Ok. It’s been a very long time since I posted. Guilt is a great motivator. Guilt and a hulking pissed-off zombie looming over you.

Not that I don’t want to blog and Liam isn’t forcing me. Just guilting me I just get distracted. There’s been a lot going on lately and frankly, I’ve been so tired that I come home and all I want to do is tumble into bed and sleep for a thousand years. Been working on the ghost issue. Finally got that sorted out. Turned out Eleanor’s daughterghost, Beth, had decided she’d had enough playing the haunter and took off to see the world. She knew her mother would never let her go, so she basically ran away. How about that? A runaway ghost.

Anyway, with Mom’s help we tracked her down, she agreed to come back and work out things with her mom and all is peachy now.

In other news, the dead are as restless as ever and we still haven’t figured out why. It’s all Dad and I can do to keep up with raisings, settlings, and occasional zombie who is too stubborn to realize they are dead and won’t go back down. It saps just about all of Dad’s strength when we get one of those.

Mom’s working with her coven to try and do their thing to find out what the hell is going on, but no joy so far and I’ve been with Dad every night training and helping. See what I mean about tired?

But I’m still around, and the blog will pick up once we get this sorted out, I promise.

CherryPop is irritated with me pestering her to update her blog so I got fed up and had her set me up on it. I’ll be posting during her lulls. It’s important to keep up interest in Zombie rights and frankly, I’m more of a technonerd than she is. Cherry’s all about action. Get out there and do it, not sit at a desk and talk about doing it.

Oh she’ll still post if I have to tie her to the desk to do it. But there actually is a lot going on right now. There’s the whole ghost thing over at Arthur’s. No progress there and Eleanor’s getting antsy. Then Des came to me the other day and told me he’s starting to get worried about the dead. Now, Des is a laidback kind of guy. For him to be worried about something usually means it’s time to duck and cover. he and Cherry are out right now at LesMortes trying out some rituals with Charlotte to try and get one or two bodies to talk to them and find out what’s stirring them up.

Why am I not with them? I never go with CherryPop when she’s working with Des. For some reason known only to Yoda, the dead don’t like me. Ironic? Yes it is. Actually they don’t much cotton to True Zombies in general, not just me. It’s my theory that they’re jealous once they discover they have to go back into the ground when Des is finished.

So I’m killing time until they finish up, and I’ll meet them later and take over CherryPop watch (She hates it when I call it that.) I just checked her blog and noticed she’s been a little slacker. We will have words about that later on.

This is the neatest thing ever. Alex, a reader around here, sent in his idea of what Liam looks like and Liam is totally in love with it:

Liam says, and I quote, “I look like a real badass! Cool!” Thanks Alex! Liam’s going to be impossible now.

Which is pretty much a ‘duh’ statement I know. I am the queen of the obvious sometimes. Liam seems to be the only one who reads this thing and he’s been on my case to post more often. So… Hi Liam!!

Things have been pretty quiet lately which is nice. I’ve been helping Dad quite a lot and he’s been really busy lately which is good and it’s bad. Good because the extra money will keep mom in spellbooks and henbane and bad because an abundance of raisings tends to mean there is turbulence in the supernatural world. Or the Shadow world as I call it.

Typically, Dad raises maybe one or two temp zombies a month depending on demand. The rest of the time he fixes stuff (he’s pretty damn handy, let me tell you) and works on refining his rituals. He’s been writing what he calls the definitive book on necromancy for about 20 years now Someday it will be complete. But lately, Dad’s been called to 3-4 raisings a week. Some have been requests from the police wanting to question a murder victim or something but others have come from families who say their departed loved ones are wreaking a bit of havoc on them and they want Dad to raise them and ask them to cut it out.

In other words, the dead are getting restless and we’re not sure why. But we’re monitoring the sitch and I’ll talk about whatever findings we umm, find. Words. Sometimes they are hard.

Til then, I’m hitting the sack. G’night Liam

Well, not at “work” per se. More like out helping dad with Liam getting a little camera-happy. So here are a few gloomy gothy-looking pix of me at the cemetery downtown. Yes I have a cloak on. Yes I’m aware of how cheesy that is but I’ll tell you this - it’s freaking cold out most of the time. Those cloaks are lovely and warm and I don’t care if I look like I’m going to a Bauhaus gig.

