Literary Escapism is excited to welcome Leanna Renee Hieber to the floor today. Leanna is the author of the much talked about The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker. I have been hearing a lot of great things about this new tale. My copy just arrived on Monday and I can’t wait to dive into it.
What fortune awaited sweet, timid Percy Parker at Athens Academy? Considering how few of Queen Victoria’s Londoners knew of it, the great Romanesque fortress was dreadfully imposing, and little could Percy guess what lay inside. She had never met the powerful and mysterious Professor Alexi Rychman, knew nothing of the growing shadow, the Ripper and other supernatural terrors against which his coterie stood guard. She knew simply that she was different, haunted, with her snow-white hair, pearlescent skin and uncanny gifts. But this arched stone doorway offered a portal to a new life, an education far from the convent—and an invitation to an intimate yet dangerous dance at the threshold of life and death….
Make sure you stick around because we not only have an exclusive excerpt from The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker, but we’re also giving away a copy of The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker to a lucky commentator.
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My vote goes to the Ghosts…
Everyone has their paranormal favourite, right? My favourite: Ghosts. I’ve youthful memories of inventing elaborate ghost stories at girl-scout camps and slumber parties in rural Ohio. At an exceedingly early age I fell in love with the English accent and adopted it around the house. I flounced about in multi-layered skirts with corset-like things I’d wrapped around my middle. Fitting I’d write epic Victorian ghost stories set in London, yes?
The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker by Leanna Renee Hieber
Setting:
What fortune awaited sweet, timid Percy Parker at Athens Academy? Considering how few of Queen Victoria’s Londoners knew of it, the great Romanesque fortress was dreadfully imposing, and little could Percy guess what lay inside. She had never met the powerful and mysterious Professor Alexi Rychman, knew nothing of the growing shadow, the Ripper and other supernatural terrors against which his coterie stood guard. She knew simply that she was different, haunted, with her snow-white hair, pearlescent skin and uncanny gifts. But this arched stone doorway offered a portal to a new life, an education far from the convent—and an invitation to an intimate yet dangerous dance at the threshold of life and death….
Top 10-reasons why Ghosts are my #1 Paranormal convention:
10. I like transparent things.
9. I know that there is more to this world than I can always see.
8. Romanticism. There’s such a wonderful mythos and intrigue about ghosts. They are of the Gothic and belong to the Gothic, where I feel I best belong too.
7. You know they’re around by the cool draft. Fun foreshadowing.
6. Can be either terribly sweet or terribly scary. And you just never know. Their unpredictability is what keeps me coming back for more.
5. Ghosts are imminently relatable beings. We recognize them in us, they were once us, and many of us have seen them and know they exist. I sure do.
4. They’re often looking for something. Finding out what that is can be great fun.
3. The possibility of possession is a fascinating and terrifying subject to me.
2. Because I write series books: They’re a wonderful way to introduce a character who you’ll revisit in life! (I’m working on Book III, the prequel, and it’s terribly convenient that we’ve met the heroine as a ghost in Book II!)
1. There are no obstacles. Walls, doors, windows be damned. They can be wherever you want them to be, whenever you want them to be. This is fabulous or horrible, depending on if you’re the author or the Ghostbuster.
Now I’d like to share one of my favourite haunts in the book, a ghost who becomes Percy’s friend.
From The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker
Alone in the library at all too late an hour, Percy sat down to her studies and didn’t notice the sudden chill on the air, nor the pale hovering figure beside her until it spoke. “Ah, Newton …” cooed the wispy, feminine voice.
Percy jumped slightly. She looked up to find a young woman much like herself both in pallor and age, but with the distinct difference that this young woman was transparent and floating. The female spirit glided backward, obviously startled to see Percy’s eyes meet hers.
“Yes, I can see and hear you,” Percy clarified, familiar with the reaction. Many spirits spoke to mortals. Few received a reply.
“Indeed! Most exciting!” exclaimed the spectre. Tightly spiraled curls floated about a face cherubic save for dark, sunken circles around the eyes. The frayed dress was dated; the open neck of the gown hung loose on a frail frame. “My name is Constance .”
