If you’ve been paying attention to the news lately, you may be aware that billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter and has been turning it from a somewhat tolerable landscape to a freaking hellhole. I’m not going to go into details, because you can read all that elsewhere, but suffice to say, a lot of people have been wondering if now is a good time to get off Twitter and find a new platform to interact with that does the same thing as Twitter. For us writers, we’ve been looking for a new platform where we can talk about writing and maybe avoid the vitriol that seems to have been given free reign on Twitter these days.
One of those platforms is called Hive Social, which I’ve seen a lot of posts about on both Twitter and Facebook this past week. It seemed like a good platform, a lot of writers and horror types I’m connected with were trying it out, and I’m usually slow on new social media trends and wanted to not be the last again, so I decided to give it a try yesterday. Besides, the platform’s website says it doesn’t tolerate hate speech or any other sort of awful behavior, which honestly appeals to me in the wake of certain decisions by Twitter’s new leader.
So, now I have an account on Hive. I’ve gotten about forty-something followers, posted a couple of times, and have liked other people’s posts as well. How does it compare to Twitter?
Well, it does have some room to improve. The app is slow to load or register likes at times, and the search engine feature doesn’t always bring you to the person you’re looking for, even when you type their full name in. You can’t access the app from the laptop just yet, only your mobile devices, and occasionally the app just shuts itself off mid-use. And you can’t leave a link so people can directly go to your page on the platform.
However, this may be because of its sudden popularity. I doubt anyone running the app could have foreseen so many people migrating over to Hive as Twitter continues to implode, so they’re probably scrambling to make sure the app is at least somewhat able to handle all these people. In fact, I did see a post from the app’s company asking people to be patient as they try and deal with the new influx of users.
So, there is a chance this app could improve as time goes on. Of course, there’s also a chance that it won’t replace Twitter and that we’ll stay on there. Or maybe we’ll go off both apps and find something else. It’s hard to tell the future. All we know is that Twitter might not be a good place to stay for the foreseeable future and that we may not be able to stay on there for much longer.
In the meantime, I’ll keep trying both apps for a while before I make any final decisions, one way or another. And while I can’t leave a link to my page on Hive, I can leave links to my other social media (though you can also look to the left and see them listed there). If you want to check me out on any of these platforms, please do. And if you end up subscribing, I hope you and I will have plenty of wonderful interactions on these other apps.
One more thing before I sign off tonight, my Followers of Fear: I found out today that my short story “The Dedication of the High Priestess,” which combines ballet with the figure of the King in Yellow, will be read aloud on the Tales to Terrify podcast this Friday. I’m so excited for you all to experience this story! I’m quite proud of it and I really hope you enjoy it. I’ll be sure to post a link as soon as it’s out.
Lately, I’ve been deep into two very different books of horror. The first, which I finished last night, is What One Wouldn’t Do, an anthology of horror stories around the idea of “what wouldn’t you do for…what? Power? Revenge? Love? Etc?” The other is Ghoul by Brian Keene, a coming-of-age horror novel about three boys who discover a ghoul living in the graveyard near their homes. They’re both very good, very different from one another, and both deal in emotional horror.
Emotional horror is horror that relies more on the feelings the story provokes in the reader than a supernatural/paranormal entity or a serial killer or anything like that. And yes, I’m aware that all horror tries to provoke an emotional response in readers. Namely terror and fear. But this is a much more subtle kind of horror. Emotional horror scares you with the situation the characters are in and their responses, particularly their emotional responses, to the situation.
A good example of this is the 2015 movie The Witch. You may have noticed, but the titular witch is actually pretty peripheral to the story. She doesn’t show up except to maybe push events in the story. In total, I think she’s maybe only in the film for three whole minutes, if even that. Rather, the horror of the story is how each character reacts to the witch’s interference in their lives. It starts with the baby being kidnaped, then with the older son disappearing into the woods and then coming back horrifically changed. The kid has an ecstatic vision before dying, which leads to the family to believe they’re being victimized by a witch, who could possibly be one of them. And you’re terrified not by the witch or what could be her supernatural influence on the characters. You’re scared by their paranoia, their heartbreak and distrust, and how quickly things devolve from here, leading to an awful, irreversible decision on the part of the protagonist.
