Boone Hall Fright Nights

If you live in the Charleston, SC area, you might be interested in Boone Hall Fright Nights, which takes place at Boone Hall Plantation in Mt. Pleasant and runs from September 26th through November 1st.  Boone Hall Fright Nights offers four scary attractions this year: Frightmare Factory, Twisted Terror in 3D, Wicked Woods Hayride, and Zombie Town Bloodfest. (You can find a description of each attraction on their website.)  Tickets are $12 for the Wicked Woods Hayride, $10 for Frightmare Factory, $10 for Zombie Town Bloodfest, and $8 for Twisted Terror in 3D, or you can buy a pass that gets you into every attraction for $27.

http://www.boonehallfrightnights.com/

Cool Website: The Haunted Writer

The Haunted Writer is a website that showcases free paranormal Kindle books, ghost hunting tools (and includes links to buy them), and videos and accounts of real paranormal occurrences.  If you've had your own paranormal experience, there's a place to submit your story, so submit away if you want the world to know about your brushes with the paranormal.  I thought the posts about haunted locations were really interesting, and you can find them here if you'd like to read them:

http://thehauntedwriter.com/category/haunted-locations/

Check out the video about the five most haunted places on Earth, which is near the top of the haunted locations page. : )

http://thehauntedwriter.com/

 

Ghostbusters pictures

I had a great time seeing Ghostbusters in the theater a few weeks ago, so I thought today I'd post some pictures of mine that are related to Ghostbusters. : )

Getting ready to see Ghostbusters!

Bret trying to eat Slimer

Ready to bust some ghosts with Peter Venkman

Bret is not at all interested in the Stay Puft marshmallow Man

R.I.P. Bret.  You were the cutest hamster in the world, and I miss you so much it hurts.

Movie Spotlight: The Quiet Ones

The Quiet Ones is a 2014 movie starring Jared Harris, Sam Claflin, Erin Richards, Rory Fleck-Byrne, and Olivia Cooke.  In 1974, Oxford professor Joseph Coupland (Jared Harris) recruits some students to help him prove that the supernatural isn't real.  They run experiments on Jane Harper (Olivia Cooke), who thinks she's possessed, and they try to prove that her mind is responsible for manifesting the strange things that have been happening around her.  They keep her locked in a room, and her mental health declines the more they experiment on her (this sounds pretty illegal).

The Quiet Ones was a good movie, and all of the actors were great, but I don't understand why a movie called The Quiet Ones was so freaking loud.  It's one of those movies where the dialogue is really low, so you have to turn the volume up, and then there are occasional loud noises that will scare the shit out of you.  I know many scary movies do this, but the loud noises in this movie seemed to be ten times louder than the dialogue...so loud that we had to put our hamster in a different room because we were afraid the noises were so loud that they could cause him to have a stroke!  A word of advice: if you watch The Quiet Ones, watch it with the closed captioning on, so you won't have to turn the volume up too high.  The loud noises were really annoying, and I would've given the movie a higher rating without them.

My rating: 7/10

Movie Spotlight: Oculus

Oculus is a 2013 movie starring Karen Gillan, Brenton Thwaite, Katee Sackhoff, Rory Cochrane, Annalise Basso, and Garrett Ryan.  Kaylie Russell (Karen Gillan) suspects that an antique mirror her father (Rory Cochrane) bought in 2002 has caused terrible things to happen to her family.  Tim (Brenton Thwaite), Kaylie’s brother, is being released from a psychiatric hospital, and Kaylie enlists his help in proving that the mirror has supernatural powers.  Tim is skeptical, but Kaylie is sure that the mirror has killed forty-five people (maybe the movie should’ve been called Murder Mirror since no one knows what an oculus is…is that even a real word?).  Kaylie has a dog that she never bothered to name since she plans to use him as bait, and at one point she puts the dog in a crate next to the mirror in hopes that the mirror will make the dog sick or kill it, which would prove that she’s right about the mirror.  Of course this made me think that Kaylie is a terrible person who needs to die by the end of the movie. ; )

Oculus was better than many of the paranormal movies I’ve watched, and all of the actors were great.  I liked that the movie went back and forth between present day and 2002, so the audience could experience the initial events that Kaylie thought were caused by the mirror.

My rating: 8/10

Goat Herpes and Other Problems on sale

I'm doing a Kindle Countdown Deal on Goat Herpes and Other Problems, so it's on sale for 99¢ for the next few days.  I hope you'll check it out...I'd love to make you laugh! : )

It's Willow's first day on the job at Godly Acres, the world's premier rehabilitation facility for gods and goddesses, and she might be in over her head. Sex addiction, alcoholism, eating disorders, goat herpes...you name it, there's a Greek god who has it. Will she be able to help these gods and goddesses work through their issues? Find out in Goat Herpes and Other Problems! (Goat Herpes and Other Problems contains the plays "Godly Acres," "Godly Acres: Bitch Session," and "Playing Doctor.")

Encounters: U.F.O. Experience

A few days ago I found out about something called Encounters: U.F.O. Experience in Myrtle Beach, and since it's only a two-hour drive from Charleston, my husband and I decided to take a road trip the next day to see it.

The building is easy to spot since there's a UFO coming out of it.  I so want to do that to my house. ; )

Encounters: U.F.O. Experience is full of information about UFO sightings and abductions throughout history, as well as replicas of a few extraterrestrials and an alien mothership.

Encounters: U.F.O. Experience is very interesting and informative, and I'm glad I found out about it before it closed.  I liked the gift shop too...everything in it was pretty inexpensive, and I bought one of almost everything in it.

The museum is located at Broadway at the Beach, and tickets are $10 for adults, $8 for children and seniors, and free for children under four years old if you reserve or buy your tickets online before you go (tickets cost $14 for adults and seniors and $10 for children if you get them at the box office).  It's only open until September 21st, so if you're interested in all things extraterrestrial, get there soon!

http://ufoexhibition.com/

Book Review: True Casefiles of a Paranormal Investigator by Stephen Lancaster

True Casefiles of a Paranormal Investigator is a 2012 book by Stephen Lancaster.  He had his first paranormal experience as a child when he was attacked by "a violent and unseen force" (pg. 1); years later, his mother told him that the same thing happened to her when she was 10 years old, the same age Stephen was when he had his terrifying experience.  Stephen later assembled the P.I.T. (Paranormal Investigation Team) Crew and began producing a TV show (starring the P.I.T. Crew) called Monstervision TV the following year.  I don't want to give too much away about the book, but I will say that there's a chapter about a poltergeist that I probably shouldn't have read right before I went to bed...the case involved floating purses and Stephen being hit in the eye with a spool of thread that flew off of the dresser, and it was pretty creepy!  I really enjoyed the chapter about the Webb Memorial Library since I spent eight years working at a library... there was a ton of spooky stuff in that chapter, and if any of that had been happening at my library, I wouldn't have lasted eight minutes there, let alone eight years!  I also really liked the chapter called "The Music House," which was about a house that was haunted by a female child and an adult male who were most active when music was playing.  The owner thought it might have something to do with the home's antique piano, so Stephen tested this by playing it; while he was playing, all three of his video cameras turned off, then he heard a male voice, and a mist that he could not see in person turned up in pictures that were taken that night.

True Casefiles of a Paranormal Investigator is a fascinating read, and Stephen is a brave man.  I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in becoming a paranormal investigator or to people like me, who are interested in it, but are too chicken to ever do it themselves. ; )

My rating: 8/10