“Hello, Constance . I’m Percy.”
The two girls nodded, knowing they could not take hands.
“Percy? That’s a woman’s name, is it?” the spirit asked.
Percy smiled. “It stands for something ancient.”
“You do not look a bit ancient.”
“Well, I’m not,” Percy admitted.
“No, but you do look like one of us. How did you learn to see my kind?”
“I’ve always had the ability,” Percy explained. “But I’ve dared not speak of it, else I’d be thought mad.”
Constance batted Percy’s stack of books with a hand that passed right through. “Mortals know nothing,” she scoffed. “I thought I knew everything when I sat at that table. On the other side, you realize how little you really know.”
“Really?” Percy breathed.
“Indeed. I now know the most important lesson: not everything can be explained. When I was alive, I thought I understood the whole of science, life, God … Went quite mad because of it.”
“Is that why you travel this hall?” Percy asked.
“My body lies in a tiny plot behind. I come into this room looking for something”— Constance made one floating turn around the table—“but I cannot, for the death of me, recall what I seek. Here I drift, looking for a once-insignificant item that now means peace.”
“And you think you’ll find it in this hall?”
“I spent inordinate amounts of time here when the academy first opened, years ago,” the ghost explained. “The first in the area to let young women attend a full curriculum. My family disowned me when I told them I wished to become a scientist. No daughter of theirs would become educated beyond eligibility, doomed to a field meant only for men! I was a revolutionary, here by the grace of the founder …” Constance trailed off. “Ah, well. I shall keep looking. I don’t have much choice.” Her hollow face took on a hopeless expression, and she glanced around, her ethereal curls quivering in a nonexistent breeze. “It’s something over there, perhaps,” she murmured, and began to fade.
“I hope you find whatever you seek, Constance .”
The spirit looked her in the eyes. “Same to you, Percy of the spirit flesh.” The ghost faded a moment then brightened, as if an afterthought increased her link to the world of the living. “And do be careful. London is going absolutely mad.”
Percy shivered. “How so?”
Constance failed to answer; she simply disappeared. The lamp grew brighter and the air warmer.
Thanks Literary Escapism for the opportunity to be here and to talk about my favourite subject matter!
I hope everyone will join me for my Strangely Beautiful Haunted London Blog Tour and Book Giveaway as I tell a bunch of different ghost stories around the Cyber-campfire. I’ll also be launching a contest for cool prizes on release day: 8/25 – Details at my website.
You can preorder The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker from: Barnes & Noble, Borders and Amazon. Watch the Book Trailer here.
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Thank you Leanna for visiting Literary Escapism.
Contest Time! We’re giving away a copy of The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker to a lucky commentator and it’s very easy to enter. All you have to do is: Tell us your favorite ghost story. Whether it’s one you heard as a child or a great piece of fiction. Remember, you do have to answer the question in order for your entry to count. The contest is open to everyone, so everyone overseas can join in the fun as well.
As always, if you want more chances to win, you can post about today’s contest on your blog, social network, or anywhere you can. Digg it, stumble it, twit it (#litesc), share it with the world. Wherever you share it, make sure you add a link to it along with your answer (all in the same post please). The more places you share it, the more entries you get.
For more entries, purchase any novel through LE’s Amazon store sometime during this contest and send a copy of the receipt VIA email for your purchase to: myjaxon AT gmail DOT com. Each purchase is one entry and it has to be through the LE Link.
Join the Literary Escapism Facebook page and you’ll get an additional entry. Make sure you leave a comment so I know that’s why you’re joining. Only new readers to the group will be considered.
For an additional entry, subscribe to Literary Escapism’s newsletter in the sidebar. This is for new subscribers only.
I’ll determine the winner with help from the Research Randomizer. All entries must be in by midnight on August 25th.
In the girl scouts we used to tell ghost stories and then there are all the Edgar Allen Poe stories to choose from. My favorites would be The Tell-Tale Heart from Poe.