So yeah, no laughing now. Here are Liam’s pics. Please leave him comments because he can be such a whiny bitch sometimes if no one pats him on the head Just kidding Liam. You know I love you.

So there you have it. Enjoy, and please, no snickering. Or at least, keep it to yourself

So I’m hanging out with a vampire and a zombie and it struck me that that probably sounds weird to the casual passerby to this website. So I made a couple new pages for the site that will hopefully explain things a little better. And Liam made me include a one-click stop for the Zombie FAQ instead of spreading it out in a bunch of posts. Practical as always, that’s Liam. You can find the new stuff over there on the right or across the top of the page.

My friend Simone is also around atm. She thinks me having this blog is silly because people are just going to think I’m a little bit insane taking about vampires and zombies and necromancers and ghosts and all that stuff. The world has taken centuries to coming around the fact that the Shadow World exists and there will always be folks who want to deny it.

I can’t say I disagree, but if I don’t get out there, get visible and tell my stories of the life I lead, then there will always be fear and fear leads to anger and all that Yoda stuff. I believe that if the world can know zombies like Liam and vampires like Simone - hell even vamps like Arthur (who can take the whole “Dracula” image to the extreme because he thinks it’s funny) then that could a big step to acceptance. I think Simone’s just cynical. By rights, I should be too. I’ve dealt with the fear and denial by the ‘normals’ my whole life and have witnessed firsthand how destructive they can be. I want to put a stop to that if I can.

So I’ll continue to blog and answer questions and tell my stories. If you, dear reader, think I’m a nutjob well, that’s your prerogative.

The meeting went well with Eleanor. Arthur OK’d Mom coming along (he’s just picky about that sort of thing. It’s a house of vampires Can’t just let anyone in.) and we met with Eleanor in the library.

She didn’t really have much information for us to go on and I’m not sure either of us will be able to help her. But I’ll try. So will Mom.

We arrived at Arthur’s around 9pm and he led us to the library and offered refreshments, but my idea of refreshments and his idea are two very very different things, so we declined. He left us alone after that. The library was large and cozy at the same time. Dim lights illuminated the bookshelves which lines every wall and we took seats in the leather wingback chairs in the center of the room.

I wasn’t sure what to expect really. Would she walk in the door or fade in right in front of us? I made nervous smalltalk with Mom who was as excited as I was to experience this new phenomenon. It wasn’t long before Eleanor appeared (she faded in, by the way) and smiled at us.

“Thank you for coming back.” She said to me. Turning to my mother, she introduced herself and let her now how very grateful she was that Charlotte McGee had come to her aid as well. Evidently, in the ghostly world, Mom’s well known. Mom puffed up a little. Must remember to tease her about that later.

What Eleanor told us tore at our hearts. When they were alive, she and Beth, they were on their own. Beth’s father had died when Beth was a baby. Thanks to his careful planning, however, he left them enough to live comfortably in the house he had built for Eleanor when they were married. Beth and Eleanor were very close, and very happy. But when she turned 12, she contracted tuberculosis and soon afterwards, Eleanor did as well. Beth died first and the heartbreak Eleanor suffered only quickened her own death. She had given up. The loss of her daughter was just too much to bear and she couldn’t see the point of fighting to stay alive.

Imagine her joy when she passed and discovered that through some fluke neither could explain they were reunited. Eleanor told us that she remember breathing her last, and then she seemed to wake up. She was healthy again almost in the blink of an eye. She sat up in her bed, and heard the sound of running feet. When she looked up, Beth had run to her, pounced on the bed and was “hugging the stuffing” out of her.

Eleanor said that there was a period of adjustment for both of them. They were both clever, so it didn’t take them long to work out they weren’t of this world anymore and they did what they aways did: They made the best of it. So happy were they, that they never tried any spectral haunting to scare away new tenants in their house. They found ways to coexist with them for over a hundred years.

