Guest Post: The Truth About Ghosts

It’s a delight to welcome author Jane Haseldine back to Colloquium in conjunction with the Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tour for her stand-alone novel, Everyone Is Perfect Here.

The Truth About Ghosts

by
Jane Haseldine

In my two professional worlds, the truth is a contradiction.

As a journalist, facts are fuel. If the bones of a story can’t be supported by what’s proven, then the entire structure is as wobbly as a paper house cobbled together with a pair of kids’ scissors and a glue stick.

As a suspense author, facts are fiction played out in make believe settings and often told by unreliable characters who may seem true-blue but can turn out to be the biggest liars of all.

My feelings about whether ghosts are real fall somewhere in-between. After all, you can’t fact-check the supernatural.

Even so, I still wonder whether something I can’t explain offered me a hand when I was desperate for one.

Circa forever ago, I graduated from Syracuse University with a journalism degree. The plan post-graduation was to move to New York City where I’d interned at a magazine the previous summer. I was ecstatic to launch my writing career there.

But life can throw a wicked curveball. For me, that came by way of my parents’ latest financial setback. I wanted to help. So, I put my future on summer hiatus and returned to the Boston area and my family.

Back home, I picked up what was supposed to be a short-term waitressing gig. Summer turned into fall. And fall turned into winter. My parents got back on their feet, thanks to my older brother, and they moved to a different state.

As for me, I’d become wrapped under the fog of a new relationship. I’d lost my way and stayed in Boston.

The person I was dating lived with his family in a triple-decker — a Boston mainstay that consisted of three narrow apartments stacked atop each other. If I close my eyes, I can still picture the place backlit with dark storm clouds in the distance.

One late night after another big fight caused by my boyfriend’s unsubstantiated jealousy, I couldn’t get a cab. The T had stopped running, and I was smart enough to know that walking to my apartment at that hour wasn’t wise, even though my pride was daring me to risk it.

Stuck, I wound up staying the night alone in the vacant but still furnished third story apartment. I deadbolted the door and went to the bedroom where I stared at myself in the mirror, wondering if the person I used to be was still in there.

Sleep eventually came. But a few hours later, I was jolted awake. The bed underneath me was shaking violently.

I shot up, heart yammering, and snapped on the light. I searched under the bed. Nothing. I did a thorough sweep of the apartment. Nothing. The deadbolt was still in place. I was still alone. I crept back to the bedroom where I stared at the ceiling with every light blazing until sunrise.

The new day came and with it, my boyfriend’s latest round of apologies.

Without school, without career, without family, I felt alone. So, I stayed.

Two weeks later, the cycle repeated. Jealousy. Fight. Too late to go home. I found myself alone in the third-story apartment, convinced that the incident with the shaking bed was a dream.

Until it happened again. That night, I awoke to the bed shaking violently again.

After a thorough check of the apartment, I realized I was alone and the place was secure, a prospect as terrifying as if I’d discovered the perpetrator.

The next morning, I didn’t stick around for apologies. I was exhausted from lack of sleep and trying to pretend everything was okay.

Without a word, I left the triple-decker, trying to make sense of things. On the way to the T, I stopped by the corner store down the block from my boyfriend’s home.

The store owner greeted me by name and then returned to his conversation with another regular.

Filling a Styrofoam coffee cup, I froze as I listened to their story. It centered on what happened to a young woman who decades earlier lived in the third-story apartment in the triple-decker where my boyfriend’s family now lived.

The store owner thought the jealous husband killed her. The regular theorized that she ran away before he could.

Decades later, I still wonder if any of the story was true, or if two men from the neighborhood saw the light going out in my eyes and made up a tale to set me straight.

I’ll never know. And I never made it to New York City. California called instead. I met a great man. We’ve been married for twenty-five years. Two kids and a beautiful life later, I still don’t know if ghosts are real.

Truth or fiction, either way, I’m thankful for whatever woke me up from my fog long ago.

Meet Jane

Jane Haseldine is a former journalist, crime reporter, columnist, newspaper editor, and magazine writer. She also served as the deputy director of communications for a governor. Born in Canada, her mother, also a writer, named her “Jane Eyre,” and took Jane and her two older sisters and older brother to the library on Saturdays where as a young girl she discovered Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, among other authors. She spent much of her early childhood on the road with her family as her British father cooked up business deals. She survived the long car rides that took her from the rocky coast of Maine to the deep red clay of Georgia by reading anything she could get her hands on. Other favorites included the Chronicles of Narnia series, A Wrinkle in Time, and everything written by Judy Blume. Jane spent her later childhood in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and Gloucester, Massachusetts. When she discovered John Steinbeck and read The Grapes of Wrath, she swore she would become a writer.

Jane graduated from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications with a degree in journalism and a minor in history, and spent many years working at newspapers and magazines across the country. She has called Louisiana, San Francisco, Boston, New York, Michigan, and Pennsylvania home, but now resides in Southern California.

Like many authors, her journey to becoming a published novelist was challenging. She had always wanted to write a mystery and created the character of Julia Gooden. After completing the first novel in the series, The Last Time She Saw Him, she sought a literary agent and met with numerous rejections, but also received valuable advice and, after securing an agent, within about a year, she had a two-book publishing deal which turned into a deal for the complete, four-book series. Will there be more Julia Gooden books? Maybe, although she feels that she left Julia “in a good place” in the last book, You Fit the Pattern.

Her next book will be Imprint, a dual-timeline mystery.

Connect with Jane at her website or on Instagram, Facebook, or X (Twitter).

Thank you, Jane!

Books by Jane Haseldine:

Julia Gooden Mystery Series

Stand-Alone Novels

Other Guest Posts by Jane Haseldine: