Guest Post

Guest Chick: Paula Niziolek

Please join us in giving author Paula Niziolek a warm welcome today! She has quite the chilling tale to tell…

My Husband Killed My Ghost

Before we hit him up with any murder charges, I’d like to say a huge thank you to Jennifer Chow for inviting me here to celebrate yesterday’s release of my debut cozy mystery with the Chicks on the Case! How fun!

Now what was that about the killing of a ghost? And can ghosts be killed anyway? Aren’t they already dead? Hang tight. I’m getting there.

You see, a couple of years ago I was convinced our house was haunted. I’d started writing a cozy, you know, just to see if I actually had enough words in me to write a book. (It turns out I did!)

I’d reached the age where I had periodic spells of turning into a flaming marshmallow and melting in place. The old ceiling fans we had moved at an excruciatingly slow pace, so dear husband hotfooted it to the hardware store and purchased two new, turbo speed fans. He installed one in my office and one in our bedroom. The fan in the bedroom is what convinced me that we had an invisible house guest.

That fan whirled at high speed all night long, but first thing in the morning, I’d turn it off. Except I started to notice it kept turning back on….by itself. Whenever I’d go into the bedroom during the day, that fan would be on again. I’d turn it off, thinking I must’ve forgotten. I’d pop back in later and sure enough, it was on again.

I started paying closer attention. Get out of bed. Turn fan off. I’d point at it. “I turned you off. Behave yourself.” Two hours later it’d be whipping the wind around the room again. Once again, I’d turn it off and go back to my writing cave.

My husband came home from a week of work on the road. I pulled him into the bedroom to stare at the fan. “Look. It’s doing it again. I’m telling you, we have a ghost.”

This went on for a couple of weeks, until the day my husband called me into the bedroom. The fan was off. “Stay here and watch it,” he said. Then he disappeared down the hallway. Seconds later, the fan came on and he hee-hawed from my office. He’d figured out that the remote control for the fan in my office was giving orders to the fan in the bedroom.

“You killed my ghost!” I sobbed.

In Hammers and Homicide, Dawna Carpenter is a widow with a secret. She thinks her late husband Bob is still hanging around the house. Of course, when she mentioned that little fact to her kids, they thought she’d lost her ever-loving mind. She shrugged it off. Let them think what they want. She wasn’t about to argue when her youngest, April, announced she was moving back to their hometown. So what if the main reason for April’s return was to keep an eye on her crackpot of a mother? Dawna enjoyed her one-sided conversations with Bob, and she hadn’t even mentioned to the kids that her little cat, Lilac, who passed eight years ago, had been sleeping on her bed lately.

Maybe I thought we had a ghost simply because I was immersed in Dawna’s world and had ghosts on the mind.

Have you ever thought you might have had a ghostly encounter, lovely readers? Or do you lean more to Dawna’s kids’ way of thinking and don’t believe in that nonsense?  

When Paula Charles isn’t writing under the towering trees of the Pacific Northwest, she can be found in the garden with her hands in the dirt or sitting on her front porch with a good book and a glass of iced tea. She has a love for small towns, ghost stories, and pie. During her childhood, she grew up in a town suspiciously resembling the fictional Pine Bluff, Oregon where she trailed behind her grandmother in the family’s hardware store until her grandmother would get fed up and put her to work counting nails. She is a member of Sisters in Crime National, Guppies, and a local chapter. She also writes cozy mysteries under the pen name of Janna Rollins with the first Zen Goat Mystery coming out in March. Paula lives on a small farm in Southwestern Washington with her husband and an entire menagerie of furry and feathered creatures.

39 thoughts on “Guest Chick: Paula Niziolek”

  1. Our cat, Sox, left us way too soon from cancer. We would see him all the time. We were moving from MA to FL and going by RV. I told him just before we were leaving that if you want to stay with us you need to come inside. I watched him come in and now he is with us in FL but we don’t see him as often.

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      1. I’m looking forward to reading about Lilac. I love that name. Sox was pretty much a loner but after a while he might get along with Lilac as he did his sister Belle. She passed away last March at 18 1/2. No sighting of her but she had kidney disease for a very long time. I miss her so much she was my little girl and she preferred me over my husband.

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  3. I definitely lean towards the haunted side of things. We built our house in 1989. But after my mom passed away my daughter started hearing things like a person with a walker walking in the hallway. That same night I woke up when someone grabbed my ankle and shook me. I woke up still feeling the hand on me but I saw no one. I knew it was my mom. That was the way she used to wake me up for school in the morning when I was a kid. She wanted me to know she was ok. My husband and 2 other friends all saw a friends father standing in the doorway of the room they were all in. He had passed about 6 years before. I have no doubt that when our loved ones pass, they are still here, at least for a bit, watching over us.
    Nani

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    1. What a great story, Nani. I have no doubt it was your mom. When I woke up on the morning of my first birthday after my own mom passed, she was standing beside my bed for a moment. You’re right. They want us to know they’re okay.

