Estate of Horror Book Teaser

MY FRIEND PAUL *- A REAL GHOST WRITER

*name has been changed

My good friend of 30 years, subject of my book Estate of Horror: A True Story of Haunting, Hatred and a Horrific Family Secret, for in all intense and purposes is the ultimate and a real ghost writer. Paul was an anthropologist, teacher, lecturer and most importantly a wonderful writer until his sudden death at the age of 55 from a massive heart attack in 2009. His articles for local newspapers spanned more than two decades and included subjects in a wide scope of interests. He was well known in our cultural community and it was a sad loss for us all when he passed away.

As Executrix of Paul’s estate I had to sift through thousands of papers he left behind, some hidden, some piled on shelves, some scattered on his basement floor and others stored in hundreds of boxes.  He was a collector and world traveler but not until his sudden death did I realize I was dealing with a hoarding situation.  Many of the papers I reviewed were original, or duplicates of his original typed articles and hundreds of extra copies of newspapers where his articles appeared. He was a gifted teacher, a brilliant man, and a bit egocentric whose wide interests ranged from Monarch butterflies to the European Monarchy. Paul had written an article about me for a local newspaper in 2006 about my talent for restoring antique dolls and it was well received. We had talked in length for several years of collaborating together on writing a book based on a certain historical female figure, which now with his untimely death, would never happen. I never imagined, that in a few years, I would write a book about Paul!

As I mentioned my friend was an anthropologist and he wrote numerous stories (on an old portable typewriter) and some topics were about the origins and history of our modern holidays. Halloween was one of his favorite times of the year and as it so happened I came across an article he wrote about this holiday.  His research showed that it was a holiday adapted from early pagan traditions to a Christian Holiday  honoring the dead and how it evolved to become one of our major holidays due to our cultural fascination today with icons associated with it: witches, goblins, demons, monsters, and GHOSTS.  He particularly singled out ghosts in this article that were called “Poltergeists”.  I think it had to do with the word being of German origin (meaning- noisy ghost) and my friend was very proud of his German heritage. Little did I know, at the beginning of my 10 months spent at Paul’s house, to clean it out for sale, that ironically I would be confronting some of the very subjects my friend had written about in his article!

I remember a conversation I had with my distraught friend after the death of his beloved mother in 2001. He told me he thought he felt her presence and that she was trying to contact him. I told him if it was true, and I had no reason to doubt his experience, it was to comfort him and to show him her love for the great and devoted care he had given her in her final days. He then asked me to make a pact with him. If either one of us were to die before the other would we try and contact each other and not be afraid?  I was so startled and stunned by Paul’s request, and told him, “Don’t be silly, we have many years before this could ever be a possibility.” But, he was so insistent about this that I could only humor my friend and quickly made the promise to him so we could get off the morbid subject. Neither one of us could have known then that this promise would be fulfilled sooner than anyone expected.

I would like to share this excerpt from my book, Estate of Horror: A True Story of Haunting Hatred and a Horrific Family Secret, as why I believe my friend’s spirit was haunting his house. You will have to wait for the book to be published to read the full and chilling story of my paranormal experiences so you can draw your own conclusions.

Excerpt from Chapter 15- Caught on Tape!

I walked into Paul’s almost empty bedroom and retrieved the tape recorder that I had placed on his bed earlier that day.  Only a clothes hamper, an old typewriter covered with a towel, and a large portrait painting of Paul, leaning against the wall, were left in his room. His large closet was emptied earlier of its hundred boxes of collectibles. It was hard to believe it was the same room. I brought the recorder to the dining room table and rewound it and found about two hours of tape had  recorded.

When I played it back, I could distinctly hear voices on the tape. Had I captured audible paranormal sounds? Then I realized they were our voices coming from the basement right below Paul’s bedroom. There wasn’t any insulation under the hardwood floor and the room didn’t have wall-to-wall carpeting to muffle the sound. I was sure our voices had contaminated the recording until I heard something interesting. Over our excited voices, and at the exact moment the poltergeist activity was happening in the basement, you could simultaneously hear either a knocking or a banging sound. I played the tape back for my son Chris and his friend Eddie when they came upstairs.

“It’s definitely timed to exactly when things happened in the basement,” Chris said. “But how come we didn’t hear those bangs above us?”

It was a question beyond any rational explanation.

“I don’t know. What gets me is that the knocks are coming right from Paul’s room,” I said. 

