When I was young, we used to visit my grandparents in the family's Plymouth Fury. We always managed to ride in the pitch blackness along winding, desolate roads bordered by giant trees whose branches reached across the roadway like hands waiting to snatch us. Our Plymouth had the largest windows of any vehicle I ever remembered, which made me feel especially vulnerable when my older sister insisted on telling us ghost stories.
Hearing about ghosts and even seeing them was nothing new to us.
I remember the first time I ever saw a ghost as vividly as though it happened yesterday. I might have been about four years old. I was piled in the bed with my older sister and brother and my younger brother, while my mother lay with us and told us bedtime stories.
I remember looking at the end of the bed and seeing a man standing there, staring at my mother. She saw him as well, as did my siblings, and she started calling to my father to come to us. I remember, even at that young age, thinking, "Dad's going to be mad!"
When my father walked across the threshold into the bedroom, the man disappeared. I remember crawling out of bed and looking for him, but of course he was gone.
Two days later, my mother received a phone call. A man she had dated for nine years before she met my father had died two days earlier. He had always loved my mother, always wanted to marry her. And when she married another, he never married. He died alone in his home, reaching for the phone as he began to hemorrhage. The time of death was estimated at the very time he was standing in my mother's bedroom.
Through the years I've seen many ghosts. Some friendly, some loving, other mischievous and some frightening. Shown below: scenes from The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
What ghosts have you seen?
Vicki's Key, p.m.terrell's 13th published book, features a psychic spy, Vicki Boyd, who also sees ghosts. Part ghost story, part romance, part international intrigue, reviewer Marcia Freespirit says it's "riveting, spellbinding, sexy, intense... terrell's best book yet!"
