The new site is up!

Hey everybody! 

Thanks for coming by - this blog has been inactive for a while now but we're firing on all cylinders over at the brand-new "Largely the Truth", www.largelythetruth.com

A Strange Little Place: True Paranormal Stories from Revelstoke, Canada

Revelstoke, B.C., Canada, photo courtesy of Sami Lingren

Since April 2012 I've been researching paranormal stories from my hometown of Revelstoke, B.C. with an eye toward publishing them as a book.  These stories range from simple ghost stories to eyewitness accounts of unusual lights in the sky to strange combinations of the two which defy conventional explanations of both.

Just as they did last year, the Revelstoke Current will be running one of my stories a week, beginning today, in the lead-up to Halloween.

My first draft of the manuscript was completed in October 2013 and submitted to a number of publishers.  Llewellyn Worldwide, a Minnesota-based publisher of all all things paranormal, has expressed interest but requires the manuscript to be longer and so I am now back knocking on doors.  In fact, I will be in the Revelstoke area in the second week of October and if you have any experiences you would like to share, please feel free to contact me at the below email address.

The index below is not a complete listing of the stories which will appear in the final version, but represent a sampling of what to expect.

Thanks for reading and should you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me at bren(at)largelythetruth(dot)com

1. Bocci's
1. A Creeping Unease
2. A Blue Flash
3. A New Start
2. The Court House Square
1. The Girl in the Window
2. Voices in the Dark
3. The House on the Bank
3. Ghosts of the Revelstoke Hospital
4. Her Number One Fan
5. The Jealous Spirit of Main Street Cafe
6. As Far Back as I Can Remember...It Was Haunted
7. The Legends of Mount Begbie
1. The Mount Begbie Iceman
2. Watch the Skies
8. The Orange Triangle
1. "We Figured It Was Just a Trick With the Trees"
2. "Two Days Later We Heard Jets"
3. The Military Angle
9. The Pass
1. The Rogers Pass Fireball
2. Missing Time
1. Henry
10. Strange Tales of the Arrow Lakes
1. Fear on the South Road
2. Just Around the Bend
3. 'Strange Object Seen in South Heavens'
4. The Light on the Lake
11. Shadow People and "Gremlins"
12. The Girl on Highway 23
1. "There Was a Young Girl Crying For Help"
2. The Blizzard
13. The Ghost of Henry Colbeck
1. The Man in the Window
2. "There Was This Horrendous Crash"
14. The Man in the Field
15. Eyes in the Fog
16. The Graveyard Next Door
1. "There Were Voices...but There Was Nothing There"
2. "He's Looking at Me...He Looks Really Mad"
3. "Something Was Not Right"
4. "There Was a Rage in There"
17. The Haunting of Holten House
1. A Storied Past
2. Lyda 
3. Charles
4. "I Always Felt As Though Someone Was Going to Push me Down the Stairs"
5. A Territorial Presence
6. Visible Spirits
7. In Dreams

Photo Gallery: Lonesome Creepy - Victoria at Night

My contentious relationship with the sun was established on a summer day in Kelowna, BC when I was four years old and overheated to the point of having a seizure.  My memory prior to the seizure is vague; we were at the now-shuttered Kelowna Grand Prix "family fun centre" and so all I recall is seeing a row of refrigerator-sized arcade games before the brown patterned carpet rushed up at me.  However, my post-seizure memory - waking up in hospital a tub of ice - is still vivid and I have spent my life since then avoiding the possibility of a repeat performance, and thus the sun, whenever possible.  You could say I'm a bit of a night owl.

While this means I'm useless at the beach and in the early morning, it does allow me to see a different side of the world around me, a perspective my Lonesome Creepy galleries are aimed at capturing.  In this particular batch of photos, I've decided to focus on one particular location - my home of Victoria, BC.  Seeing the city at night has given me a deeper appreciation for a place many people - myself included - dismiss as picturesque but bland.

Many, if not all, of the below photos have appeared on my Instagram feed, albeit in cropped form under the tag #yyjatnight. If you're on IG, please feel free to use that tag and show off your own view of night time in BC's capital.

Click here to find and follow me on Instagram.  

All photos taken with an iPhone 5s