Between the Darkness and the Dawn, a short story

Tuesday’s Summer Ghost Story,  July 16, 2019

READING FICTION BLOG

While October remains the most popular month for reading ghost stories conjuring images  of rusty pumpkin fields and soaring black crows under dark skies, I am here today to give you a ghost story for July. A summer ghost, if you will.

What lies between the darkness and the dawn? Maybe a gap in time or space where a ghost might slip into our earthly world? How about a summer read of a ghost, a famous literary figure, a ghost hunter, and a dash of historical elements? Between the Darkness and the Dawn is my own short story, originally published at Whistling Shade Literary Journal.

Come to the Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, to the home of author Nathaniel Hawthorne. It seems appropriate to read about Hawthorne this month: his birthday is July 4, 1804. And to read a ghost story set in Concord, one of the most haunted locations in America with the ghosts of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, Henry David Thoreau and others reported to still be present in this historic town.

 

You can download this short story (40-minute read) FREE on Amazon.com:

 

REVIEWS

“Concord, Massachusetts–a town that appears very much today as it did hundreds of years ago–is the perfect setting for a tale of the mingling of time periods. Cappa’s “Between Darkness and Dawn” is as nuanced and atmospheric as the stories of Hawthorne himself. Mesmerizing.” —Erika Robuck, author of House of Hawthorne: A Novel.

“This is a mind-bending tale from a very accomplished author. It takes a healthy dose of historical fiction to go with the supernatural. What appealed to me most was the sense of atmosphere. The author captured the Gothic, Poe~like feeling.” —V.M. Sawh, author of Cinders, Hontas, and Anatasia.

Visit the Old Manse Website:

http://www.thetrustees.org/places-to-visit/metro-west/old-manse.html

News about the Old Manse:  https://concord.wickedlocal.com/article/20150130/news/150139951

More on Hawthorne here at Reading Fiction Blog: https://paulacappa.wordpress.com/2017/05/18/ghost-by-moonlight-anniversary-of-nathaniel-hawthornes-death/

Don’t forget to view the INDEX above of more free reading at Reading Fiction Blog. This is a compendium of over 200 short stories by more than 100 famous storytellers of mystery, suspense, supernatural, ghost stories, ‘quiet horror,’ crime, sci-fi, and mainstream fiction.

Follow or sign up to join me in reading two short stories every month. Comments are welcome! Feel free to click “LIKE.”

  

Other Reading Web Sites to Visit

Kirkus Mystery & Thrillers Reviews

Books & Such    Bibliophilica   NewYorkerFictionOnline

 Lovecraft Ezine   Parlor of Horror

HorrorNews.net   Fangoria.com   

Slattery’s Art of Horror Magazine   Chuck Windig’s Terrible Minds

HorrorAddicts.net     Horror Novel Reviews    HorrorSociety.com     

Monster Librarian      HorrorTalk.com 

 Rob Around Books      The Story Reading Ape Blog

For Authors/Writers:  The Writer Unboxed

Beauty of the Dead: The White Maid

The White Maid   by Nathaniel Hawthorne  (1835) Twice Told Tales

Tuesday’s Tale of Terror    November 29, 2016

Two women are standing over a corpse. The young dead man is the lover of both the women who are unmarried  and aging. This is a story of an abandoned mansion and the mystical.  And a secret.

THE MOONBEAMS came through two deep and narrow windows, and showed a spacious chamber, richly furnished in an antique fashion. From one lattice, the shadow of the diamond panes was thrown upon the floor; the ghostly light, through the other, slept upon a bed, falling between the heavy silken curtains, and illuminating the face of a young man. But, how quietly the slumberer lay! how pale his features! and how like a shroud the sheet was wound about his frame! Yes; it was a corpse, in its burial-clothes.

Suddenly, the fixed features seemed to move, with dark emotion.

Herman Melville once wrote of  Nathaniel Hawthorne: “Even his bright gildings play upon the edges of thunder-clouds.”  Many readers love Hawthorne’s air of mystery that pervades his short stories. This is certainly one of them.

