled it out and popped it in the mail in record time.

Class began last Tuesday evening at the Pittsburgh Technical Institute, a mere half hour drive from home (beats the hour and a half drive through rush hour traffic that I endured for the Pittsburgh classes).

Troopers Robin Mungo and Joe Christy led the orientation. First tidbit of knowledge gleaned: PA State Police don’t wear a badge. They have one, but don’t have to display it.

Once we’d all been officially signed in, Officer Mike Spagnoletti of Allegheny County Police Department took over and gave the class a rundown of his department.

Most counties have sheriff’s departments. Allegheny County, however, also has their police department, which originated in 1932. It has four divisions: Headquarters, Uniform, Detective, and Training. The Detective Division is further broken down into Homicide (and Allegheny County’s clearance rate is very high on homicides), Narcotics, and General Investigations.

Just a few odds and ends that you might find useful in your writing:

Part of the General Investigations unit involves audio-visual forensics. They clear up video or reconstruct damaged or destroyed tapes, CDs, or DVDs. I kept picturing NCIS’s McGee and Abby.

Those computers in police vehicles are called MDTs or Mobile Data Terminal.

Next week I’ll be back here on my regular Wednesday slot with CPA Week #2: the Driving Simulator.

In the meantime here are a few photos of our class room at PTI.

This is a poster of the evolution of police uniforms.

And a couple of posters showing forensic firearm identification. Very cool.

I'm not sure who this guy is, but he hangs around in the front of the room. He's definitely the strong, silent type.

To give you an idea of what else is coming up, a few items on our agenda include making some traffic stops, 

a visit to the ME's office, a tour of the jail, and an evening in night court. Stay tuned!

Five Things I Learned on My First Ghost Hunt (and some really fun other stuff)

By Tamara Girardi

So, this month is spooky October. I love October. It's my birthday month; the fall colors are gorgeous, and the weather is perfect. But nothing beats Halloween.

One of my coolest ghostly tales involves my ghost hunting adventure at Mansfield Reformatory in Ohio. It's been a while, but the experience has stayed with me for sure. For your enjoyment, I'm reposting my blog entry from immediately following the ghost hunt. Enjoy!

1. I am nothing like Leia Angeletti, my brave, 17-year-old ghost-hunting heroine.

2. I am a big scaredy-cat.

3. Fear of heights and a cell block with a low railing do not mix.

4. I am not patient enough to hang out and wait for a spirit to manifest.

5. I'm a really bad ghost hunter!

The picture to the right is my favorite from last night. In it, you can see down the long hallway of the West Cell Block at the Manfield State Reformatory. If you notice the cells are on the right, and to the left is basically a cage.

The East Cell Block has no cage. There is simply a hip-high railing, and as you can imagine, several inmates were thrown to their death as a result.

The building itself is amazing. In the video posted here yesterday, a former prisoner compared it to Dracula's castle. That's an incredibly appropriate comparison for several reasons.

The exterior is spooky yet gorgeous. The architecture demands attention and fools new visitors into believing the interior could be palace-like. As you can imagine, though, that anticipation doesn't deliver.

Inside, paint is chipping from the cell bars, walls, and ceilings. Wooden floors in the former wardens' living quarters soften as you walk over them creating nearly as much fear and anxiety as the graffiti on the walls and the violent history the tour guide revealed, which plays in your mind throughout the night.

The Attic

As the stories go, an inmate was helping with work in the attic once upon a time. The guards left him, and he committed suicide by hanging. Although many of the members of Spirited Ghost Hunting have been to Mansfield several times, they had never been in the attic. It was too dangerous - because of the mess, not because of the ghosts.

But after scarfing some pizza, we headed for the attic above the East Cell Block in a group of 8 around 11 p.m. We wandered around in the dark, flash lights bouncing off the walls and lingering on massive holes in the ceiling where plaster was peeling and hanging low, feet shuffling against the mounds of dirt and dust.

Across the attic were what appeared to be shower stalls like this one, which brings me to our first point of investigation.

My husband and I were standing in this stall while other groups were in adjacent stalls. Everyone was doing their best to be still and quiet while we recorded some electronic voice phenomenon or EVPs.

