THE MONSTERS
IN MY HEAD
MJ Peter, Author of GhostiLeaks © 2015
Sometimes
you can’t see the cursed wood for the ominous, decaying, precariously leaning trees.
On the
19th September I got a Twitter message about something called Halloween-Palooza.
The moment I read that hybrid word, Halloween-Palooza, I was interested. To be
honest I wasn’t really sure what a 'Palooza' was though. It’s one of those
words I’d read many times but never thought about what it actually meant. I
quickly checked. Apparently it's a 'Wild, Crazy and Extravagant Party'. Now I’m
not big on parties but then I've never been to a wild, crazy or extravagant
one. Normally they’re just overly loud ones that result in someone shouting
drunken conversation into my ear. This ‘Palooza’ was much more appealing than
the sort of Drunken-Paloozas I'd experienced. Halloween-Palooza reminded me of
a time when horror geeks like us had to rely on magazines and newspaper ads to
find out where our brethren met and exchanged thoughts on ghosts and monsters.
I imagined if this Palooza were a physical one, it would be a party with
awesome homemade costumes of Rod Serling and Stephen King characters.
It
also reminded me of the power of social media, one of 31 horror writers being
called to fight on the Halloween front, through high speed broadband. At that
very moment, I was looking at a tweet I’d received a while back, from The
Comedy Store in LA. That had all started when I asked the comedian Ralphie May
if he believed in ghosts. I ask people that question a lot. In fact I’m more
likely to ask your feelings on the occult than your vacation destination. I
wouldn’t care where you holidayed if I’m honest. Ralphie hinted that he'd been
in some strange places and that I should contact the Comedy Store to find out
more. Intriguing. At this point the Comedy Store tweeted me their contact
details. God bless the technological world, and Twitter.
This
lucky lead from my favourite funny man caused a flashback to an episode of
Unsolved Mysteries with Robert Stack. It covered a story on the ghosts of the
Comedy Store. I've watched the segment again recently and it's as terrifying now
as it was back in the 1990's. I was just
about to send that email off to the Comedy Store, asking about those ghosts Bob
Stack and Ralphie May were talking about, when I stopped to write this piece
for Halloween-Palooza 3. I'll have to let you know how that goes another time.
For
me, monsters and ghosts are the terrifying nightmares I've been searching for
ever since I started reading and watching movies about them. I was an unhappy
kid for some of my childhood and spent hours thinking about the paranormal and
endless mysteries of the world. I wasn't sure I believed in haunting or any real
monsters but knew the thought of them put fire in my belly, and little else
did. I wanted there to be truth to it because it helped give meaning to the
very odd and sometimes sad world I lived in. In a funny way, monsters gave me
hope. The Lochness Monster, Bigfoot, ghosts and of course horror movies distracted
me from the routine of school, dinner and bed for as long as I can remember. I
particularly liked ‘Killer Klowns from Outer Space’ and even asked my parents
to rent it for me after I cut my foot open on a smashed milk bottle whilst
messing around at a building site. Yes, that was the make it better gift a 10
year old boy asked for, and yes I shouldn’t have been watching it at that age,
but I did anyway. I shouldn’t have been on that building site either.
What
is it that keeps me and all of us coming back to horror and mystery? Why do we
love it so much? For me, part of it is that rush of adrenaline when I walk
through a supposedly haunted house or watching the latest scary movie, the one
everybody’s talking about and hyping how scary it is. It hardly ever is really that scary though is it? Still great fun
though.
When
they do get a scary movie, show or book right, the goosebumps are the
confirmation it’s worked. That’s an amazing feeling, a buzz like no other. The
last time a scary idea really got me and sent those prickles all up the arms
and a chill down the back, was a stage show called Ghost Stories. This
ingenious theatre performance had horror tread the boards in a way I’d not seen
before. Such was its brilliance that I kept thinking about it long after I’d
left the theatre. It seems to be catching on now, growing like a Yew tree in a
graveyard. Do they really grow in graveyards or is that a myth? It was
testament to the incredible leaps our favourite genre is making in all areas of
entertainment. This was horror on stage, with a twist. I saw it twice and loved
it. I won’t ruin it for you but it contains both ghosts and monsters, much like
my brain.
This
brings me back to probably the most important element to my love of horror and
the supernatural. It has to be fear, I love to be scared. Indeed, I'm a
scare-junkie. I need a regular fix to keep me from becoming a normal person.
Like all junkies, because I devour so much of my vice, I require stronger jolts
each time to achieve the same high. As a result, it now takes a lot to spook
me. I've a tolerance to creepy places, scary movies and ghost stories but
continue to push my limits, occasionally finding a gem like Ghost Stories. You
might say I'm leading my own perpetual, supernatural, search party.
