Thorne And Cross

Review of Five Nights in a Haunted Cabin – 6th and Final Post in my Haunted Cabin Series

/ danielwalterc / 4 Comments

FiveNightsCabinThe cabin season is about to come to a close, at least here on this blog. Sorry, but it has to be this way. After all, one cannot be forever “cabinated.”  Unless, perhaps, that “one” happens to be a ghost that haunts the cabin.  But even in that case, I think the ghost will eventually evaporate, dissipate, and therefore, no longer “cabinate.”  But what of a cabin beset with residuals hauntings; echoes of the past in motion, or “repeated playbacks of auditory, visual, olfactory, and other sensory phenomena that are attributed to a traumatic event…” (from http://parapedia.wikia.com/wiki/Residual_Haunting)

Do such hauntings endure forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and…

Authors Tamara Thorne and Alistair Cross claim to have witnessed several residual hauntings while staying at a cabin located in Gold Country in California. They document this experience in their book Five Nights in a Haunted Cabin . It is a short but highly fascinating read.

Unlike all the other stories that make up my haunted cabin series, this account is real. It is a real cabin, in a real place, visited by two very real people. At least I hope Thorne and Cross are real. I have reviewed several of their books,  I have heard real voices when I tuned into their Internet radio show Haunted Nights Live and I have had real exchanges with them on Facebook. It would be a shame if, after all that, they turned out to be bots! But I’m betting this is not the case.  And I believe that their experiences inside that cabin are real…allowing for subjective interpretation.

Thorne and Cross have collaborated on many novels. They write as a team, and as far as I can tell, they are what the kids call BFFs. They are like brother and sister.  While their acquaintanceship began virtually, they first met in person at this cabin that is the subject of this book. Knowing that the cabin had a reputation for being haunted, Thorne and Cross decided that it would be a great place for two authors of the paranormal to finally meet. After securing permission from the cabin’s owner to stay for several nights and conduct an investigation, these two went forth with their plan. Stayed five nights they did!  And things got creepy , creepy, creepy.

thronecross

Now, I bet you’re wondering – what makes this particular telling creepy? Let me answer this by stating what this story is not, especially when compared to the other tales of haunted cabins that I have reviewed. Spirits of natives are not descending upon the cabin (Rough Draft – Oops, I forgot to put the part about “Native American spirits” in the review), there is no witch in the woods (Maynard’s House and Revisiting Maynard’s House), Thorne and Cross are not succumbing to demonic possession (The Evil Dead), the cabin is free of scurrying, severed hands (The Evil Dead 2), and finally, there is no underground organization manufacturing zombies (Cabin in the Woods.)

What Five Nights in a Haunted Cabin offers is far more subtle and therefore, possibly, creepier.  It’s a “things that go bump in the night” type of scary.  It has cuckoo clocks that cry out at strange times, scratching noises on walls and doors. Then there is an unnerving silence, as if the wind is afraid to breath.  There are other disturbances as well; doors opening and closing, objects are found in certain places when the authors are sure they set them down some place else.

These incidences that take place in the cabin can be explained in two different ways: 1) The cabin is really haunted. 2) There is a logical explanation to all these occurrences. Being the “septic” that I am (That’s “skeptic” in Archie Bunker language), I tend to go with option #2.  But even if there is no haunting, the accounts documented in this book continue to be creepy because they realistically mimic “the stuff” of a haunting.  Because these disturbances are subtle, they are believable and therefore – creepy, creepy, creepy!  And perhaps this cabin is haunted! Don’t let my “septicism” ruin you, embrace the haunting if you must.

In my article Beyond the House: An Examination of Hauntings Within Alternate Structures – Part 1 – Cabins , I say this about haunted cabins:

Maybe it’s not the cabin that is haunted. Maybe it’s the surrounding environment that reeks of terror

HOWEVER

They (the cabins) are susceptible to the surrounding elements and therefore very permeable to the stuff of the supernatural

In sum, the haunting begins outside and then makes its way into the cabin. But that’s NOT what happens in Thorne and Cross’s book. Instead the inverse is true: the haunting begins in the cabin and then goes on to infect the surrounding environment, as testified by the birds. What birds? Exactly!  The tree-filled perimeter is absence of bird-song.  The environment is too disturbing for these feathered creatures! Thorne and Cross did their research and discovered that murders and suicides occurred inside the cabin many years ago. Perhaps the emotional trauma of these events remains (a residual!), discouraging even birds from coming to close to the cabin.  Hmm, maybe there really is a haunting going on!  (Or maybe birds are just sometimes absent or silent.)