I paused and looked around the room, and noticed the portable typewriter covered with an old orange towel that had been pushed aside on one of the window ledges. I realized we had never even looked closely at it. To me, it was just another obstacle we moved out of our way to clear Paul’s room. This time, something was drawing me to the typewriter to take off the towel. 

“Guys, you are not going to believe this. Look!”

Chris and Eddie walked up to view what was a sheet of typing paper still in the typewriter’s roller. Several of the typewriter’s keys were stuck up in the air and jammed together. The paper was blank except for two typed words “the hell….”

“Dude, really?” exclaimed Chris.

We had no answers for this. My friend had to be the one who had typed the words but I had no idea when or why. Was he trying to send us a message? I wondered, was his room the source of the paranormal activity?

End of excerpt.

The typewriter as found in Paul’s bedroom and used in my book trailer.  http://youtu.be/kA2_q6GWJjQ

For more info and ghostly updates go to: www.estateofhorror.com

WHAT MAKES A HOUSE HAUNTED?

I want to post the top criteria for a haunting that we experienced while at my friend’s house. The unexplained phenomena didn’t happen overnight. We spent 10 months at my friend’s estate to clear out his “hoarder’s home” until it was ready for sale. His house was not anything special-a simple 1950’s ranch style house. This extended time spent at his house presented a unique set of circumstances as we (my son and I) were at the house for many hours each week, for a final total of over 2000 hours.

                               
                       My artistic renderings of my friend's house.

Small things happened randomly and us being novices to any haunting experience, we didn’t recognize them right away, until things started to escalate on a regular basis of such extraordinary scope that we could no longer deny that what we were witnessing was of a supernatural origin. Luckily we did document by keeping a written record and by filming, photographing, tape recording evidence and verifying eye witness accounts. We now realize we had the Trifecta of Hauntings: Residual Haunting, Poltergeist Activity and Intelligent Spirit Interaction.

In the ghost hunting shows on T.V. you see a group of investigators with their paranormal sensing equipment stay up to 24 hours (sometimes 3 days) at a “Haunted Location”. This in a way is putting the ghosts on notice to preform just for the audience. It doesn’t happen that way in a serious investigation of the paranormal. The audience doesn’t know the editing that goes behind the scenes so it appears as spontaneous activity. Remember this is for the entertainment value. It brings in revenue.  The residents of a home or a volunteer at a local historical site supposedly haunted have much more time and hours spent at that same location day in and day out than the sporadic visitor. Their personal experiences become a more accurate gauge with the consistency or pattern the unusual events keep occurring. They “feel” and live it every day. This is invaluable for serious investigation.

Here is a list of some of the top points we have complied by our documented evidence and reading other sources that match a classic haunting with our own “Haunting”. Here is how it started and progressed.

1. Cold air in areas where it is unexplained. There can be wavy distortions in the air, which can look like white or gray mist, or even feel like cobwebs.

Our Experience: We had sickening “cold spots” that occurred in certain parts of the living room and then the basement that physically affected my son. He would become nauseated and sick to his stomach and didn’t know why.

2. Residual-activity of an unexplained nature witnessed by the living where things, people or an evident is played in a loop, over and over again (like a tape) without any interaction with living.

Our Experience: As Executor of my friend’s estate, I had to pay the house bills. While reviewing his phone bill, an unexplained phone number kept appearing on it and we were being billed for a long distance call each week at the same day and time. This was strange as the calls were being made from his home at 4:05 AM same day, every week when no one was in the house. We had taken long distance services off the phone and when asked, the phone company had no explanation why the calls were going through. They took off the charges but the calls continued for 6 months until we had to change phone providers. Then the mysterious calls stopped. This was investigated further and our new evidence mentioned in a newer blog.

3. Excessive noise such as creaking, growling, faint voices, tapping or scratching. The sounds can be animal, human or demonic/inhuman sounding.

Our Experience: The first eerie sounds we heard were one Saturday morning. My son and I had stopped to check on the house and as I walked into the living room I heard 3 long moans. Chilling! Another time there was a noise so loud and long the vibration shook and rattled the dining room. Later sounds of an animal scratching, tapping, people whispering and then inhuman voices mocking us became more and more prevalent while the work at my friend’s house progressed.

4. Being suddenly locked in or out of a door to a room to cause separation and panic.

                                             

Our Experience: My son, Chris was locked in a bathroom for several minutes. He remembers not closing the door to the bathroom completely but the door slammed shut and he was locked in. The door handle was frozen when I tried to turn it, then inexplicably it opened several seconds later. Needless to say my son was very frightened. We also faced a crisis when my son and I became locked in the basement and his friend was on the other side of the door in the kitchen and the door lock was frozen. His friend was screaming that something was behind him and we were deliberately separated and unable to help him for several minutes. Needless to say his friend never came back to the house!