To
explain to you just how passionate I am about all this you need to understand
the kind of things I've done in the name of paranormal exploration. Would you
believe me if I said I'd hunted a demon judge? How about a haunted car or even
a Nazi poltergeist? You might get the impression that with interests like these
I'm one of those people who will believe anything. Far from it. Yes I love
horror and the unexplained but I'm a rational person who takes a lot of
convincing. The search for spirits and monsters fascinates me, inspires my
writing, fills conversation and keeps the left foot moving in front of the
right. I can’t imagine a world without them. Or, am I simply imagining a world
with them. Is this all in my mind, do these shadowy beings exist only in our
heads?
Years
of searching and thinking about the misty world of the paranormal have seen me
produce a TV show, write a few books, investigate ghosts, legends and creatures
and talk to my idols about this most addictive of interests.
GhostiLeaks,
my book, was inspired by everything I've talked about. Like Halloween-Palooza,
it too is a hybrid. It's an account of some of my real life paranormal
experiences and a collection of short stories I've written about the vampires
and spectres that live inside my skull. The concept was based on my own
compulsion to write about the horrors and hauntings of the world around me. It
felt as if something from that dark place was guiding my pen, pushing me
forwards. Perhaps it was all in my imagination, but who really knows.
Not
long after the book was released I went on the radio show 'Real Ghost Stories'
to talk about some of the ghostly encounters I'd covered in the book. They'd
previously featured a paranormal experience I had one misty night many years
ago and concluded the experience was as close to ‘proof’ of the afterlife as
one could hope to get. GhostiLeaks had for the first time given me an outside
perspective on my supernatural adventures, an opinion different to my own
skeptical one. Had I really experienced the paranormal? Was I looking for
something so intently that I'd actually missed it when it happened? These were
questions I started to ask myself. That saying 'not being able to see the wood
for the trees' took on personal meaning. I was someone who found the topic
entertaining, so entertaining that I might just have forgotten my objective, is
the paranormal real and do ghosts and monsters really exist?
I'd
always said ‘I don't believe in ghosts, but I'm frightened of them'. This had
been true for years, but I no longer felt certain I was entitled to say I
didn't believe. This was because during the course of investigating stories of
haunting, curses, vampires and yetis, I'd had several extremely bizarre experiences.
Somehow I'd managed to rationalise them all away, relegating them to a category
of 'spooky, but not proof'. Getting an outside opinion revealed that many
people thought I already had a compelling case for a supernatural world co-existing
with our own. If I were to accept this, it meant that all this time I’d been
living side by side with ghosts, ghouls and monsters… with my eyes closed.
Halloween-Palooza
brings me full circle. This is because my own discovery, that I may be missing
something supernatural, echoes the modern tradition of Halloween itself. This
is supposed to be a time when we honour the dead but it’s become a light
hearted way to dress as witches and skeletons. I suppose what I’m trying to say
is enjoy Halloween, dress up and carve pumpkins, but remember one thing. If
there really are ghosts and monsters out there, wouldn’t this be an
irresistible portal for them to emerge from…
Sometimes
you can’t see the wood for the trees, or the real monsters for the fancy dress
ones.
Have a
happy Halloween
MJ Peter
Kent, England
September 2015
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THREE ecopies of M.J. Peter’s
GHOSTILEAKS!!!
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AUTHOR
BIO
M.J. Peter has spent a lifetime searching for the truth behind the
paranormal. His writing reflects a passion for the unexplained and his real
life search for supernatural enlightenment. His writing is dark and
suspenseful, often with masterful twists. His work includes a combination of
his incredible short stories as well as his personal experiences with haunting.
GHOSTILEAKS
Horror lovers meet M.J.
Peter & ‘Ghostileaks’ – a collection of terrifying short stories with twists, inspired
by the author’s love of the paranormal, horror and his own weird real-life
experiences.
Each tale is intended to
give the reader that wonderful short story ride as well as beloved twists and
unexpected turns. A hauntingly popular new world of horror.
With creepy facts along the
way, detailing the chilling real-life inspiration behind these disturbing
tales, we spiral into a dark world. The author uses blood-curdling experiences
to write about the darker side of our existence and the things of nightmare.
If H.P. Lovecraft and
Stephen King spawned a demon child, it might write books like this. The author
says ‘Sometimes I tried to imagine the pen was moving automatically, as if some
shadowy source from the other side was leaking insider information, tales that
should never be heard on Earth – hence the title, GhostiLeaks’.
These 13 gems really are
from the other side and will have you hungry for more from M.J. Peter. The book
contains 11 original stories, many with a ‘Creepy Fact’ about its nature as
well as 2 terrifying personal encounters, witnessed by the author himself. As
you read each tale, the rich descriptive text leaves you thinking they would
make incredible films or TV series. An episode of the radio show ‘Real Ghost
Stories’ recently featured the book’s final tale ‘My Ghost Story’, an
experience which made M.J. Peter question his own beliefs. The book has
something for everyone, ghosts, vampires, zombies and some truly bizarre
stories that’ll have you wondering how on earth you missed the twist.
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