 

Read the short story here at EldritchPress.org

 

Listen to the audio here at Barrow Bookstore Audios 

 

 

Don’t forget to view the INDEX above of more free Tales of Terror. This is a compendium of over 180 short stories by over 100 master storytellers of mystery,  supernatural, horror, and ghost stories. Join me in reading one short story every other week! Comments are welcome.

 

Other Reading Web Sites to Visit

 

The Kill Zone

Slattery’s Art of Horror Magazine

Books & Such   Bibliophilica    Lovecraft Ezine   Parlor of Horror

 HorrorAddicts.net     Horror Novel Reviews    HorrorSociety.com     

Monster Librarian     HorrorNews.net     HorrorTalk.com 

 Rob Around Books      The Story Reading Ape Blog

Kirkus Mystery & Thrillers Reviews

For Authors/Writers:  The Writer Unboxed

EZindiepublishing

Thriller Author Mark Dawson http://markjdawson.com/

Dawson’s Book Marketing site: http://www.selfpublishingformula.com/

Valentine’s Day Ghostly Romance, Short Story

99 cents!!! This weekend only on Amazon, KINDLE. “Beyond Castle Frankenstein” for Valentine’s Day.  A Ghostly Romance.
Fact: Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, kept her husband’s calcified heart in a silk handkerchief for years after he died. What a romance she had with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Do you know who removed P.B. Shelley’s heart from the cremation fires because the organ refused to burn? Read the fictionalized short story of the author and the poet, a perfect Valentine’s Day romance with a ghostly twist.

 

[Image is “The Funeral” by Louis Edward Fournier, 1889, a rendering of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s cremation.]

“Beyond Castle Frankenstein” is my short story published in JOURNALS OF HORROR, FOUND FICTION ANTHOLOGY, PUBLISHED BY PLEASANT STORM ENTERTAINMENT, EDITOR TERRY M. WEST.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Buy the anthology on Amazon.com for 99 cents this Valentine’s weekend only.

Lots of horror stories for your weekend reading.

 

 

 

The Feet of the Dead

Bewitched  by Edith Wharton (1926)

 Tuesday’s Tale of Terror, February 3, 2015   Classic Tales from Women In Horror

 

It’s February, Women in Horror Month. This is the time to recognize your favorite women horror writers, buy their books, read their stories, comment, and give your support. As a horror reader and author myself, especially ghost stories, I so enjoy sharing my favorite women authors in our history with you this month.

 

Today we are recognizing Edith Wharton. She wrote 38 novels, some 50 short stories, and wrote her first novel at age 11. Did you know that Wharton could not sleep in a room with a book containing a ghost story? She was that haunted. I think we can say that a good deal of her ghost stories evolved from a true and immediate sense of the supernatural. She is one of our most prestigious Women of Horror.

 

Bewitched is a story that has everything for a winter’s bleak reading experience. We are on the dark side of New England. A stinging wind with snow is falling thickly upon the old and isolated Rutledge house in Starkfield, an abandoned stretch of land between North Ashmore and Cold Corners.

Prudence Rutledge is dressed in black calico and a grey woolen shawl. She tells her three visitors at the door …

“There’s a spell been cast over Mr. Rutledge.”

The Deacon looked up sharply, an incredulous smile pinching his thin lips. “A spell?”

“That’s what I said: he’s bewitched.”

Mrs. Rutledge is accusing her husband Saul of adultery with the dead woman Ora Brand.

This is more than just any old haunting. We’ve got adultery and necrophilia and insanity going on. And more.

 

This Pulitzer-prize winning (The Age of Innocence) author is known for her patterns of imagery and psychological insights. What is so amazing about Wharton’s writing is that you can read her stories again and again and still find them deliciously haunting. You can read more about her ghostly history at The Mount, her home in Lennox, Massachusetts, where ghosts are said to still haunt her property: http://www.edithwharton.org/programs-and-events/ghosts/

 

 

 

Read Bewitched at Ebook.Adelaide.edu

 

 

I couldn’t find an audio version of Bewitched but did find Tales of Men and Ghosts, which includes several of Wharton’s ghost stories. I can personally recommend “The Eyes” and “Afterward.”