5. Poltergeist-(German for “noisy ghost”)- objects moved from one place to another or misplaced objects. Some of this activity can start out as innocent but can become quite violent, destructive and threatening.

Our Experience: We had poltergeist activity right around the time we had construction work done in the basement. This was only the beginning of the months of this type of ghostly activity we would be involved with-starting as benign and really funny but then it was much more personally directed at us with violent and sinister motivations. We have numerous witnesses that observed this rare phenomenon on many occasions.

6. Unusual unexplained smells, such as tobacco, a decayed smell, flowers, or perfume.
Our Experience: We would smell, outside of the hideous moldy, dusty and damp smells that reeked in the basement, that of a wet cat, something burning and a man’s cologne.

7. Flashes of light or orbs in your sight or peripheral vision.

Our Experience: We saw flashes of light in my friend’s bedroom, gold shimmering orbs on walls and on a kitchen table, black orbs go into a wall, and later digital photos captured large orbs in my friend’s bedroom, his parent’s bedroom and basement.

8. Unexplained shadows, figures or apparitions in or around the dwelling or in certain “hot spots”
Our Experience: My son’s friend was the first to see an actual apparition down below  the basement steps. We also had a shadow figure reflected on an appliance in the basement; a photo captured a dark figure peeking behind my cousin's shoulder and wardrobe closet in the basement-which was the worst “hot spot”

9. Direct contact/interaction with a spirit by ways of asking a question and receiving within seconds an intelligent answer by ways of recorded EVP’s or physical action.

Our Experience: It was an amazing event to me when I posed a question to whatever spirit was in the basement and then received an immediate answer by way of an object being thrown that only I would know and recognize. When I again asked for verification of the spirit another object was thrown near my foot within seconds. Our audio tapes of EVPs are numerous and our videos verify the close interaction we had with the ghosts in the house. Sometimes with unpleasant results.

10. Electronics inexplicably shutting off and on.

Our Experience: It was learned early on that we always needed to carry extra batteries and tapes and extension cords when we started to document the paranormal activity in my friend’s house. We could only use our camcorder battery pack for less than an hour, sometimes less before it would lose power. The batteries would be drained although they were fully charged before entering the house. The lights in the house would also shut off and on, and the refrigerator and freezer doors would open suddenly.

11. Physical attacks by unknown entities that can cause serious injury. This is the most dangerous when dealing with the unknown. Some people can be singled out for attacks.

Our Experience: At the beginning of the poltergeist activity objects were never thrown at us but around the rooms. Then as the work of clearing out my friend’s house, objects were thrown at us and some were near misses meant to intimate and frighten us. I experienced a physical attack (of being pushed) outside on the grounds of my friend’s estate and my son was thrown to the floor in the living room-he said something grabbed his ankle and tripped him. We had bumps and bruises for weeks. We knew then that we were dealing with something dangerous.

12: Spirits Attached to People/Objects-Is This For Real?

Our Experience: YES! This can be true. I would have never in a million years believed this but I’ve become a believer since it’s happened to my son and me. My deceased friend was an anthropologist and world traveler and he willed to me hundreds of his artifacts and souvenirs. I had no idea until his sudden death the scope and depth of his collection. It was like cleaning out a museum. We now believe that some of these objects that I possess had negative energy associated with them and I unknowingly stored many in my home months prior to the paranormal activity. Bad Idea!
                                            
What to do?
Document, keep a diary, dust off your video recorder or buy a new digital camera and audio recorder. Review the evidence-Look at photographs, listen to the audio and view the video from the “haunted location” for anomalies that might be caught on film or tape (EVP’s-electronic voice phenomenon). You are not imaging all this. You may have people that will say to you, "Oh, you are just imagined it or that you made things up". You have to be careful with whom you share your experience. This is the reason I wrote my book, Estate of Horror, to inform and explain the extraordinary set of supernatural events that have changed my life forever.  For more information about my story and book you can go to: www.estateofhorror.com

Who are you going to call?

