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

The Thing About the Desert...Part 2

On September 24, 2013 I returned from a two week vacation during which I flew to Texas and ended up taking a 3600 mile road trip across six states, along the way visiting four national parks and catching up with a friend I hadn't seen since the first time we met five years ago, when I threatened his life over a card game in Morocco.  

Along the way, my friend and I decided to look into local ghost stories and ended up with one of our own.  This is part 2 of that story.

Click here to read part 1 first
Click here for part 3

A look at Google Earth shows the area to be dotted here and there with houses but on the ground, in the dark, the turnoff to Angel Canyon Road from Highway 89, some six miles into the desert north of Kanab, felt so remote it may as well have been the far side of the moon.  After leaving the highway we followed the road down a small rise, past low shrubs and patches of scrub grass, to the start of the 350-acre Best Friends Animal Sanctuary.

Best Friends is noted as being America’s largest sanctuary for companion animals, recognized for their commitment to their “no-kill mission”; they believe that 90% of shelter animals are adoptable, or could be with the proper care and treatment.  It seemed a bit grim, then, that the sole reason we were in the neighborhood was on the off chance of seeing someone wearing a fur pelt and firing pellets of ground-up human body at their enemies, but that didn’t stop us. 

Aw, that's cute.  Now make with the evil witches

The Thing About the Desert...Part 1

On September 24, 2013 I returned from a two week vacation during which I flew to Texas and ended up taking a 3600 mile road trip across six states, along the way visiting four national parks and catching up with a friend I hadn't seen since the first time we met five years ago, when I threatened his life over a card game in Morocco.  

Along the way, my friend and I decided to look into local ghost stories and ended up with one of our own.  This is part 1 of that story.

If you've already read part 1, click here to be taken to part 2

Those of you who read this site regularly will recall that I don’t find the desert to be a particularly exciting place.  Apart from the odd dramatic vista and infrequent lightning storms, the many hours I've spent driving across the desert have mainly consisted of scanning radio frequencies looking for something – anything – to distract myself from the agonizing pace at which the miles on my GPS screen tick down.  Yet, like so many things I claim to dislike – CostCo, social gatherings, Las Vegas – I find myself drawn back to the desert again and again.

The reading I’ve done in “paranormal” literature since beginning to write my book of ghost stories, and - oddly enough - the blog for dating site OK Cupid would like me to believe I’m wrong, that there is a great deal more happening in the desert than I thought but it took my road trip to the Grand Canyon last September to convince me.

Midnight at the Waffle House, Part 2

Click here to catch up on part 1

The first Waffle House was opened by Joe Rogers and Tom Forkner in the Atlanta suburb of Avondale Estates.  The two men had met in 1949 when Rogers, at the time working for the national restaurant chain Toddle House, had bought a home from real-estate agent Forkner and the pair became friends.  Rogers, who had grown tired of miserably toiling away in other people's restaurants and decided it was his turn to make someone miserable, sold Forkner on the idea of starting their own diner and, in 1955, Waffle House was born.

Joe Rogers and Tom Forkner. I don't dare make jokes about either.

Another soon opened in 1957, by 1960 there were a total of four and though it has never grown to Denny's-level ubiquity, Waffle House has become a fixture along the highways of America’s southeast.

On that night in Austin, heavy construction along Ben White Boulevard meant the access road leading to this particular Waffle House was reduced to a miserable dirt path in a dark gap between streetlights and consequently it took Mike and me two passes before we could find the thing.

Just up the road sat a Denny's, it's gleaming, modern interior a beacon of hospitable sterility, with a driveway plainly visible from the road; in comparison, Waffle House looked like an old screen door banging in the wind at the end of a donkey track.   However, by this point we had invested so much time in trying to get to Waffle House that giving up wasn’t an option and had abandoning the vehicle across three lanes of freeway and walking been the only avenue left to us, we would have seriously considered it.