My other favorite was told in girl scouts and is a version of the Lady in White. A man drives by a cemetary and finds a young lady in a white dress outside the gates. He offers her a ride home. She doesn’t engage in any chit-chat and they have a quiet ride to the address. He gets out of the car and rings the door bell. He is greeted by an older gentleman and explains about the girl in the car…only to find she has disappeared. The old man explains it is his daughter who died in a car accident on the night of her prom. Every year she comes home at curfew.
Beth Caudill
beth@bethcaudill.net
My closest brush with a possible ghost was about 15 years ago. I was at my boyfriend’s house, laying in bed with half a migraine. I heard the front door open and someone clumped across the living room, then down the stairs to the basement. I assumed it was my boyfriend’s roommate, who lived in the basement. I got up later, but didn’t see the roommate’s car in the driveway. The fresh snow by the front door was pristine – no footprints. And no one was in the house but me.
Turns out that others had experienced the same thing – it was widely believed to be the ghost of my boyfriend’s dad. His dad used to come home from work and head down to the basement in his work clothes (and boots) to change.
My favorite ghost story is one my husband tells of the time he & his family visited Frogmore Island in South Carolina. They went at night & encountered a Union sentry carrying a light walking around on guard duty!
My favorite ghost story takes place just outside of Sierra Vista, AZ. There lies a bridge closed off to cars and the like. Driving by, you might not even notice that there is a bridge there. Make a right just after you get off the new bridge into what you presume is just empty land, turn right again, and you will see the bridge shortly. Its not very long and not very wide, really only room for one car at a time. There is chain link on either side of the bridge. I had heard that the bridge was haunted by many different things, but wasn’t sure of anything. We walked up and down the bridge for a bit peering into the darkness, listening, talking amongst ourselves, wondering if anything was really there. We had our cell phones out and were trying to capture EVP and taking videos and pictures searching for orbs. After a little while, we began to hear footsteps in the water. Not just footsteps of one person, but footsteps of many. A few of the guys headed down to the water to investigate, but found nothing. You could feel the buzz of excitement passing through everyone. Not much later after the footsteps were head, my husband shouts to me, “COME QUICK!” So I hurry over. When I approach, he’s as close as he can be to the chain link fence and staring off somewhere in the distance. “Can you see the eyes glowing in the grass?”, he says excited. I start looking and I didn’t notice anything at first, but sure as I’m sitting here typing this, a pair of green eyes appeared very low to the ground. Too low to ever be an animal crouching or anything of the like. Just as fast as I had seen them they were gone and complete and utter darkness enveloped us. I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face. It was then that I began to become afraid and grabbed my husbands hand. “Let’s go now please, I just got a bad feeling and it’s getting very cold.” We headed towards the cars and told everyone we were leaving, just about the time we were stepping off the bridge, noises came from the chain link fence, a scream and a jump. It was two of our friends that had came along, trying to scare me. It worked. As we were leaving, we saw a black cat run past us. A shiver ran down my spine and I wanted out of there fast. We drove back home, hardly talking. I was a bit shaken at what I had seen. As we pulled into the parking lot, we noticed another black cat. We all considered the possibilities of it being the same cat as the one at the bridge and laughed it off. How absurd we though. We got back to our apartment and sat down on the porch for a cigarette. About 5 minutes later, a truck passed through the parking lot, a truck we recognized from the bridge. As the truck passed, there were three shadow figures holding on to the back of it. I wasn’t the only one who saw it. Everyone jumped up, a little freaked out and went inside. We all talked about what we had just seen and then decided to head to the darkest part of the house to look at our pictures and videos and listen to the EVPs. We ended up in my walk-in closet. We sat there for a half hour collaborating everything we had gathered. We cam up with a few orbs in pictures here and there. A picture of a dark purple streak and from someone’s video, they found the face of a ghost like baby when they paused it at one point. At another paused point they saw an extremely evil looking face of a man. At that point, I was a bit scared of sitting in the dark and had to use the bathroom. I asked my friend if she would stand outside of the bathroom for me. She did. While I was in the bathroom, I heard what sounded like an airplane to be flying right over the house. Which I didn’t think much of, even though it was well after 2 in the morning, due to the fact we lived about a mile from the army base. Everyone left shortly after and my husband went to bed. I was not able to sleep, still a bit scared of everything that had happened. I decided to research the bridge and see what I could find out. I found out a few shocking things, that explained what we had seen and heard. First, a lady threw her baby off of the bridge in a fit of hysterics. There was a battle that had happened there and the soldiers marched through the water. I found out at a later date, when I went back to the bridge in the day time, that the water was only a few inches deep. Found out that a boy had hung himself under the bridge, someone had driven a car off it, and a few other things. From then on, I went back to the bridge often trying to find more evidence of the hauntings. Even during the day.
