Rhoads - The Haunted Mansion Project: Year Two

Damnation Books, LLC.
P.O. Box 3931
Santa Rosa, CA 95402-9998

www.damnationbooks.com

The Haunted Mansion Project:

Year Two
Presented by Rain Graves

Edited by Loren Rhoads

Cover photograph by: Nichole Boscia

Digital ISBN: 978-1-61572-917-3

Print ISBN: 978-1-61572-918-0

Copyright 2013 Rain Graves

Rights for individual works contained within remain with their respective authors.

Printed in the United States of America
Worldwide Electronic & Digital Rights
Worldwide English Language Print Rights

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any form, including digital and electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the Publisher, except for brief quotes for use in reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book is gratefully dedicated to the Mansions staff, who have treated us like royalty. Twice.

We are All Survivors Now

In 2010, twelve writers and artists joined hostess, Rain Graves and a team of ghost hunters for a weekend at a haunted historical mansion in Northern California. The weekend was so inspiringand so scarythat most of us jumped at the chance to do it again in September 2012. Some new blood was added to the mix. All of us looked forward to four days together in our haunted house.

I rode with Rain and Sphera Giron up to the Mansion on Thursday afternoon. Our drive from San Francisco was easy, once Rain managed to fight clear of the Giants playoff traffic. Even though the map she had was less than straightforward, we found our way through Marin. After a while, every twist of the road brought a familiar view. It felt, in an odd way, like coming home. Several of the Haunted Mansion survivors talk about that feeling in the pieces that follow.

Once we arrived at the Mansion, Rain put Sphera and me to work getting the mansion ready for the group. We went up to the second floor to place name tags on beds so that everyone could find their assigned rooms when they arrived. The second floor was comfortably warm. Sunlight flooded in through the windows, highlighting the crisply made beds and cozy rooms. Mount Tam loomed up on the west, lush and green, enrobed in autumn.

During the first Haunted Mansion Retreat, there were too few of us to use the entire second floor. This time, Sphera and I started with the familiar rooms at the top of the stairs: here was where Scott had been menaced by a female spirit, here was Wes and Yvonnes sunny corner suite, here was my friendly little blue room. Then we worked around into the unfamiliar rooms that had been closed off on our last visit.

We had just come out of the room that would be Chris Colvins. Seph was telling me about the Black Mass that had harassed her and Rain in the corner room in 2010. We stood in the little hallway, sorting out our list and the name cards, when something large moved through the room at our backs.

I looked up, startled, and met Spheras eyes. Did you hear that? I gasped. Wed just come out of that little room. We knew it was empty.

Something is up here with us, Seph said. And smiled.

~

After wed finished with the name cards, I should have gone back upstairs to photograph the rooms in their pristine states. Instead, I realized that I didnt want to be alone up there while Rain, Seph, and the mansions staff bustled around safely on the main floor.

So I settled into the sofa on the south side of the parlor, with the heart-shaped lawn at my back and the big empty house in front of me. I signed in to the group blog that we would take turns updating through the weekend. I was still on the sofa, poking around on the internet, when Wes and Von arrived in a large white truck.

The door to my right stood open to the porch. Wes came into the parlor to say hello. As we talked, the door slowly swung closed.

Not a breath of breeze had passed us. Wes looked at me, smiled, and went out to the porch to examine the door. He swung it to and fro. When he left it standing open, it stayed.

Apparently someone had just wanted to say hello.

~

Thursday night passed quietly. I couldnt sleep, but for all my prowling the hallways in the middle of the night, I didnt see anything and felt nothing other than a deep, bone-rattling chill. My internal thermostat is broken at the best of times, so it could have just been me. I put on all the clothes Id brought and huddled under the blankets until dawn.

On Friday morning, I sat in the parlor on the west, with my back to Mount Tam, waiting for the pre-breakfast hiking group to form. Something ran through the foyer, low to the ground. I thought it was a dog, but why would a dog be in the house alone at 8:00 a.m.?

I crossed the parlor and looked out into the entryway. The double doors to the porch were closed. The dining room doors were closed. The back of the house was silent.

If a dog had been there, where had it gone?

~

Friday night, most of us were writing in the first-floor parlor while some of the others joined the GhostGirls investigating upstairs.

Something heavy scraped across the floor above us, on the second floor, in the area where Yvonne, Wes, and I would be sleeping. It sounded like a heavy piece of furniturefor some reason, I thought of a trunkbeing dragged across the floor. None of us would do such a thing, conscious as we were of being in someone elses home. We exchanged glances, but couldnt explain what wed heard.

Scott came stomping down from the third floor. What was that? he demanded.

We thought it was you, Chris Colvin said.

We were all on the third floor, he said. Whos on the second floor?

No one. Were all right here.

Scott raced upstairs to explore.

Things seemed to settle down. An hour passed quietly. Then Sphera shouted from the third floor, Rain, we need a priestess. We have poltergeist activity up here.

Half the writers thundered up the stairs to see what was happening. The rest of us cowered in the parlor, listening as Dan was brought downstairs and something truly terrifying was chased outside. Youll read more about that in the nonfiction that follows.

~

After midnight, when I finally got brave enough to go upstairs to change for bed, I tried shoving the furniture around my room to see if I could replicate the noise wed heard earlier.

The bed was on casters. It glided silently across the bare, unmarked floorboards. Nothing in my room could have made the heavy scraping we all heard.

I chose to sleep on a sofa downstairs in the parlor with Stacey and Dan.

~

After Rain called on her lion goddess ghost-ass-kicking power, the house seemed quiet on Saturday. Chastened, almost. I didnt think anything more supernatural would happen to me, so I napped in my room before sunset. Even though Eunice told me that she really didnt like the short dark hallway that connected my room to the front of the house, I felt calm enough to go up to bed when everyone else did after midnight. The night passed peacefully. I felt pretty calm about the whole experience, until Yvonne teased me about sleeping with my light on.