The true horror of this story may not be from the titular monster
This is the kind of horror both What One Wouldn’t Do and Ghoul deal in. Many of the stories in the former deal with supernatural elements, but the horror itself is what drives the characters to commit heinous acts or to make deals with the devil or go through insane challenges, and then seeing the fallout from those decisions. And for the latter, while the titular monster is scary in its way, it’s no Pennywise. Rather, a lot of the horror we experience is through the main characters, twelve-year-old boys who are becoming disillusioned by the world around them through the adults in their lives. It’s honestly heartbreaking to see the adults around them fail them so spectacularly, and one scene in particular was so upsetting, I had to post about it on Facebook and Twitter just to get my emotions out.
So, how do you write these scenes? Honestly, it’s not easy. I’m not sure you can set out to write a story that deliberately tugs at your heartstrings and fills you with the emotions the characters are feeling. It’s kind of like how you can’t write a story around a theme. Instead, you take a story and the theme evolves naturally from your working on it. Only when that theme has revealed itself can you play with it and the story together to bring out the best in both.
That was certainly the case with Cressida, the story I wrote that was published in Into the Deep (click here to check it out if you haven’t yet). While it’s a horror story and a mermaid story, it’s not a horror story about mermaids, though they aren’t the pretty fishtailed supermodels Disney animated, either. Rather, the mermaid is in herself a catalyst for the true horror, which is what the characters do upon encountering a mermaid who shares an uncanny resemblance to a deceased family member of theirs.
But when I set out to write that story, I never intended that the horror would come from the characters’ emotional and psychological reactions. I wrote the story because it sounded like a lot of fun to work on and I made changes to the storyline along the way to better bring out the horror I was discovering. The result is Cressida, which I feel is some of the best work I’ve written yet.
You know, that makes me realize something: in emotional horror, whatever is happening in the plot, be it mermaids, ghouls, necromancy, witches, etc., is often not the main focus of the story (even if it’s in the story’s title). Rather, they’re plot devices, tools to draw out the horror hidden within the characters’ emotional responses.
My story in this anthology didn’t start out as an emotionally-driven horror story. It just ended up that way.
I guess that makes emotional horror a kind of psychological horror.
Anyway, that’s what’s going through my mind at this time. The fact that I was getting into all these stories with similar kinds of horror at the same time got my brain working, so I decided to write it out. I’d love to hear what your thoughts on this subject are. Let’s talk in the comments below.
That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I leave for my trip tomorrow, so I likely won’t be around as much as I would otherwise be. However, I’ll be around on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, so check there for updates if you start to miss me.
Until next time, my Followers of Fear, good night, pleasant nightmares, and there’s only a week till Halloween. Prepare to give yourselves to the dance of terror and to raise the old gods so we can all enjoy their infernal gifts. If you do not, I suggest you run.
From left to right: Charles Naylor, Joleene Naylor and myself, masked up in front of our hotel and ready to rock.
Hey, Followers of Fear! I didn’t think I would have a moment to let you guys know how I’m doing, but I ended up having some spare time in the airport while waiting to head to South Carolina. With that in mind, I thought I’d take a moment to update you guys on what I’ve been up to. Now obviously, I can’t update you on the Villisca Axe Murder House, not until I’ve had some time to upload my videos to YouTube. However, I can tell you about my time in Des Moines, and the book expo I attended.
I arrived in Des Moines on Friday at about three in the afternoon, and took an Uber to the airport, where I met with my friend and colleague Joleene Naylor and her husband/my friend Charles Naylor. We went out to dinner at a themed burger joint called Zombie Burger (and yes, it looks just like you’d expect. See my Instagram for photos). We then spent some time driving around Des Moines and seeing the sights.
But it was the next day that was on our minds, as well as the reason why we were there: the 5th annual Indie Author Book Expo.
We arrived Saturday morning for the first day of the Expo at the Valley West Mall in Des Moines. We were located in a wide-open area on the first floor near a children’s area, with several tables spread around the area. I found my table, which was hidden in the shade of the second floor balcony and right bny two stores called Buckle and University Sports, and set my stuff down before introducing myself to Jenn Thompson, the woman who let me come to the Expo in the first place. After that, I got my booth set up and waited for 11, when the stores and the Expo would begin.
My table at the Indie Author Book Expo. Thanks to Joleene Naylor for the photo.
Some observations about the Expo:
-First, I need to work on my display. My table was the most bare-bones of the authors. I had my copies of Rose, one of which was on a stand; a Tarot deck; and a homemade sign stating my prices. Meanwhile, look at Joleene’s below.
Joleene’s booth at the Expo.