My favorite ghost story takes place just outside of Sierra Vista, AZ. There lies a bridge closed off to cars and the like. Driving by, you might not even notice that there is a bridge there. Make a right just after you get off the new bridge into what you presume is just empty land, turn right again, and you will see the bridge shortly. Its not very long and not very wide, really only room for one car at a time. There is chain link on either side of the bridge. I had heard that the bridge was haunted by many different things, but wasn’t sure of anything. We walked up and down the bridge for a bit peering into the darkness, listening, talking amongst ourselves, wondering if anything was really there. We had our cell phones out and were trying to capture EVP and taking videos and pictures searching for orbs. After a little while, we began to hear footsteps in the water. Not just footsteps of one person, but footsteps of many. A few of the guys headed down to the water to investigate, but found nothing. You could feel the buzz of excitement passing through everyone. Not much later after the footsteps were head, my husband shouts to me, “COME QUICK!” So I hurry over. When I approach, he’s as close as he can be to the chain link fence and staring off somewhere in the distance. “Can you see the eyes glowing in the grass?”, he says excited. I start looking and I didn’t notice anything at first, but sure as I’m sitting here typing this, a pair of green eyes appeared very low to the ground. Too low to ever be an animal crouching or anything of the like. Just as fast as I had seen them they were gone and complete and utter darkness enveloped us. I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face. It was then that I began to become afraid and grabbed my husbands hand. “Let’s go now please, I just got a bad feeling and it’s getting very cold.” We headed towards the cars and told everyone we were leaving, just about the time we were stepping off the bridge, noises came from the chain link fence, a scream and a jump. It was two of our friends that had came along, trying to scare me. It worked. As we were leaving, we saw a black cat run past us. A shiver ran down my spine and I wanted out of there fast. We drove back home, hardly talking. I was a bit shaken at what I had seen. As we pulled into the parking lot, we noticed another black cat. We all considered the possibilities of it being the same cat as the one at the bridge and laughed it off. How absurd we though. We got back to our apartment and sat down on the porch for a cigarette. About 5 minutes later, a truck passed through the parking lot, a truck we recognized from the bridge. As the truck passed, there were three shadow figures holding on to the back of it. I wasn’t the only one who saw it. Everyone jumped up, a little freaked out and went inside. We all talked about what we had just seen and then decided to head to the darkest part of the house to look at our pictures and videos and listen to the EVPs. We ended up in my walk-in closet. We sat there for a half hour collaborating everything we had gathered. We cam up with a few orbs in pictures here and there. A picture of a dark purple streak and from someone’s video, they found the face of a ghost like baby when they paused it at one point. At another paused point they saw an extremely evil looking face of a man. At that point, I was a bit scared of sitting in the dark and had to use the bathroom. I asked my friend if she would stand outside of the bathroom for me. She did. While I was in the bathroom, I heard what sounded like an airplane to be flying right over the house. Which I didn’t think much of, even though it was well after 2 in the morning, due to the fact we lived about a mile from the army base. Everyone left shortly after and my husband went to bed. I was not able to sleep, still a bit scared of everything that had happened. I decided to research the bridge and see what I could find out. I found out a few shocking things, that explained what we had seen and heard. First, a lady threw her baby off of the bridge in a fit of hysterics. There was a battle that had happened there and the soldiers marched through the water. I found out at a later date, when I went back to the bridge in the day time, that the water was only a few inches deep. Found out that a boy had hung himself under the bridge, someone had driven a car off it, and a few other things. From then on, I went back to the bridge often trying to find more evidence of the hauntings. Even during the day.
