I’m on spring break which is more like a grade all things, make new tests break. Sigh. But I did get good news. My knee is healing well and he said I can cautiously get back into hiking. I’m also signed up for Camp nano so maybe I will get some writing done.

Continuing with These Haunted Hills with Josh and Brendan outside the murder hotel.

“It would be a sad end. They suffered enough. The other option is Diana doesn’t want anyone happy about her and human misery is what makes her happy.”

“That scares me too.” Brendan stared at the hotel. He swore Diana was in the upstairs window watching back. She was probably just his imagination, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t unnerved. “At least you told me about the shadow man or demon possibilities before we got inside this time.”

“It’s about time I got smarter about that.” Josh shot him a sheepish look before starting to fish their equipment out of the bed. “Help me with the ladder.”

“Are you really going to peek into the second story? What if she pushes the ladder?”

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The world is being so hard and coupling that with how hard it’s been in my own life I almost missed getting this up. Had my stitches out but the wound didn’t heal as well as I’d have liked. Spent this week (and the foreseeable future) fixing that issue. Then the cat almost broke his leg. It’s all soft tissue but it was also a lot of money to find that out. Sigh.

Have some more of These Haunted Hills, the guys discussing the murder hotel. The first two lines are from last week as a lead in

Brendan widened his eyes. Josh’s enthusiasm for ghost hunting made it easy to forget sometimes that he was a scientist.

Josh flushed slightly as if embarrassed he might be talking over Brendan’s head, which he sort of was. “Anyhow that would only explain the bedroom intruder form of shadow people, not the ones we see else. Besides, it’s most likely we encountered Diana or one of her victims.” Josh unbuckled and slid out of the truck. Brendan took a moment to admire that denim-clad ass as Josh did so.  “The victims could be angry that any one is happy here.”

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I missed last week because it was the anniversary of my life-changing injury. The state of my head isn’t much better but at this point is anyone’s with the state of the world?

I’m continuing with These Haunted Hills. Josh and Brendan are back at the murder hotel talking about the possibility it’s not haunted by a ghost but rather something more demonic.

“I don’t know. Anything is possible. Great horror happened here. Maybe Diana had been possessed. I can’t see it hanging around in the middle of an abandoned hotel for a century though, unless it’s somehow bound here. No one really knows what shadow men are or if they are evil or neutral.”

“I listened to some of the Coast to Coast AM talk shows about them. I noticed that they said some people even think they’re from another dimension or extra-terrestrial.” Brendan grimaced. While he was willing to accept there was life on other planets, he couldn’t think of a single reason they’d appear in doorways and in abandoned asylums in shadow form.

“I’ve read some neuroscience articles on shadow men. It’s not exactly my field of biology but I could follow it. Something about sleep paralysis, Hypnogogic hallucinations and functional disturbances in the right parietal cortex and the mirror neuron system.”

Brendan widened his eyes. Josh’s enthusiasm for ghost hunting made it easy to forget sometimes that he was a scientist.

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Missed last week because of work. Almost missed today because I had hand surgery yesterday (minor stuff, no worries). I decided I could find time to put up a little more of These Haunted Hills. Brendan and Josh are talking strategies to tackle the haunted murder hotel.

“Do you really think it could be a demon?” Brendan was prepared to say yes ghosts were probably real. He didn’t think he had it in him to leap all the way to demon which when he considered his Irish Catholic background made little sense. Demons should be easy to buy into, but he had a failure of imagination when it came to believing a demon had made him nearly wet himself and run for the truck. Then again, the sheer malevolence he’d felt, deep to his bones, could a mere ghost have done that to him? He had no basis for any of this.

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I almost forgot to do this because I’m unmoored in time and space with the ice storm. I kept my power luckily and oddly it’s been restive knowing I’m expected to go nowhere or do anything (even discounting yesterday’s zoom meeting). It’s been the recharge I’ve needed.

Still rolling on with These Haunted Hills. The guys are rolling up on the murder hotel with Josh’s ghost hunting team.

Brendan turned slightly on the seat, staring out the side window. “Josh, do you think that whatever it was that made us high tail it out of here last time will be around? Do these things have memories?”

“As for memories, there’s no agreement about that. I haven’t seen much in the way of that kind of intelligence. Most of what I’ve seen are often residual hauntings, which means they’re more like players on a screen. However, there’s an almost poltergeist like quality to the thing here, at least the one that was with us in the hotel room. What happened when we were outside.” Josh bit off his response.

“That was weird.”

“It’s never happened to me before. I know the twins have experienced things like that. I’m just hoping it was a ghost.”

Brendan wet his lips. “Do you mean shadow men or a demon or something?”

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