Holy crap! She’s got intricate displays, a tiered-display with pet vampire rocks and bottles of vampire blood on it, candy dishes filled with freebies! Plus a banner and a few other odds and ends! And many of the other authors had other additions to their booths: big banners that went behind their booths for photos, cheap little bobs and bits for sale to go with the books you buy, etc. And Joleene mentioned that at other expos and conventions she’s been at, people have used prize wheels, raffles, and more to entice readers. In fact, she usually uses selfie banners so people can take photos of themselves with vampire fangs (not something to do in this day and age, but still).
Seeing all that made me realize that, in future expos and fairs and conventions, I will need to step up how I display and sell my work to draw in more people. I’m not sure how, seeing as Rose and my other works don’t necessarily lend themselves to little toys or raffle wheels or whatever. But I have a year before my next scheduled convention (assuming COVID-19 doesn’t cancel that as well). I have time to think of something.
And if you have any suggestions, my Followers of Fear, I would love to hear them.
-Second, COVID-19 had its effect on the expo. As you can see in the photos, Joleene and I are wearing masks, and obviously we took our time and effort to keep ourselves and others safe. But the pandemic took its toll on the expo, to be sure. Most of the people who would go out of their way to attend an expo with authors at a mall are also the type who would not want to risk getting the virus, so they stayed home. That meant the mall was filled with mostly employees and people who were there to pick up what they came for and leave. Which made our job of getting books and other products into their hands that much more difficult.
And it was under those circumstances the expo began. The first day did not go as well as I’d hoped. Not only had I left my cloak at the hotel room, but given what I said above, it was hard as hell to sell books. I only sold one copy of Rose near the end of the day, plus a couple of Tarot readings. I got a lot of people passing by or saying no, including one guy who said he and his wife were moving to Malaysia and were downsizing by fifty percent. I’m not sure if that was just a line or the truth, but man, that was a strong rejection!
The second day, Sunday, on the other hand, actually went much better. I don’t know if it was remembering my cloak this time or the stars were right, but I sold about three copies of Rose and did a few more Tarot readings. Overall, a successful day. My favorite part was giving a young woman a Tarot reading about something close to her heart. Apparently the reading was very accurate to her life, and she liked what she heard in terms of what might be in the future for her. It made my day to give her a reason to smile and hope for the future.
I’d say, despite all the barriers up against us, the Expo was, at least for me, was a success. Sure, I didn’t make back everything I put down for this, very few can,* but I still sell some books and met some new readers. For me, that’s a success. A bigger one than the Bexley Local Author Festival last year, even.
Plus, I got to buy some art from Jenn’s daughters and made some new connections with other writers, so that’s a plus.
Thanks to Jenn Thompson for allowing me to come out for the Expo, and thanks to Joleene and Charles for all the help they gave me. Hope we can do it again someday.
That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I don’t know when I’ll be back again, but I’m sure I’ll have plenty to talk about when I do log onto WordPress again. Until next time, stay safe, watch out for the giant flying sheep, and pleasant nightmares!
You know, I feel like I should’ve written a post like this a while ago. Like, at least a month ago. Oh well, better late than never. I’ve been thinking for a while of what I want to do in terms of writing for 2020. Which is unusual, because while I’m a huge plotter for my stories, I don’t usually plan out goals for an entire year. But I feel like, with a book published and a short story included in an anthology last year, I feel like I should try some new strategies to keep the momentum going. So without further ado, let’s talk my writing goals of 2020.
Finish Toyland
Of course, this was on here. Luckily, I’m already on my way there: as of a few days ago, I’m only six chapters away from finishing Toyland, the Gothic horror novel I’ve been working on since November. Depending on how things play out this year, I’ll probably edit it at some point. After that, perhaps I’ll find a publisher for it. Fingers crossed it goes well (and that a novel approaching ninety thousand words doesn’t intimidate anyone).
Complete the short story collection
Before November and NaNoWriMo, I was putting together a collection of short stories. As of now, there are twelve stories in the as-yet unnamed collection. Being a horror writer though, I want thirteen stories. Good thing I’m already making strides on that goal: I’ve been doing a lot of research for a story I want to write after Toyland‘s done. I think it’ll be somewhere between the length of a novelette and a novella, or ten thousand to sixty thousand words. Hopefully writing it goes well, once I hammer out the plot details.
After that, I’ll hopefully be able to find a publisher who can help me get the stories in tip-top shape. Or maybe I’ll self-publish again. We’ll see how things develop.
