Most of my “writing time” yesterday involved securing our next paranormal research outing. I spent a lot of time on the internet researching all the best haunted locations in Minnesota that we could drive to. It also needed to be kid-friendly because what better family outing could there be than hunting for ghosts in creepy places (that question was oozing with sarcasm, in case you couldn’t tell)?
With the help of my research assistants (a.k.a. my 9 year-old son, Logan and my 7 year-old daughter, Ella), we’ve decided to make a trip to Owatonna, MN and spend an afternoon discretely investing the Minnesota State School Orphanage which has been turned into a museum and has been proclaimed by one regional group of paranormal investigators to be in the top five MOST haunted locations in the state. We have to do it discretely because they don’t appreciate people “ghost hunting” and have requested that people not perform investigations. I shouldn’t have mentioned this fact to Logan because now he’s afraid we’re going to get arrested – poor kid!
*Sidenote: I believe I will have to add into my publishing contracts that 10% of all proceeds from my novels will go toward my children’s future therapy bills. I can already envision them on the couch…”Well, it all started when my mommy told me she was a vampire, which is why she stayed up late every night. Then she started dragging me to haunted houses and made me run the ghost radar as she tried to capture EVPs.”
After we decided on our next family ghost adventure, I started researching local paranormal investigators. Why? Because I want to investigate with the professionals! If you’re my Facebook friend or follow me on Twitter, you might have seen my declaration that the Dakota County Paranormal Society has agreed to let me join them on their next investigation. Yay, DCPS, you guys totally rock (and I’m not just saying that because you agreed to let some suburban house-mom trying to promote her debut novel – which her agent is totally gonna sell before Halloween, tag along with you while you hunt for ghosts) I’m super-duper excited – which is one step above my usual state of being simply super-excited.
*Disclaimer: I have no way of knowing that my agent will or will not sell my manuscript before Halloween. I won’t even claim this statement to be any sort of premonition or psychic vision – it is merely my wishful thinking. I would like to apologize to my agent for any undue pressure I have placed upon her by publishing such unfounded statements on my blog. I should also thank her publicly for putting up with me.
I sent emails to several regional paranormal investigating groups. I’m sure I haven’t found them all – there seem to be quite a few of them. If any of you know of a group, let me know! Although I’m in Minnesota, I’m open to traveling to other states. One group I contacted invited me to investigate the Villisca Ax Murder house in Iowa, but I’m not sure I can make the date work due to my daughter’s ridiculous dance schedule – who signs these kids up for all this stuff? Oh yeah, that would be me, but I’m sure if I think about it long enough I can find some way to blame my mother (even though she had absolutely nothing to do with it) – don’t worry, I’ll get mine when my girls are older and they start blaming me for everything.
Come back next week to see if we’ve gathered any evidence of the paranormal. Hopefully, we’ll just end our adventure with a few photos of orbs or maybe full-body apparitions and not family mug shots after we’ve been arrested on the front steps of a local museum holding our Nooks and I-Phones with the Ghost Radar App running.