Mom and I listened to her talk, both of us just fascinated as hell. After she told their story, we came to the Big Question. What has happened to Beth?

“Two weeks ago, I woke up one morning and went to wake Beth like always. She wasn’t in her room which is very unusual.” She told us. “I searched the house and grounds as far as I could - we are limited as to how far we can go on the premises - and I just could not find my Beth. I became distraught. I fear I may have disturbed the present residents of the house with my weeping.” She looked down at her hands.

“Can you remember anything unusual happening that morning? Strange sounds? New houseguests - anything like that?” I asked.

“No I’m afraid not.” She replied. “One day is very much like the next to us. Everything is very routine. I am sure I would remember anything that was out of the ordinary.”

Mom and I asked a few more questions, but we really don’t have much to go on here. When Eleanor seemed as if she was tiring (her form would sort of flicker, like a light about to burn out) we said our goodbyes. I told her we would do everything we can to find Beth. I tried to be as reassuring as possible, but I think when she heard her own story out loud as she spoke to us, she came to the same realizations we did. There was precious little to go on.

As Mom and I left we talked about what we should do. She’s going to “feel” out the house and see if there are any signs of malevolent forces. I’m going to interview all of the vampires and see what they know. I’m afraid that’s all we can do for now.

I’ll keep you posted.

What did that ghost want? I’ve finally got a bit of time free to tell you.

The long story short is that in this old house there were actually two ghosts who kept to themselves. A mother and daughter who had both passed on over a hundred years ago. No one who used the home ever knew they lived with ghosts. not even old Arthur who you would think would be sensitive to that sort of thing. But no, the lady told me. She and her daughter merely wanted to exist in peace in the home they both loved, so they kept a low profile.

The lady in question’s name is - err… was - Eleanor, and her daughter was named Beth. She and Beth had both succumbed to tuberculosis within a month of each other. Beth was only 12.

Anyway, the reason she’s made her presence known now is because her daughter’s missing. Vanished. Gone. And Eleanor is terribly distraught. After Beth went missing, Eleanor started to pay attention to the living (so to speak) in her house. She said she was hoping to find someone among them who might be able to help. And that’s when she heard about me.

I don’t have all the details and Eleanor didn’t have much time this night. Apparently, ghosts aren’t able to manifest for very long. She explained that it takes a lot of energy to do so, which is how she and Beth were able to remain undetected for so long. They just never bothered manifesting. So they peacefully coexisted with a houseful of vampires. It didn’t seem to bother her that vampires were real either, which I thought was odd. I’ll have to ask her about that.

I go back to speak to her tomorrow tonight. I had to get Arthur’s permission to return and speak with her. He was astonished as I was at the fact that he has ghosts. “I never believed in them.” He said. Freaky. With as much preternatural stuff that goes on in the world, you’d think at least one of us would have had a run-in with a ghostie at some point. Life’s a funny old thing.

I’m not sure what I can do for Eleanor. I’ve spoken with the parentals about it, wondering if perhaps they’d have some advice. Dad was fresh out of advice, but Mom said she’d like to come along to the meeting and see what she can do to help. She may have better luck sizing the energies in and around the house up. I’m still training and I’d like to have her experience and power with me on this one.

I really want to help Eleanor.

I can’t believe I haven’t posted much lately. I was doing so well. Things have been so hectic lately what with the ghost and everything. I know, I know, I was supposed to continue the story of the ghost and tell you what she wanted from me. And I will, just… not tonight I’m afraid.

I’m only home for a few minutes right now and then I’m off to help Dad interview a dead guy. Mom was supposed to go but she got called out of town on some kind of Wiccan emergency. She was tight-lipped about it, but when the coven calls, she has to go. We’re used to it. So Liam is downstairs in the truck waiting for me while I gather up a few things. Some stones, a raven’s feather (Dad was out of them) and duct tape. No the duct tape isn’t involved in a raising ritual but the gearshift knob fell off in my truck and I thought I could MacGuyver it back on until I have time to glue it or something

Crap, there the horn. Liam’s so impatient. I’ll write about the ghost soon, I promise.