Calling in professional help when intervention is required to know what you are dealing with and what you are up against. This can be a paranormal team of investigators, a psychic medium or a parapsychologist. You have to do your homework and it can be a tough call as there are many people out there calling themselves paranormal investigators and they could make your situation worse. You need to be careful on picking someone who is out just out for the entertainment venue at your expense or someone who is a true professional in the field. I learned this the hard way and you can read about that experience in my book. You need to educate yourself (knowledge is power), check credentials, their organization, and their websites, ask others for referrals, check out other clients who may have used them and also go with your gut instinct.

Your biggest offense is a good defense. Show them you are not afraid as spirit entities feed off that negative energy. Take control- don’t let them control you. Stay strong physically, mentally and spiritually. Good Luck!

ORIGIN OF THE "VEILED LADY'

I have been asked about the design and origin of the statue on my working logo for my debut book, Estate of Horror and featured in the Book Teaser. This statue is a direct link to my deceased friend who is the subject of my book. As you may know by now that the reason I became involved with the paranormal is because of my responsibilities as an Executrix (female Executor) to this friend’s estate. The statue of the “Veiled Lady” was among his many hundreds of items and artifacts he collected and left behind and willed to me. He was an anthropologist, teacher, writer and lecturer and my friend for 30 years. The statue had been used in some of his lectures on the history of early Victorian customs and practices.

The statue is a replica of a sculpture made in England in 1850 by artist Raphaelle Monti. The exquisite technique and treatment of the veil over the woman’s face was originally sculptured in Cararra marble. It was purchased and owned by an English lord, the Duke of Devonshire. Although the statue depicts a young maiden on the eve of her wedding, it now became a somber symbol to me, given the tragic circumstances of my friend’s sudden death, of a figure shrouded in mourning. I felt that this statue was a unique icon for the book cover and it evolved into the focal point for my Book Teaser video because of the chilling paranormal experience we had at my friend’s home concerning the statue. I can’t give away the horrific sequence of events of what happened, so I guess you’ll just have to read about it when the book comes out.

 

Or you can watch the Book Teaser. A fact is all the props in the video came from my friend’s estate. The many cultural statues, figurines, dolls, books, magazines, film slides, post cards, photos and “haunted” typewriter featured in the video are symbolic to the chapters in my book. Even the color red has meaning.

Here is the YouTube video link:  http://youtu.be/kA2_q6GWJjQ

Some things I have posted online on my Facebook page: www.Facebook.com/EstateofHorror from the video production feature some very strange and unexpected events that occurred during the filming of our Book Teaser in July 2012 that we are not able to explain. You can see "Spirit Orbs" in the photos here that we did not see until after we reviewed 100 still photos of the production shoot. There were at least 8 photos with anomalies on them. Looks like the spirits were not camera shy.
You can see these photos and other continued weird postings on my Facebook page. BOO!

 

At the beginning of the video, as the door slowly opens and creaks, you see a shadow figure wearing a brimmed hat reflected on our white door and just before that there is a brief 2 second EVP of a dog barking. Our producer and crew said no one heard any dog barking or noise when they were filming this video (around 11pm that night) and no one in the crew was wearing a hat. Our brimmed hat shadow man came to my son (who has become a medium) in a dream months before and told him was a former resident who murdered his wife in the early 1900's. My son described him as wearing farmer's overalls and a brimmed hat along with his companion -a large black dog with red eyes. We researched in county records (our property dates to the early 1800's) and indeed a former owner went to prison for murdering his wife in the 1900's. Watch and enjoy a few shivers down your spine!

HOW I BECAME A "HAUNTED" WRITER

I had written for fun in the past: started writing poetry at age 12 and continued to write short stories, a one-act play in college and T.V. scripts based on some of my favorite shows growing up; yet I never considered myself a writer. Even now, after completing the manuscript for my first book, Estate of Horror, the terrifying telling of my real-life encounters with ghosts after becoming the Executrix of a dear deceased friend’s estate in 2009, I don’t regularly think of myself as an author.

This may seem strange that someone who is has a literary agent (a major coup) and submitting to major publishers, has a hard time considering herself an author.  Before 2009, my background as a professional artist for the last 47 years, (sold my first oil painting at the age of 13), had always been my visual method of telling a story.
But, after experiencing the unexplainable and the horrific ordeal with the paranormal at my friend’s home, I knew I had to record these extraordinary haunted experiences other than a daily diary.  My son, and I along with other witnesses saw and heard on captured audio and visual equipment, extreme poltergeist activity, cold spots, black and gold orbs, an apparition, objects appearing and disappearing, nonhuman voices and physical attacks.

When I first entertained the idea of writing a book, urged by my friends and family members after hearing of the unusual events happenings at the estate, I had no intention of writing it myelf. I felt if I provided the story and the materials, even possibly be interviewed, then someone else could do a better job. Having no formal experience other than a creative writing class in high school and a one-act play I wrote for a college assignment, ironically about a revengeful ghost (and by the way I got an A+) I was on the learning curve.

I was also being haunted.  After a grueling year of cleaning out his hoarder’s house, my deceased friend estate was sold to contractors, gutted, remodeled and resold, and many items that were left to me in my friend’s will, stored in my basement. This turned out to be a very bad decision, unknowingly to me. Someone or something transferred to my house and was now acting up with major poltergeist activity. My once safe haven, where I spent years as a single parent raising my son, where I worked in my art studio, enduring economic and personal hardship, and proudly taking care of it all, was now a battle ground for spirits. I felt that the best defensive was an offense and I decided that others needed to know what happened to me.

After several attempts contacting “ghostwriters” several backed out after learning the nature of my real life ghost story, several were too cost prohibitive, I was left with the decision to write the book myself. In February, 2010, after being connected with a friend of a friend in New York, who was a former reporter and writer, I started to send one or two chapters a months to her for a look at the overall content, edit any glaring mistakes and dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. She encouraged me that my writing “was not bad at all” and to continue to write to the end to which took 9 months and I completed my first draft of  my manuscript, Estate of Horror.

Estate of Horror’s structure didn’t rely solely on my diary entries or experiences; the chapters dealt with eye witness accounts, various people who encountered the poltergeist activity for themselves, EVP recordings, audio and visual evidence and secret documents discovered that had a profound effect on the overall mystery of why the house became haunted.  My experiences with writing my book have been collaborative, and I attribute my successful completion of my book to not only myself, but to everyone who helped and encouraged me along the way; and the generosity of family members and friends who gave me permission to use their photos, experiences and testimonies included in the book.

After completing my first “draft” I started learning everything there was to know in crafting a “query” letter and synopsis to send to prospective literary agents. I started querying agents in November 2010 and in responses from agents, realized that writing non-fiction also required writing a Proposal/Marketing Plan (writers liken this to as much fun as root canal). For the next five months I made querying a “part-time” job, along with my other responsibilities as an free-lance artist to complete my clients projects. I was also caring for a dying father, in the last stages of Parkinson’s disease. After 40 rejections from literary agents, I got “the call” from a literary agent who wanted to represent me. After helping me with a polished draft of a proposal and seeing the potential for my unique story for not only a book but for T.V. and movie rights, Laurie Hawkins of Collage Literary signed me to a contract in summer of 2011. This was a brave act for her as she has since been the recipient of some very strange paranormal activity since taking on my project. (nothing like having your client's manuscript being printed out and the machine spits out a metal clamp over your head and across the room!)

Taking almost another year to polish and edit the book with my agent, my debut work is now out on submissions to major publishers. In the meantime, I have not been idle, as I am writing a sequel to my book, and establishing a presence on the internet and social media with a revamped website: www.anitajointenzo.com/Estate_Of_Horror.html
For my photo-restoration and art art business- www.Facebook.com/Pastimagesbyanita, www.Facebook.com/EstateofHorror- for my book

Twitter account, www.Twitter.com/past_images which has 1100 followers to date and I’m on the professional business network: www.LinkedIn.com/AnitaIntenzo. 

My agent told me before we started that today authors have to very pro-active in marketing themselves and her advice and my efforts have paid off.  I have been interviewed on several internet paranormal radio shows including, PZTV’s Do You Believe with Norene Balovich (Aug 2012), and PSI FI Radio with S.J. Wells (Oct 2012), a joint interview coming up with renown author, lecturer and minister Bill Bean on KGRA/Project White Paper with Chase Kloetzke (April 2013), and Just Say’in It with Mary Gasparo of PEN network (June 2013).

I also produced (out of my own pocket) a Book Teaser in July 2012. It is currently up on youtube.com http://youtu.be/kA2_q6GWJjQ  using the many talents of family, friends and clients, and also used many props from the original Estate of Horror. While filming the teaser, the crew had some unusual experiences with tampered equipment, spirit orbs and other anomalies that showed up later in 8 photos on some of the production’s 100 still photos. It seems the spirits weren’t camera shy.
My story isn’t over as my haunted journey continues. What was once a fairly normal life is now a paranormal life every day. Stay tuned and join me for more of my spirited blogs!