Rachelle, Spirited Ghost Hunting's fearless leader, was asking questions such as why are you here, what year is it, and what is your name?

She asked if anyone was there could they give us a sign. We heard a bang on hollow metal. I recognized the sound immediately. A few minutes earlier another hunter Tonya and I had squeezed through a small door frame to find an old furnace and stairs to other aged heating or water devices. That area is on the other side of the wall from the shower stalls.

Rachelle asked more questions and again asked for a sign, a noise of any kind or movement in the room. At that moment, Dom moved next to me.

"Did you hear that?" he asked.

"Yeah, stop moving," I told him, fearing we were going to get yelled at for improper ghost hunting etiquette. We were supposed to be quiet!

"No, someone threw something at me," he said. I was standing in the doorway of the stall, so it didn't come from that direction.

The rest of the group came into our little stall. We flashed lights on the floor and found a piece of glass. Glass hitting the floor made sense with the sound both of us had heard. I assumed he stepped on something or dropped something, but he insisted the glass either fell through the hole in the ceiling of the stall or the hole on the wall.

Tonya and I insisted no one was in that room. We had just been back there. To investigate, we all filed through the doorway into the next room to find a few other ghost hunters enjoying the joke they'd just played on us!

A couple more things about the attic before we move on. The history in the building is obviously incredible. It was opened in 1896 and first housed youth offenders. They were taught trades and "reformed" before being released. Then around World War I, more serious adult offenders called it home. At one time, it housed Death Row. Although its capacity is 1,100 prisoners, the most it ever held was 3,600. Clearly, overcrowding was an issue.

That's one of the reasons why in the 1970s, officials were pushing to have it closed. The decision was made in 1978, and it took 12 years to transfer all of the prisoners before the doors closed to corrections in 1990. Now, it's privately owned and preserved as a historical landmark.

I'm not sure why so many prisoners were up in the attic or why the place hasn't gotten a paint job for 80 years. I guess it's always possible that someone got creative and jotted some notes more recently than that, but above, you can see one of the many "I was here" notes.

It's hard to make out the details, but it's from prisoner 30890, who was transferred from Cleveland to serve at Mansfield in 1933. Some of the notes included reasons for incarceration.

A number or name. A crime. A date. I guess in their everyday lives, those were the most relevant attributes.

The notes illustrate a desire similar to Brooks' need to be remembered in The Shawshank Redemption, which was filmed at Mansfield. The halfway house Brooks lived in when he left the prison was filmed in one of the prison's administration rooms.

But back to the attic. We had one more experiment for the spirits, if they were with us. Four people set their flashlights in the middle of the floor. We crowded around them.

We got our voice recorders ready, and Jami, a really nice guy and fun ghost hunter, started with the questions. The main request was for the spirit to use the battery power in the flashlights as energy, thus shutting the flash light off. A particular line of questioning yielded a flicker in one of the lights.

"Did your family not visit you? Were they ashamed of what you'd done?"

The flicker was very visible. Not groundbreaking research or ironclad proof of paranormal activity, but clearly visible. After a few questions, Jami went back to the family questions again, but no more flickers, and none of the lights were extinguished.

When you're hoping for something to happen, it's hard not to assume or conclude prematurely. For instance, take a look at this photo of Rachelle and Colleen in the attic.

If you look closely above both of their heads, you see orbs. You can see one to the left of Rachelle (who's in the brown shirt and black shorts) and one right above Colleen's head. Farther above them, you see a few other orbs floating around.

I'd conclude these are dust particles. The validity of orbs carries a heavy debate. Some people believe if there is any color to them, it means they are paranormal whereas colorless orbs are simply dust particles. Others rule them out completely. Some, still, jump at any orb in a photograph and are excited about the implications.


*If you're interested in the followup to this post and want to hear some spooky Electronic Voice Phenomenon, link to the post on my blog here.

Getting in the spirit...

By Pat Remick

I have not been visited by the ghosts of dead heroes, pets nor family members. The spirits apparently prefer to spend time with more interesting -- or receptive -- human beings. Therefore, adhering to this month's spooky theme has been a challenge.

My husband suggested writing about our Lhasa Apso (seen here in the most mysterious and ghostly photo I could manage) because legend has it these dogs were bred to guard Tibetan temples against evil spirits.

My dog does have an annoying habit of barking at the wind, but not strangers who come to the house. Perhaps I should give more credence to the possibility that he is preventing ghosts from calling on us. However, I have a difficult time viewing our happy-go-lucky Buddy as a ferocious guardian against otherworldly beings.

Next, I considered writing about what terrifies me, which would be things that could harm the people I love. Fellow New Hampshire author Jodi Picoult readily admits the themes of her best-selling books center around subjects that most frighten her and her hope that by addressing them in fiction, she can prevent these horrible things from happening. I do the same.

Then I gave a great deal of thought to what might frighten others and concluded the unusual thinking processes of people who enjoy writing about crime and murder might very well qualify as spine-chilling.

For example, Buddy and I sometimes take early morning walks through a wooded area and I often wonder if something, or someone, other than the usual forest creatures is watching and waiting to pounce. When the hair rises on the back of my neck, I become very aware that it would be easy for someone to attack, kill me and escape. (At just 18 pounds, Buddy isn't much protection -- remember, he only barks at the wind.) What's more, there are several locations that offer excellent opportunities to conceal a corpse. Believe me, I've looked.

I think that if other people knew how much time mystery writers spend thinking like this, they might find it ... well, unsettling, to say the least.

I can't even engage in recreational activities, such as attempting to climb a mountain with my spouse, without thoughts of murder and mayhem. As I complained to a National Forest Service official recently in an entry on my personal blog, "Because we're mystery writers, we also know that mountain trails provide optimum opportunities for serial killers and other wackos. If we could figure out that someone hiking without ski poles to defend themselves – and no emergency button to push – easily could be dragged off into the woods and murdered, so can they."

It is impossible for me to drive by an overgrown highway median, enjoy the view of a large body of water or even visit a historic fort surrounded by vegetation without thinking: "That would be a good place to hide a body." My husband and I often discuss ways to commit murder -- and not get caught. Reading the ingredients on household products can prompt musings about new opportunities to dispose of people and evidence. An intriguing news story can trigger imaginative and macabre discussions of "what if....?"

Normal people might find these traits peculiar at best -- and possibly even horrifying. But I consider them just part of "getting in the spirit." How about you?

FEAR AND ATTRACTION

by Gina Sestak

The topic of the month is scary things, so I sat down and tried to think about some things that frighten me.  I had to stop.  I got too scared . . .

It's odd, though, that things that terrified people for centuries seem to have morphed into things that are downright attractive.  Take the vampire, for example.

Many cultures have legends about beings - the dead or undead, corporeal or in spirit form - who suck blood from the living.  Sounds pretty horrible, doesn't it?  Early depictions of the vampire on film showed a repulsive creature, one you wouldn't want to run across in a dark alley - or anywhere else!

Bela Lugosi may have been a leading man on stage in his native Hungary, but when he played Dracula in American horror films, he managed to look pretty scary.

I know I'd run screaming if I saw him coming after me.

Anne Rice's vampires are attractive, but they are killers nonetheless.  Even Louis, with all his angst, slaughters humans.

Nowadays,  though, vampires are depicted as attractive, even relatively harmless.  Think Edward Cullen from the Twilight films.

Who wouldn't want him sneaking in through her bedroom window?

[Yeah, I know he's way too young for me, but this is fantasy, OK?]

The werewolf has undergone a similar metamorphosis.

When Lon Chaney transformed beneath the full moon, we knew we'd better run and hide or else he'd tear us
limb from limb.  He couldn't help himself.

Neither could Professor Remus Lupin, the werewolf in the Harry Potter films.  He, too, is a tragic figure, doomed to turn into a monster every month.

Even a man who is pure of heart
And says his prayers by night
May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms
And the moon is shining bright.


Jacob Black, on the other hand, is a hunk, no question.  Even in wolf form he comes across as a nice guy in the Twilight films - at least, if you are Bella Swan and not a vampire.


[Yes, I have read Breaking Dawn, but let's not go there.   That book creeped me out in ways that are neither fun nor even horror.  I mean, the Jacob part was just plain icky.]

So, what do you think?  Do vampires and werewolves scare you?  Or would you rather date a few?