Maureen A Miller, click
here to update your pages on AuthorsDen.
Blogs by Maureen A Miller
Haunted Houses 7/13/2011 4:35:26 AM
Haunted houses are a guilty pleasure.
I don't know about you, but scary houses are like a guilty pleasure to me. I like to read about them. I like to write about them. I like to watch movies about them...but I don't ever want to be in one!
As a child I used to watch Creature Feature with Dr. Paul Bearer. He hosted back to back low-budget horrors that would probably make your eyes roll now. But as a child, I would take this blanket my mother had knitted and throw it over my head and watch the movies through the little holes in the yarn. It was safe inside that cocoon. Every now and then Mom would lift the blanket and hand me some juice.
You may not have heard of Dr. Paul Bearer. He was a local guy in the Tampa Bay area...oh, excuse me, his studio was based in St. Creaturesburg, the city you may now refer to as St. Petersburg. He told ridiculously bad jokes and always signed off with his trademark, "I'll be lurking for you."
I don't write horror as it would be very difficult for me to type with that old knitted blanket over my head, but the idea of the big mansion that gives you chills just by looking at it fascinates me to this day. In ENDLESS NIGHT, Wakefield House stars as the third character in the book.
Here is Jake Grogan's first glimpse of the mansion.
Just as he contemplated turning around, the pathbegan to widen. One more incline and he reached a clearing, a plateau that overlooked the Atlantic.
And there sat Wakefield House.
It was hard to see through the swish of wiper blades, but the Victorian mansion was large, guarded in front by the remnants of a wrought-iron gate, the ornamental pattern of metal closely resembling a spiderweb. The remainder of the fence was long gone, making the crooked gateway a droll deterrent. The house itself stood two stories, with a steeply pitched roof accommodating a third floor, atop which sat a cylindrical turret offering a panoramic view from its ring of portholes. Gable windows with black louvered shutters looked like hooded eyes, and the dark-planked stairs to the front door, a yawning mouth, ready to swallow.
As he walked up the path and felt the tug of the coastal wind, he suspected the railing had been yanked from its moorings by nature’s vacuum, that gaping chasm off the cliff that churned with froth and begged to be fed.
