Haunted Halloween 2012: Guest Post - Auracle author, Gina Rosati + A GIVEAWAY!!!

Ghosts
By Gina Rosati
Auracle (Roaring Brook Press/Macmillan)


        When I was a little kid, my first floor bedroom had a lovely view of the basement door.

Gina purchased this photo from Shutterstock

        My parents finished our basement so we’d have a playroom, but it still felt dark and suffocating to me, like a wood-paneled grave. I knew the oil burner growled like a hungry beast, and its flame was responsible for the faint light that flickered through the crack under the basement door in the darkest nighttime hours, but my imagination has always run on the wild side … I spent way too many  childhood night-hours listening, watching, waiting for Frankenstein’s monster and his friends to stagger up the stairs and smash that door down.

Gina purchased this photo from Shutterstock

Ohai - we are here to scare the crap outta you!

        Even creepier was the hazy white shadow that often seemed to hover around the door. I couldn’t figure out if it was something sinister (ghost!) or my imagination messing with me.
        Grown-ups don’t always realize that kids can hear them. Years before I was born, Everest Road was a hill that was big enough to drive up. My father and his brother razed that hill to build the house we lived in. Buried in the dirt, they found an entire outfit of woman’s clothing, including silk stockings and high-heeled pumps. I heard my father randomly mention this one day, but back then children were seen and not heard, so I never asked, but I remember wondering what if? What if some lady was murdered right here and her ghost is haunting my basement door! 
        I asked my mother if ghosts existed. “Of course not,” she assured me. This is the same woman who hauled me to church every Sunday so I could listen to talk about the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. “That’s different,” she argued.
        But is it? I am drawn to conversations about ghosts like a moth to flames. And after listening to the experiences of some of very sane, rational people I know, I am absolutely, 100% convinced that ghosts exist.

-    One couple and their children lived in a brand new house that was built for them. When their oldest daughter was about 10, she told her mom there was a girl who kept coming into her room. The parents thought the girl was a figment of their daughter’s imagination until one night, they heard a knock at their partially closed bedroom door. When they looked up, they thought it was their daughter who reached in and closed their door, except the mom didn’t recognize the flannel nightgown the girl was wearing. She got up and went to her daughter’s room, but her daughter was sound asleep and was not wearing a flannel nightgown.  On several occasions when she went to make her daughter’s bed, and there would be an indentation as if someone were lying down, which went away as she approached the bed. One day while the mom was taking a shower, she heard someone knock softly at the door, but the only person at home was her infant daughter, who was sleeping in her crib. She often heard a dog bark when her own dog was sleeping.  They knew on the far back of their property, there was a burnt out foundation from over a hundred years before, and after much investigation, they learned that a girl named Mary and her dog had died in the fire. Once the daughter left for college, Mary’s visits stopped.

-    Another friend lives in an antique house near the center of town. When she first moved in, for several weeks, she couldn’t figure out why the front door was always unlocked in the morning. She remembered locking it at night, but in the morning, it would be unlocked. She often heard footsteps going up and down the stairs when she was home alone. They knew that the builder of the home, a retired sea captain, had died there, so she figured he has a thing about locked doors.

-    A woman I used to work said whenever she had company visit, her resident ghost knocked pictures off the walls. Apparently, ghosts can be antisocial, too.

-    When my mom died, I put a few framed photos of her and a stained glass angel on a shelf, where they sat uneventfully for 4+ years. One morning, I woke up to find the photos and angel had all fallen over, which I thought was odd until I learned that my cousin’s 19 year old son, who had been in a serious car accident, had passed away the night before.

-    I live in New England, home to dozens of famously haunted places, including The Country Tavern Restaurant http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/living/travel/871425-224/nashua-restaurant-seemingly-haunted-by-ghost-of.html and The Common Man http://merrimack.patch.com/articles/travel-back-in-time-the-common-man#comment_1133027 which is said to be haunted by a couple of ghosts. The former owner committed suicide over a hundred years ago and people have said they’ve seen a gentleman wearing an old fashioned suit sitting at a table, but when they look again, he’s gone. Also, a waitress I spoke with said her friend went to the basement to get a bottle of wine and encountered a Native American in full headdress.

-    I have a friend who is really tuned in to the spirit world, and one day as we drove by a cemetery, she shuddered. “Busy place in there,” she remarked.

This picture is one of Gina's own

When I told this friend that my daughter and I were heading to the local cemetery to take a photo for this blogpost, she told me to bring a bottle of salt water to pour over the soles of our shoes before we get back into the car to keep from bringing any negative energy back with us.

Awesome. I’m home alone and I’ve managed to scare myself silly.

Gina’s debut novel is AURACLE, a YA paranormal romance about an out-of-body experience gone terribly wrong. 

Title: Auracle
Author: Gina Rosati
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press, 304 Pages (August 7th, 2012)
Add to: Goodreads

Synopsis: 16 year old Anna Rogan has a secret she's only shared with her best friend, Rei; she can astrally project out of her body, allowing her spirit to explore the world and the far reaches of the universe.

When there's a fatal accident and her classmate Taylor takes over Anna's body, what was an exhilarating distraction from her repressive home life threatens to become a permanent state. Faced with a future trapped in another dimension, Anna turns to Rei for help. Now the two of them must find a way to get Anna back into her body and stop Taylor from accusing an innocent friend of murder. Together Anna and Rei form a plan but it doesn't take into account the deeper feelings that are beginning to grow between them.

Bio:


Gina Rosati lives in southern NH with her husband, two teenagers and two chubby guinea pigs. When she’s not writing, she’s volunteering at her middle school library or playing with pretty/shiny yarn and beads. You can haunt her on: Website | Blog | Twitter | Facebook 

Order Auracle Online:

Amazon | Barnes and Noble | The Book Depository

ENTER to WIN a HUGE PRIZE PACK INCLUDING A SIGNED COPY OF AURACLE!!

• ONE winner will receive the following - Gina’s prize pack consists of a personalized, signed hardcover of Auracle, a swag bag with an Auracle bookmark, magnet, button, silicone bracelet, sticker, and an uber-fancy beaded bookmark.

What's an uber-fancy bookmark? So glad you asked :) Since Auracle’s main character, Anna, loves the sunrise, I asked Etsy artist Rebecca McGlynn, owner of 3 Muses Glass if she'd create some special borosilicate glass beads in the colors of sunrise. I found some Hill Tribes silver components that symbolize the sun, and matched them up with Swarovski crystal beads. I'll make fewer than 10 of these bookmarks, and each borosilicate bead is one of a kind.

Here’s a close-up, although my camera phone does not do this beautiful bead justice. I picked a bead that had some shades of orange and green for Halloween …

Rules and how to enter:

Please fill out the Rafflecopter form below to enter this giveaway.
Name & Email Address must be provided. (Easy Entry, just click the form & it does it for you!)
You must be at least 13 years old to enter.
This giveaway is open: INTERNATIONAL!!!
Giveaway ends: November 3rd, 2012 (12:01AM EST)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Gina, Thanks for sharing that creepy story with everyone and a HUGE Thank YOU for putting together such an amazing prize pack! There sure is going to be one thrilled, lucky winner that's for sure!

Don't forget to stop by and check out who Jessica is featuring today for Haunted Halloween!

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