There is something that I wish the book had touched upon. Thorne is meeting Cross for the very first time. I would have liked to learn about their first impressions of each other. It would have been interesting to read about how they warmed up to one another. Was there a single moment that broke the ice? Was there a relationship-defining event? Somewhere in Facebook land, I learned that Tamara shaved Alistair’s back hair during this stay. That should have been in the book!  That must have been a truly “haunting” experience for Tamara!  But seriously, I do think a dual story about two people meeting for the first time in the midst of a haunting would have gone a long way.  And it would have fit in so well with the format of the book.  Thorne writes a paragraph, and then Cross follows with his paragraph or two, commenting on what Thorne had just written.  It’s like listening to two people at a campfire taking turns telling a story while helping each other with the telling along the way. It definitely made for some cozy reading.  It would have been even cozier had they shared more details of their meeting.

All in all, this is a good book. I say buy it. Read it.

 

 

And with that, here ends my series about haunted cabins. I hope you have enjoyed it. Too-da-loo! (for now)

Review of The Witches of Ravencrest (The Ravencrest Saga Book 2)

/ danielwalterc / 2 Comments

WitchesRavencrestOnce upon a time, I absorbed the “Ghosts of Ravencrest.” Then I needed a break. I had to let these ghosts settle into my consciousness and give them time to digest into my subconscious before moving on. And move on I did,  carrying these ghosts with me, for they were stored in my memory banks. But alas, many of these banks were locked; their contents – irretrievable?  I had hoped not, for any understanding of the book that is under review depended on unobstructed access to these ghosts. Were “The Witches of Ravencrest” able to set them free?   Short answer – yes!

For those that have no clue what I was babbling about in the preceding paragraph, I refer you to this review: The Ghosts of Ravencrest  The Ghosts of Ravencrest is the first book in the Ravencrest saga. The subject of this review is The Witches of Ravencrest, the second book of the series. I finished the first book back in February. When I started the second book in the late summer, I was a bit worried. It had been a while since I visited with the occupants of Ravencrest Manor – the haunted house of the Ravencrest series. These occupants are members of the Manning household; would I remember them?

As far as family goes, the task was easy. The only living family members are Eric Manning and his two children. Check, check, annnnnd check!  But this household includes more than just this trio of living relations – so much more.  First there is the household staff. There is Belinda Moorland, the governess for the Manning children and the aspiring love interest of Eric Manning. Since she is the central protagonist, I had an easy time recalling her as well. Being the newest member of the household, it is through her eyes that readers of the first book come to meet the rest of the staff; a collection of  odd individuals whose idiosyncrasies  range from the charmingly eccentric to the dangerously disturbed.  Then there are those other “entities” that lurk about in the house; abhorrent creatures living in the walls and mysterious spirits that haunt an entire wing of the mansion. Going on memory, it seemed that each household member, living or dead, had a role to play in this somewhat complicated  and continuously unfolding plot. Oh Lordy! How was I ever going to reacquaint myself with all these characters and remap this plot?  Turns out, the task was not that difficult.

With familiar ease, I rediscovered Grant Phister the butler and his husband Riley the gardener. Grant is the eyes and ears of Ravencrest and he seems to be the one tasked with managing the overall affairs of the household. This is no easy feat since part of his job, unofficial though it may be, is to keep the supernatural carnage at a minimum. His ease of character and witty humor make him memorable.   Officially, the untrustworthy Cordelia Heller is the household manager. She is bound to the estate by matters of wills and legality.  It took me very little time to refamiliarize myself with her wicked ways.  For she is an ancient witch that has worn different clothing’s of flesh over her many years. She has it in for Belinda, who is learning, little by little, that she has her own magical abilities that, when fully realized, may rival the skills of Cordelia.  But for now, Cordelia’s power is great! In The Ghosts of Ravencrest, she transformed a man into a crawling abomination that lives inside the walls. This thing, known as The Harlequin, is back in this second novel. He passed out of my conscience for a time, but he crawled back into my brain with the same ease for which he crawls about in the ventilation system.  Cordelia is in charge of the maids who she regularly disciplines down in the dungeon, thereby adding some BDSM flavor to this novel. Ah yes, how could I have forgotten the spicy Dominique, the Latina maid whose obsession with Jesus Christ is taken to an erotic level! Oh and I had forgotten all about Walter Hardwicke, the chauffer, always doing the bidding of Cordelia.  He is also a serial killer. Once reintroduced, I “remembered him fondly” (not really, I just wanted to use that phrase!)

Of all the ghosts that haunt Ravencrest, the three nuns stand out the most. I never forgot them and they are back again, gliding in unison in the haunted wing, forcing anyone they encounter to “Eat, eat, eat!” the cursed persimmons that they have in their possession.  But perhaps of more prominence are the ghosts of Mannings long since dead. To what extent these men and women haunted Ravencrest in the first book I could not remember. But they shine with meaning and revelation in The Witches of Ravencrest.

 The first book introduces us to all these characters and lets us readers know that GhostsRavencrestRavencrest is haunted not only with spirits but also by a strange history of familial drama wrapped in murder and treachery. This second book goes beyond the supernatural manifestations and explores the agents of such phenomena; the summoners of spirits, the casters of spells. In short, we move on from “The Ghosts of Ravencrest” to “The Witches of Ravencrest”.  In the first book we learn what we are dealing with. In the second book, we learn more about the whys and wherefores of the “whats”. We learn of the complex roles of the characters and begin to understand how they fit into the larger story.