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  5. We did have a ghost in our house. He was the grandson of the previous owners who was killed by a drunk driver shortly after he graduated from college. He loved playing practical jokes on us–hiding things, turning on the computer, and toying with the electricity. He loved Christmas, and would peer over our shoulders when we opened our gifts. While visiting Savannah, Georgia, I met an author at a book signing who explained how to send Christian on his way. Since then, we’ve been ghost-free.

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      1. In a weird way, it was a comfort having him in our house. Christian lived here when his mother was going through a divorce. He must’ve loved it–that’s why he returned when his life was cut short before his time. However, I don’t miss how he used to hide my things, which would take like forever for me to find. I imagine he was happy about continuing on his journey to eternal life.

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  6. I’m following Paula around today lol. I just visited her on Dru’s blog, but I promise I am not haunting Paula. I would like to believe people stick around and give us signs they are OK. Many people seem to have that experience. After my mom passed away I kept waiting to see her or get some kind of sign. I was disappointed when I didn’t, but I just decided she was anxious to get her next adventure going and knew that we would all be OK.

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    1. Are you stalking me, Sue?! Don’t worry. I’m fine with that. hehehe – I’m guessing your mom knew you were okay and went on her merry way. “On to her next adventure.” I love that!

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  9. Welcome, Paula, and congrats on your debut! It sounds great!!

    I’m not sure if I’ve had a ghostly encounter, but this reminds me of a friend who was convinced that her dead grandfather was trying to communicate with her through the microwave!

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  10. Congrats on your book, Paula!

    These days, my wife and I have trouble distinguishing ghosts from CRS disease (that’s can’t remember s___). Someone moves an object from point A to point B and forgets they moved it. Or for some inexplicable reason, I take off my glasses and set them down, then spend twenty minutes looking for them. Or turn on the oven, leave the room, then find the oven on three hours later.

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    1. Hi, Tom! We have that same problem at our house. I like the idea of blaming missing glasses and half-finished tasks on ghosts instead of my own forgetfulness. Good one! I’m stealing that idea!

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    1. Hi Tom! *waves* Thanks to you and all who are turning up as Anonymous. It seems we Chicks have a ghost on our blogsite also, playing tricks.

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  12. Congratulations on your release, Paula! We have two ceiling fans upstairs that respond to the same remote. It took us a while to figure that out, so I totally feel your pain. And, hey, just because that mystery was solved, it doesn’t mean you don’t have a ghost. Just sayin’…

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    2. Sheesh! Both JC and Paula have ghost fans so I was hoping for some help with mine! We have tried everything—yes, literally—so I guess we really do have a ghost! He must be a hot little guy too, since he always turns it full blast. Sigh.

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      1. Oooh, but what if both JC and my ghosts moved to your house? With two of them, the spirit realm might be heating up so they have to go full boar on the fan speed!

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  13. Paula, thank you visiting Chicks today, and sharing your new book with us. It sounds great, and love the post. So nice to meet you. I had a poltergeist in an apartment way back–he won, I moved. (If anyone wants to look up the story sometime, it’s in the Chicks archives under “Who You Gonna Call? Not Me.”)

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  15. Not a believer in ghosts here–or in any kind of woo-woo–but I do love a good story about ghosts (the fabulous Cary Grant film “Topper” comes to mind). And I love the premise of your new book–congrats! Thanks so much for visiting the Chicks today, Paula!

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  16. Well, we have ghost dog. Our Golden Retriever Needa died in our house as did Punkin before her. But before we got the one, we have now, Texie, a friend drove by the house and saw Needa in the window she always was looking out. Then when we got Texie, she was one of 12 and kind of the runt. So, when we brought her home, she always rushed the food we put down since she used to be last to get any. Then all of a sudden after three weeks, she stopped and sat down until we released her to eat. Just what we had taught Needa. And there are other instances of Ghost Dog that taught this pup. So yes, we believe in ghosts.

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      1. Thank you, Paula. Needa tried to go upstairs once when she was little, and the doggie gate fell on her. So, she never tried again except once when she followed me up the back stairs and when she got to the front stairs she froze remembering. She never tried again. She never got on furniture or tried. Texie has never tried to do either. She stays downstairs and, in her beds, or the floor. She also sleeps at the bottom of the front stairs waiting for me to come down. So many examples of Needa’s presence.

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