Write at least ten short(er) stories
Including the last story for the collection, I want to write at minimum ten stories shorter than a novel. Preferably, they’ll all be short stories, but I know that a few of them will be novelette or novella length (depends on the story, obviously). I would also like to edit most of them within a year, and get at least three or four published in some form or another. Getting a short story in The Binge-Watching Cure II last year was an amazing experience, so I want to see if I can do it again.
And of course, it’s always a good idea to polish your short fiction-writing skills.
Maybe start a new novel
I’ve known for a while what novel I’d like to write after Toyland. However, I think I’ll wait a good while until I write it. Novels are a huge commitment of time and energy, so I want to make sure I’m ready before I try my hand at a new one (and maybe get one or two others edited and/or published).
Grow my audience
I’ve been lucky to grow an audience over 8.5 years of blogging, Facebooking, tweeting, Instagramming, and occasional YouTube videos. But I’m always hoping to grow my audience just a bit more. And while I don’t have any particular numbers I want to reach, I want to draw more people in and maybe get them hooked on my particular brand of weirdness. Especially my fiction.
Well, those are my writing goals. Here’s to them going well in the 11.5 months we have left of 2020. I hope you’ll continue to support me during that time, and maybe even read/review my published work if you can.
Until next time, Followers of Fear, pleasant nightmares and WHO LET THE MONSTER KNOWN AS THE DEAD MAN’S STRUGGLE INTO MY BUILDING?! Now I have to either kill it or seal it away. Either way, the cleanup’s going to be exhausting.
What are your writing goals for 2020? Have you made any progress with them so far?
Hello, and welcome back to another interview. I’m so glad I’m able to spotlight so many different authors lately. Really livens things up a bit, and it’s a great way to connect with new friends and new readers. And today’s interview is with a new acquaintance whom I met through the Horror Writers Association. She’s a writer, editor, and she’s hear to talk about her work.
Please welcome KG Finfrock.
Rami Ungar: Welcome KG. Tell us about yourself and your novel House of Redemption.
KG Finfrock: I love to listen to people’s stories. I had a friend in high school who was a pathological liar and I didn’t care. I loved to hear the stories she would weave as truth. I love to get people to open up about what’s going in their lives and where they’ve gone. Being a homebody, I’m happy to live vicariously through their experiences and yes it’s true. Anything and everything you say to me may end up in a story.
House of Redemption is about eight strangers who come to Blackstone Resort, a large luxurious plantation house in the middle of nowhere. After a lovely evening of good food, drinks, and music, the guests discover they cannot leave the house. All the doors and windows are sealed shut. As they try to find an escape, they each meet the ghosts of the people they have harmed. There is no escape for the guests until they repent their evil ways.
RU: It sounds like an interesting idea. How did you come up with it and what was it like writing it?
KGF: One of my favorite films is Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians. I play the DVD repeatedly as my comfort background noise. I was attracted to the large house. The idea of the whole island to your self is heavenly and I realized, when I wrote Good Thoughts for Bubble Off-Plumb, I like the concept of people not being able to escape punishment for bringing harm to others.
There are eight characters in House of Redemption and I began by writing each person’s situation and how they ended up at Blackstone. I then realized one quarter of the book was all backstory and it was several pages in before the real story began. I had to cut it all out and, that was all right, as I had a firm grasp on who they and what kind of person they were. The story begins with the arrival of the guests, as it should. As a bonus, I included the characters stories at the end of the novel.
RU: You’ve also been involved as an editor for the collection Good Thoughts for Bubble Off-Plumb and put together The Daily Ten-Minute Writing Prompt (Volume I). How did those projects come about?
KGF: I believe being offered the position of editor for Bubble Off-Plumb was the result of good networking and being in the right place at the right time. And I would like to add, it was a blast working with the other authors. Some stories in the anthology still stick with me. I also learned something about my own writing in my story contribution Good Thoughts. I realized I write about the bad guys getting their comeuppance which is probably why I enjoy House of Redemption so much.
I host a monthly writer’s group with small selected membership. The Daily Ten-Minute Prompt came about when I saw how much fun the members in my writer’s group had when I set the timer and gave them a sentence. They had ten minutes to write and in some part of their story, the sentence had to be in the story. I saw what fantastic stories could be written in only ten minutes. Even as a first draft, they were great. There were moments of hysterical laughter (because the story was funny) and moments of stunned surprise. Since I had been posting a daily writing prompt on my blog for three years, I figured I might as well put them all together and publish them in a few books.