For better or worse, The Ravencrest Saga has the makings of a literary soap opera. There is love and eroticism, murder and betrayal, a subplot here, a trail of story over there, here a conflict, there a conflict, everywhere a con-flict – Eric Manning had a house – E-I-E-I-GHOST! Some may not like this style, especially those horror fans that are not into romance sagas. While I am not a follower of such a genre, I did enjoy this book. What I missed, however, were the trips back in time that were prevalent in the first book. There are places in The Ghosts of Ravencrest where the story creeps back to the distant past. The writing style of these sections reflects the style of the period. We go back a century or two and learn about the Manning family of yore. We see how ghosts and witches were a part of the makeup of the family even back then. In The Witches Of Ravencrest, while the ghosts of the old times visit the present, we as readers are rarely allowed back into the past. I miss the old world of the story. Oh well, time marches forward I guess.

So to wrap it all up, The Ravencrest Saga offers interesting characters and a compelling story. It mixes erotica with the gothic. Sometimes this mixture works well. At other times it…I don’t know, it just “works” these other times, minus any supporting adjective. The soap opera style can be daunting, especially if one is not attuned to this style of storytelling, but in the end it pays off with its creativity of content.

 

 

 

 

Review of Haunted

/ danielwalterc / Leave a comment

HauntedThorns and Cross – sounds like I’m about to embark upon a seasonally appropriate Easter theme post, doesn’t it? Christ wearing the crown of thorns, Christ nailed to a cross, etc. etc. and etc.  All on account of a typo. Damn that “s” for being so close to the the “e” on the keyboard!  Let’s remove the “s” in “Thorns” and replace it with the correct “e” and we now have Thorne and Cross – two authors who often partner together to write Gothic ghost stories. I first discovered them when I read and reviewed one of their works: The Ghosts of Ravencrest.  I found the book very much to my liking.

Having familiarized myself with the pair, I decided to dissect the duo.  By this I mean that I wanted to read their “solo” novels.  I began with Haunted  by Tamara Throne.  Overall, I enjoyed it.  I will explain why but first let me establish the novel’s setting and describe the house that is at the center of the story.

 

David Masters, best selling author of paranormal books, moves to a Victorian mansion off the coasts of California known as Baudey House.  Yes, it is haunted. He knows it too. Or at least he expects it to be haunted; that what the rumors say anyway. As a paranormal kinda’ guy, it’s what he wants.  The house is part of an odd seaside community that is a mixture of cantankerous yokels and new age flakes. Nearby the house is a lighthouse haunted by a headless ghost. And there are plenty more where that (or in this case, “he”) came from! Inside the Baudey House there are spirits, some of which are visual echoes that can only be perceived by those that that have sixth sense. Others are more interactive – more deadly!  There are certain rooms where presences are so strongly felt that it is impossible to remain inside of them for any length of time.  Somewhere in the house there is a secret passage that leads to a dungeon. It is up to Masters to find it. Then there are ceramic, hand-made dolls hidden in various places throughout the house. How weird is that!

Did I mention the murders? At different times over the course of more than one hundred years, grizzly murders have occurred inside the house.  Bodies were found in various states of dismemberment. It is no wonder Baudey House became known as “Body House.”

Let me now describe the things I find most appealing about this book. The first has to do with the overall story.  Thorne serves up a “full meal of a plot” with several interesting angles, many well-rounded characters, numerous situations of captivating drama, and a compelling but chilling backstory. If I had to choose one word to summarize the story, that world would be “fulfilling.”

My second piece of praise is more specific. Of all the authors that have dealt with the subject of “cold spots”, I find Thorne’s descriptions to be the most visceral, which for me translates to “frightfully descriptive.”

Cold spots, according to the According to the Associations of the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena:

“… are small areas (usually a lot smaller than a room) that feel significantly colder than the surrounding area. They are considered by some to be a sign of a ghost in the area. Some cold spots are always felt in the same place while others seem to appear and disappear at different locations.”

Thorne’s accounts of cold spots are gripping, literally so; when her characters encounter them, they feel their chilling presences closing in on their bodies.  First, there’s the drop in temperature, then there’s the gripping sensation, next come paralysis and finally their bodies are vulnerable to possession!

Alas, the novel has its shortcomings. Quite often, without warning, the third person narrative slips into a first person perspective. This happens in the middle of paragraphs of all places!  Sometimes I found myself at the end of a sentence before realizing that I was reading the character’s thoughts.  Italics go a long way! Perhaps this is a formatting issue; maybe the italics disappeared when the original file was converted to an e-file. Even so, it would have been helpful if the phrases that represented thought had their own lines.

All in all, this a good book.  One Thorne down, once Cross to go! I’m not sure if Alistair Cross  has written a haunted house book. I might just have to bite the bullet and “read outside the house”.