I did once, many years ago, and I think it was my mom. The problem with encounters between the spirit world and ours is that you can never tell with complete certainty who paid you a visit, or even if anything happened at all. It’s all a guessing game. Coincidences. But the outcome is always the same: your pulse is sent racing, you’re not quite clear what happened and are left completely changed by the experience.

Back to my mom. She and I were very close, yet I doubt we ever got along. She could never come to grips with my wanderlust, while my mom left me bewildered by her need to keep a tight control over my restless spirit.

Our ghostly encounter happened on the night she died. I was at university in Guelph, Ontario, some 415 kilometers (~260 miles) away from where she was recovering from an illness in Ottawa, Ontario. It was late afternoon. I had finished my last exam for the year before heading home, and ended up alone because my landlady was away. I decided to fry something for supper.

All was fine until around 5pm, when the oil burst into flames. In a panic, I shifted the burning pan off the stove. Then I had the not-so-brilliant idea of carrying it out to the balcony before the whole house filled with smoke. I picked up the pan and some of the burning oil sloshed out and splashed my jean-clad leg and landed onto the kitchen floor. I did manage to get the hot pan outside where I found something big enough with which to cover the flames. House only a little smoky and fire put out, I breathed a sigh of relief and returned to check on the kitchen floor.

The linoleum was scorched and pealing. I knelt to look at it closely and noticed the stain on my jeans. The material was soaked through but not burned. Neither was my leg even slightly injured. Odd, but I didn’t pay much attention to that since I was more concerned about how to tell my landlady that I’d ruined her kitchen floor.

Later that night, I lay in bed after confessing my misdeed to my landlady, wondering how I had escaped a serious burn on my leg. A knock startled me. Since I was closest to the front door and wide-awake, I went to answer.

It was my brother, who, instead of calling first, had driven all the way to Guelph to tell me that our mom had died – around 5pm that day. That’s when I began to wonder if that oil bursting into flames and yet not burning me and my mom dying might somehow be connected. Had she come by to say goodbye?

A fairytale-inspired Regency romance (ghost story)

I used some of that disturbing feeling from my fiery experience in describing my heroine’s encounter with the ghost at Clearview Manor in A Beastly Scandal. This novel is a fairytale-inspired Regency romance in which a feisty beauty tries to cleanse a home of a restless spirit terrorizing its occupants, despite the beastly lord of the manor insisting that there is no such thing as a ghost.

Have you ever had an inexplicable experience? Seen a cat stare off into space as if looking at something that you can’t see? Felt a presence nearby when you would have sworn you were alone?

It’s almost time for Halloween, when ghosts are said to roam the streets. So come share your thoughts on this chilling subject. One fortunate commenter will be randomly chosen to win a FREE pdf  (or Kindle) of A Beastly Scandal, an enchantingly romantic, ghost story.

To learn more about A Beastly Scandal, you can read the entire Chapter One on my website or view the video Book Trailer.

This post is in loving memory of my unforgettable mom.