RU: What are you working on now?
KGF: I’m working on a sequel to House of Redemption, I have two more volumes of the ten-minute writing prompts, and I have a ghost story on the back burner which is more on the side of a cozy murder mystery that happens to include a ghost living with the main character.
RU: When it comes to writing, do you have a routine or a process?
KGF: I need a routine, and I keep trying to stick to a routine, but life events constantly interrupt and thus I have not been as productive as I should be. I’m hoping that will change when the youngest child in my family starts school full time later this year. As far as process goes, I’m off to a good start as soon as I put fingers on the keyboard and I just go with the flow.
RU: Is there any kind of story you’re particularly drawn to, as a reader and a writer?
KGF: I like mythical monsters, beasts, and a bit of the paranormal. I like reading about large houses and places I’ve never been.  I admire Fredrik Bachman’s style of writing where he brings the community together and is able to show the faces behind the masks.
House of Redemption by KG Finfrock.
RU: What advice would you give other writers, no matter the background or experience?
KGF: Put your butt in the chair and just start to write. It can be done if you make it a priority, a must do, but it won’t be accomplished without you actually writing.
RU: And finally, if you had to go to a desert island for a while and could only bring three books with you, which would you bring?
KGF: I would pick the three that are on my table waiting to be read. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah (a book my sister gave me) Kill Creek by Scott Thomas (May’s book-club selection) and Parasite Life by Victoria Dalpe, a book I chose supporting women horror writers (and the synopsis caught my attention).
RU: You’re going to love Kill Creek. It’s my current favorite. Thanks for joining us, KG. I hope you join us again soon.
If you’d be interested in reading House of Redemption, you can get it from Amazon. And if you’d like to find out more about our guest today, you can find her on her very own WordPress blog, as well as on Twitter and Instagram.
If you would like to see some more of the conversations I’ve had with various authors, head over to my Interviews page. And if you yourself are an author with something coming out you’d like to promote, then send me an email at ramiungar@ramiungarthewriter.com with the subject line “Author Interview” and we’ll see if we can’t make some magic happen.
That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. Until next time, pleasant nightmares!
I’ve mentioned time and time again how I want to visit haunted locations. In the past, I managed to visit the Paris catacombs, where I saw plenty of skulls but no paranormal phenomena, and last year I visited The Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast, where I caught my first paranormal evidence on video. And over this weekend, I had the opportunity to visit another one, one that’s in my home state of Ohio that I’ve been wanting to visit for a long time: The Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio. And wouldn’t you know it? I saw plenty of stuff that can be considered out of the ordinary (besides me, I mean).
Some context first: for a while now, my dad’s side of the family have been planning an “Ungarfest,” where the whole family gets together and hangs out. It’s a chance for all three of the families–my dad and his family, his brother and his family, and his sister and her family–to see each other now that most of the next generation are grown and there’s a chance our lives will take us all over the place. Currently all three families still live in Ohio and Michigan, so the majority of us were able to come together and see each other. And guess where the family ended up spending the afternoon after spending the morning at a nature garden in the morning? You guessed it, the Ohio State Reformatory.
Now some of you may know the reformatory, or OSR for short, as the place where The Shawshank Redemption, among other famous films and a few TV shows, were filmed. However, the OSR is also famous for being something of a paranormal hotspot. Plenty of deaths have occurred there over the years, and of course stories of hauntings have popped up over the years. With that in mind, I bought my own pair of dowsing rods so I could speak to the spirits there (the ones at the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast worked so well for me).
Me protesting my guilt with a cell-door on the lawn.
Me pretending to shank my stepsister for some reason.
So once we got there, we went in (two of my sisters decided not to go in because they found the whole thing too freaky), and met JD, our tour guide, who was honestly just the best tour guide we could ask for have (I’ll get into why in a bit, but for now, just know that if you get to come here for a tour, you can’t go wrong by asking for JD). He took us around for the first half of the tour, talking to us about the history of the prison and what it was like for a prisoner during the prison’s heyday.
How can one describe the prison accurately? Well, it’s big, I can say that. Metal and drywall and brick and stone are everywhere. The paint on the walls and every other surface is peeling all over the place, and you can smell the building’s age and paint everywhere. In various rooms, you’ll see original artifacts from when it was an active prison, such as the original electric chair that was used there, products made in the shops the prison ran, and much, much more.
