Today, I'm glad to have DL Koontz here to talk about her experiences with paranormal encounters. Be sure to check out her new paranormal romance release, Crossing Into the Mystic, as well as her great contest at the bottom of this post.
*~*~*
The
Joys – or Angst? – of Paranormal Encounters
Hi, xxxx. Thanks for letting me join your blog today
to talk about Crossing into the Mystic.
First, an
overview of the book, for perspective: After the deaths of her parents and
sister, insufferably independent main character Grace is so grief-stricken that
even years later when she encounters a ghost, she is charmed into trusting him
with the hope of (1) being able to help him solve his murder, and (2) making
contact through him with her dead family.
Many people have asked what prompted me to write a
story about the paranormal. My answer always is that several things came
together at the right time to develop the story.
However, today, for the first time, I’d like to
share one of those in more detail. It’s about my beloved cousin-through-marriage,
Jim, an intelligent, generous, and delightful man.
Although he died a couple years ago at the age of
81, his story will remain with me forever.
To begin, I have to place you into character. You are now a man in your late 50s. You’ve
lived your whole life in towns around the Gettysburg Battlefield, site of one
of the Civil War’s bloodiest and longest battles. As a boy, you found minie balls and shells
and even a uniform emblem that stemmed back to that fateful battle. You learned the fields, their drops and
inclines, their vistas, their routines, but never once did you see anything
untoward.
You grew up to serve in the National Guard, reared
several children, operated (and launched) a couple businesses, and made
yourself so financially successful that you could retire young and travel with
your lovely wife. You were involved in your church and several civic-oriented
organizations. In short, you are now successful, healthy and of sound mind.
One evening, you and your wife go out to dinner with
another couple. You have a great time and agree to journey back to the house to
continue your time together. As you crest a hill beside a battlefield, you look
to your left and see six soldiers marching in formation. You’re used to such
sites in Gettysburg, given that they perform re-enactments periodically
throughout the year.
But, that quickly it hits you, it’s the wrong time
of year. And, it’s dusk, whereas re-enactments generally occur in the afternoons.
Further, you realize that the soldiers have a semi-transparency to them and
that the hair is standing up on the back of your neck (yes, even from the
distance and in a car).
You pale, swallow hard, and ask your friend if he
saw it, too. His answer, “yes” comes out elongated and hoarse. Quickly, you
look back, but the soldiers are gone! You ask the wives in the back seat if
they saw it, but the answer is no. You have only one witness.
You try to reason it through, you discuss it a little
with your friend, and decide that the fading sun had to have played tricks on
your eyes and that, for some reason, it was re-enactors walking along that
field. With high hopes, you choose to dismiss the whole thing, but find that
you can’t.
It stays with you—the visual, the feeling, the
raised hairs.
Two days later, the local paper runs a story about a
ghost siting. Three other people, separately, reported seeing the same six
soldiers. What’s more, one brave person ran toward them and watched the soldiers
disappear as he approached.
Now what do you do? It just became even more real,
but if you talk about it to other friends and family, they’ll label you in the
same category as those people who believe in alien abductions.
What did Jim do?
He wrestled with the memory for years. He changed from being skeptic
regarding all that silly battlefield talk about ghosts, to true believer in the
spiritual realm.
When he told me his story, the hair on my arms stood
on end.
Jim’s not alone. A Gallup poll found that nine of
out ten people believe in God, and a Harris poll found that fifty-one percent
of the public believes in ghosts. So clearly we have an overlap of people who
believe in God but who also believe in ghosts.
That same Harris poll also found that one in five Americans claims to
have encountered an apparition/ghost.
There
will always be skeptics among us who come up with scientific explanations to
discount spiritual phenomena. Yet, at the same time, most people acknowledge that
there’s much more around us than what we can see, taste, smell, hear, and feel.
Many Jew
and Christians interpret the Bible as saying that there is no such thing as a
dead person's spirit walking the earth or returning to the place where they
died, but that there are spirit beings who can connect with our physical realm.
These spirits are fallen angels that once served God, but now they serve the
god of the underworld, Satan. These demons are expert at deception, for they
masquerade as angels of light. In other words, they can take on the same
physical looks as a human who has died.
And that
lays the foundation for spiritual warfare.
So, this
means then, that even people of strong faith think ghosts could be in our midst
(albeit, actually demons). If that’s so, then why? In Jim’s case, for example,
he wasn’t interacting with them in anyway.
Did they appear merely to attempt to destroy the faith of those who
observed them? (Ironically, if anything, it made Jim’s faith stronger.) I don’t
know the answer to that question, but I do know that Jim saw what he described.
What
about you? Have you ever had an encounter with the unexplained, an angel, or a
ghost that left the hair on your arms at attention?
*~*~*
Crossing
Into the Mystic:
About the Author:
D. L. Koontz was born in
Pennsylvania, but with her husband, now splits her time between their home in
mountainous West Virginia and their cattle ranch in coastal plains Georgia. She
has a son and a stepdaughter. A member of ACFW (American Christian Fiction
Writers) and ASJA (American Society of Journalists and Authors), she is a
former journalist, business consultant, spokesperson, and college instructor.
After several non-fiction books, Crossing into the Mystic is her first novel.
A
Civil War Paranormal Romance
The
Crossings Series
Book
One of a Trilogy
D.L.
Koontz
Genre: Inspirational Fantasy,
paranormal elements
Print Length: 258 pages
ISBN: 1941103030
ASIN: B00J5GSSRM
Publisher: Lighthouse Publishing
of the Carolinas
Book Description:
Three years after losing her
family in a car crash, Grace MacKenna is set to inherit her stepfather's
ancestral estate among the mountains of West Virginia. Seeking solace and
healing, Grace discovers the ghost of William Kavanaugh, a dashing Civil War
captain in Virginia s 17th Infantry, haunts the property. When William charms
Grace into investigating the mystery that led to his death a hundred and fifty
years ago, she finds herself drawn into a world of chivalry and honor, but also
deception with secrets too dark to speak aloud.
Meanwhile, Clay Baxter, home from
service in Afghanistan, fights his own demons and ghosts. When Clay senses
Grace falling deeper into the realm of the dead, he seeks to pull her back. But
is he too late?
Torn between her love for two
mysterious young men - one living and one dead - Grace stands in the shadows of
the Antietam Battlefield with a choice: one that could leave Grace lost
forever, "crossing into the Mystic."
Available at Amazon Amazon
Paperback BN
Book Trailer: http://youtu.be/4RKylDUi0sc
Reviews
In Crossing Into The Mystic, D.L.
Koontz makes a very different world real. ~ Ann Vanino
The story is complex and
unexpected and I enjoyed the twists of plot. by Felicia Bowen Bridges
I kept going back and reading a
sentence, a paragraph, some of the time the whole page.~ Tricia Scoggins
About the Author:
D. L. Koontz was born in
Pennsylvania, but with her husband, now splits her time between their home in
mountainous West Virginia and their cattle ranch in coastal plains Georgia. She
has a son and a stepdaughter. A member of ACFW (American Christian Fiction
Writers) and ASJA (American Society of Journalists and Authors), she is a
former journalist, business consultant, spokesperson, and college instructor.
After several non-fiction books, Crossing into the Mystic is her first novel.
2 print copies open to US Shipping Only
0 comments:
Post a Comment