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| Ghosts of the Past |
1. The Real Rose Red House--(Published May 31, 2011) I adore Stephen King's work, and one of my favorite miniseries was the Rose Red series. Who wouldn't love the tale of a spooky house with a mind of its own, hell bent on destroying a team of psychic researchers? Loosely based on several 'true' stories, including the Winchester Mystery House, the Rose Red story, unfortunately is false. However, some awesome marketing with a book, The Diary of Ellen Rimbaur, a companion movie, and a well-crafted website, has served to confuse the hell out of people.
When I wrote The Real Rose Red House, my intention was simply to tell the true hauntings of Thornewood Castle, the home in Washington state where some of the exterior shots were filmed. It has an interesting and spooky history all on its own, without the help of the movie's reputation. But, all those people trying to find out whether or not the story is true seem to find my blog post! I always know when SyFy or another network airs a showing because the daily stats for this entry skyrocket.
2. Buckley Family Murder--(Published October 5, 2012) When a fake story accompanied by a doctored photo started making its rounds on the internet close to Halloween, I decided I had to find out the story behind it all and keep all my information in one handy link on my blog. So, sorry...the Buckley kids did NOT murder their own mother on Halloween...the photo is an art piece. Originally, most of my hits from this entry came from Facebook group pages as people were eager to share the creepy story. Now, however, nearly all hits are coming in off of Pinterest. This blog entry is obviously more popular around Halloween, but it still sees plenty of traffic throughout the rest of the year as well.
3. The Man with Two Faces--(Published March 26, 2014) After American Horror Story released that its theme for the 2014-2015 season was to be Freak Show, I featured a series of blogs about some of my favorite human oddities, including Edward Mordrake/Mordake, who was said to have a second face on the back of his head that whispered terrible things to him at night, prompting his suicide at an early age. Originally, the blog was well received, but things took an unexpected turn for the better when, lo and behold...Edward Mordrake actually showed up in a two-part Halloween special of American Horror Story! Although this entry is less than a year old, it skyrocketed to third place overall, thanks to people looking for additional information on Mr. Mordrake, and through a post on a forum about different mysteries that linked to my blog.
4. The Last House Standing--(Published March 20, 2014) If you've been on Facebook over the past year, I'm sure you've seen the infographic about the little house that survived Hurricane Ike...because it hosted an exorcism there in 1988. This piece of misinformation got passed around so much, that I felt compelled to blog about the TRUE story of The Last House Standing. It couldn't have hosted an exorcism in 1988, because it wasn't even built then! Every time I would see someone post the misleading photograph, I'd share a link to my blog. It's also quite popular on Pinterest for some reason!
5. Lake Shawnee--(Published May 23, 2011) Lake Shawnee is known as one of West Virginia's spookiest places. It's a haunted, 'abandoned' amusement park-- straight out of a Scooby Doo mystery! Featured on several shows and in many different articles, Lake Shawnee's reputation as one of WV's most haunted hot spots is becoming comparable with TALA or Moundsville. I'm just glad that there was enough widespread interest in this location to ensure that an actual West Virginia topic made the Top 5 entries on my blog!