You also got to see a lot of the locations where The Shawshank Redemption and other films used as sets. Warden Norton’s office is perfectly preserved for the most part, as well as the door that the guard broke the window in that one scene of the movie. And apparently Brooks and Red’s apartment was filmed in the prison too. It was cool to see that piece of film history on display there.
JD (left) and his fellow tour guide Michael (right) talking to us in the room where a scene from Air Force One was filmed.
Me at the foot of the stairs where Andy Dufresne and Warden Norton talked about budget issues in getting a library.
I’m at Warden Norton’s desk. There’s a bit of “blood” still on the window.
Me doing my imitation of that guard from the movie. Also, this is my new author pic.
And so was Rami
But definitely one of the best parts of the tour was JD. He was friendly, funny, and a really cool dude with a voice that reminded me of musicians I’ve seen in movies and TV (and that description is how you know I’ve been writing for a long while). I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out he was a musician, he seems like the kind of guy who would enjoy playing some guitar on the weekends. But he was also very inspiring. You see, JD was an inmate for a short time at OSR back in the 1980s. During the tour, he took us by the cell in the west block where he stayed while there, and how his experience at OSR helped him turn his life around. It was really inspiring to hear. A lot of people think of people who have gone to jail, and it isn’t usually a positive image. But JD was able to give us this personal story of how his stay affected him. Combined with his friendly and very humble personality, it really made his story all the more powerful. You couldn’t help but like him, not just as a tour guide but as a person. And on top of his personal knowledge of what it was like to be a prisoner at the Ohio State Reformatory, it just made for an excellent tour.
JD in front of his old cell, telling us how being at OSR changed his life.
If it’s not obvious, I highly recommend JD as a tour guide. On a scale of 1 to 5, a definite 5. If you get him as your tour guide, you won’t regret it.
Of course, you’re curious about the paranormal stuff I witnessed. First off, the dowsing rods had an excellent first time out. I got a lot of communication from spirits, some of which made it onto video and then onto YouTube. One of the first places we visited was solitary confinement, where the spirit of Frank Hanger, a security guard who was murdered by three inmates in that area, is said to hang out. Here’s the video of that particular encounter.
Something you should know: that question Jay threw out about the electric chair was a trick question to make sure we were actually talking to a spirit and it wasn’t random movements on the part of the rods. Turns out it wasn’t random movements: those three convicts committed suicide, so Officer Hanger’s “no” was a point for the I-was-communicating-with-spirits side.
The other major spirit I spoke to was that of James Lockhart, an inmate who killed himself by immolation. His cell is notoriously haunted. I got to speak with him as well, and learned some interesting things.
Sorry about the vertical filming. You can only do so much with your cell phone.
I also had a lot more communications, some of which I got on video. But these are the best quality, so I wanted to make sure people got to see them. You can draw your own conclusions on what happened while at OSR that day (just don’t leave vitriol-filled comments for me to read), but I like to think that I got some communication from the other side that day. And a lot of people who witnessed me using the rods, including this one family I kept seeing around the east cell block (they’re the ones asking me to ask Lockhart if he burned himself), probably believe me now (I think they took video footage of some of my communications. There may be footage of that floating around the Internet somewhere).
Oh, one more thing I want to mention. This isn’t so much explicitly paranormal as it is weird, but it’s worth a mention. You remember that photo of me at Warden Norton’s desk? Well, this may have just been an issue in the transition from my camera to Instagram, but it’s still weird and kind of freaky.
I have no idea what happened here. The photo of me at the foot of those stairs seems to have been overlaid with me at Warden Norton’s desk. Not sure how that happened, but it is pretty cool. Even if it isn’t exactly supernatural.
All in all, the Ohio State Reformatory was an amazing experience. It is a beautiful building, filled to the brim with history, pieces of culture, and a few spirits. I’m so glad I got to go, as well as to test out my dowsing rods in such a great venue. And now that I have my driver’s license, I may be able to go up again someday very soon and perhaps get some more proof of the paranormal. In fact, you should bet on that happening (Zak Bagans, call me). Until then, definitely consider making a trip to the Reformatory and seeing the history and hauntings yourself. Guaranteed you won’t regret it.
And thanks to JD and the folks at OSR for hosting my family this weekend. We enjoyed ourselves immensely while there. I hope you’ll see us (or maybe just me) again soon.
The Ungar clan, AKA 40% of the reason I’m as messed up as I am.
That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I hope you enjoyed my little travelogue. I’ll be seeing you all again very soon. Until then, pleasant nightmares!
Rami Ungar The Writer 