Listen to the audio version of Bewitched at Librivox.org

 

 

 

 

For more about Women in Horror Month, visit their web site

http://www.womeninhorrormonth.com/

 

 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WomenInHorrorMonth

 

 

Stop by the Horror Society this month to see their tribute to Women In Horror

 

Other Reading Web Sites to Visit

Bibliophilica       Lovecraft Ezine     HorrorAddicts.net  

Horror Novel Reviews    Hell Horror    HorrorPalace

HorrorSociety.com       Sirens Call Publications

 Monster Librarian  Tales to Terrify       Spooky Reads

HorrorNews.net     HorrorTalk.com

 Rob Around Books    The Story Reading Ape Blog

For Authors/Writers:  The Writer Unboxed

Don’t forget to view the INDEX above of more free Tales of Terror classic authors.

The Supernatural at the Old Manse

Between the Darkness and the Dawn,   Whistling Shade Literary Journal 2013 

Tuesday’s Tale of Terror   September 1, 2014

 

This holiday weekend I’m off, but still wanted to give you a tale of terror, so how about a historical ghost story from … yours truly.

Do you believe in synchronicity? Synchronicity is the experiencing of two or more events as meaningfully related. Do you believe in ley lines? Lines of energy, or energy grid, between ancient monuments or natural bodies of water, rocks, mountains, Stonehenge, Pyramids, etc., discovered by archaeologist Alfred Watkins (many scientists debate the existence of ley lines). Still, many believe ley lines are scientifically verifiable and are sacred earth energies where spirits can enter the earth’s atmosphere–and that we are naturally drawn to these ley lines.

In Between the Darkness and the Dawn, Edward Fane is a ley line hunter, on an adventure to locate the ghost of Nathaniel Hawthorne at the Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts. Hawthorne and his wife Sophia lived at the Old Manse during the time he wrote Mosses From An Old Manse. What Edward discovers when he tests for ley lines at the Old Manse is not just the ghost of Hawthorne, but an experience within a ley line that reveals a shocking encounter with the past and a little piece of history.

 

What’s most interesting to me is that when I wrote this short story back in 2010 and 2011, I had no idea there were ley lines discovered and confirmed at the Old Manse in Concord. During the creative writing process the ley lines just naturally appeared in the story. Two years later, upon visiting the Old Manse in October 2013 to drop off the Whistling Shade Literary Journal copies for their gift shop, I met with the director of the Old Manse. He had read my story and asked me how I knew ley lines were discovered on the property because it had not been publicized. The truth is, I didn’t know it. At least not in my own conscious mind, but then synchronicity often functions at the subconscious level. I gave a real chuckle to myself when the director showed me where the ley lines on Hawthorne’s property were confirmed (across the back lawn near a favorite rock where Nathaniel and Sophia often sat for tea). Of course, I probably don’t have to tell you that the reason they had the property and house tested for ley lines was because of the supernatural events that are frequently occurring at the Old Manse.

 

 

You can read Between the Darkness and the Dawn here at Whistling Shade Literary Journal.

 

 

Visit the Old Manse Web site, Concord, Massachusetts.

 

 

 

Please leave a comment! I’d love to hear  your reaction to this short story.

 

Other Reading Web Sites to Visit

Bibliophilica       Lovecraft Ezine

Horror Novel Reviews    Hell Horror    HorrorPalace

HorrorSociety.com       Sirens Call Publications

 Monster Librarian  Tales to Terrify       Spooky Reads

 Rob Around Books    The Story Reading Ape Blog

For Authors/Writers:  The Writer Unboxed

Don’t forget to view the INDEX above of more free Tales of Terror classic Authors.