My favorite local (San Antonio, TX) ghost story is :Ghost Handprints…
According to local legend, a school bus full of children had stalled on the railroad tracks at Shane Rd. Everyone on board the bus had been killed by an oncoming train. The ghosts of the children are reported to haunt this intersection and were said to protect people from danger. If a car stalls on the tracks, it is said the car will be pushed over the tracks by the children in the accident to safety or if you park your car directly over the tracks and shift into neutral, the ghosts of the children will push it uphill, out of the way of any oncoming train. And if you have the foresight to cover your bumper with baby powder or flour, you can reportedly see the children’s fingerprints upon your car.
*My favorite all time Ghost story though would have to be The Legend of Sleepy Hollow*
This happened to me. I was in the house with my cousin the day after my uncle passed away. The front door open suddenly, blown by the wind. My cousin’s dog jumped up to his feet and stared at something in the air, then started wagging his tail and barking affectionately. The incident sure made all the hairs on my arms stand.
Wow – thank you to everyone who has commented thus far, these ghost stories are really wonderful. Thanks for sharing!
I know ghosts are real. My daughter has had one since she was a baby. It goes to every house she moves to. It doesn’t do alot but it lets you know it is there. It opens doors and cabinets while you are watching. It moves things from where they were and you can hear footsteps sometimes. It is a nice ghost but it is definitly attached to my daughter.
Debby Creager
cleo@hbeark.com
Leanna, thanks for the blurb. The book sounds/reads great. I can’t wait.
My favorite is fiction and its A Christmas Carol. I love that story.
My favorite ghost story has always been Turn of the Screw by Henry James. Those kids give me goose flesh every time!
I know ghosts are real. One night I was asleep in bed. I felt someone sit next to me, put their hand on my shoulder and ask me to take care of my mother. It was my dad next to me. Just then the telephone rang. My mother was on the line to let me know that my father had passed away.
If I had to pick a story, it would be Poe’s Tell Tale Heart. I just love his works.
Oh, my goodness I am getting chills, these are incredible stories, each and every one of them, from the haunted areas to the familial relations, thanks again for sharing, especially the really personal stories. A Christmas Carol and Turn of the Screw are two of my favourites too! (I’m also a HUGE Poe fan). Sounds like I’m in some great company here! :)
I really don’t know many ghost stories, but I hear there are many here in Maryland. I do like The Christmas Carol and the move “Ghost”. I remember one…. About a guy and a girl, sitting in a car and some guy with a chainsaw comes out of the woods and kills them and now their ghosts walk the woods. But that could have come from a movie too! You get my age and the mind goes! LOL! Thanks!
My favorite ghost story would have to be A Haunting In Connecticut
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I am a movie buff so my favorite ghost story is the movie “Ghost” with Whoopi Goldburg and Demi Moore. As for books, Second Glance by Jodi Picoult is a wonderful ghost and love story. I have loved ghost stories all my life and read as many as I could get my hands on, so I have to put this book on my wish list in case I don’t win. I will keep my fingers crossed.
rebecca[dot]cox[at]charter[dot]net
http://twitter.com/ccqdesigns/status/3449686979 Here is my tweet.
rebecca[dot]cox[at]charter[dot]net
i can’t remember any ghost stories right now but i can tell you of an unexplainable incident in my life.
i had just had major surgery. it was night and the lights were out except in the hallway. i woke up and saw a man with a white collar coming in thru the doorway. i could not see his face. he came up to my bed, introduced himself, and asked of i would like communion. i told him i was not confirmed. he said it was ok and blessed me and touched my forehead with a crossing motion. he left and i went back to sleep. the next time one of the priests came by, i asked about father x of x church. i was told there was no father x of that, his, church. i asked if there was a catholic church with the same name that might have a priest by that name. the answer was NO and NO.
http://twitter.com/spvaughan/status/3458586221