Remains of the Dead





The first in the Ghost Dusters mystery series by Wendy Roberts, The Remains of the Dead is a quick read. Despite the fact that it addresses serious matters, it manages to be light and entertaining.

Sadie, our protagonist, has an unusual business and a habit that she manages to conceal from most people: she regularly speaks to the dead. We learn more about her relationships with others -- living and dead -- than we do about her at this point in the series. For example, it may have completely escaped my attention but I had no clear idea of her age.

Surprisingly, I was more impressed by the dialogue between the living and the dead -- and by the subplots -- than I was by the plot itself. Not that it does not work, but the dialogue between Sadie and her ghosts stole the show, so to speak.

It has not ceased to amaze me that there are at least as many characterizations of ghosts and their relationships to the living as there are books that I've read in which ghosts (forgive me) appear. This book is no exception.

If you read this book, do so because it is not very densely populated with questions about souls, the afterlife and what it all means. It adheres to the rules of genre mystery writing and it has a twist. It also conveys a unique perspective on communication with the dead, an original one in my experience.

Ridding My Home of Books

Scully has asked me to kindly go through our 10,000 books and, well, get rid of some that I don't want or won't read or won't read again, etc.

Fair enough. We either need to get a bigger house or pare down our collection. I've definitely set some boundaries. There are books with which I will never part; books that are no longer in print or books that had such a limited print run that you can barely find them on the Internet.

I'm thinking of old Hans Holzer, Ed & Lorraine Newman, Edgar Cayce tomes . . . To mention only a few among hundreds of names. Over the years, I've tried different book databases and different methods of tracking my acquisitions but, really, haven't succeeded very well. I think I will use this blog to help keep me organized. Why not? I'm working on a running list of titles in the area of supernatural/paranormal/psychic phenomena and will post a link.

I'm reminded of the first time that we (my family-of-origin and I) walked through our new home in the early 1980s. As I kind of 'spaced out' looking around, taking everything in, I heard my mother mentioning to someone that many families had lived in the house but most had left pretty quickly.

I opened the closet door of the upstairs hallway. There, on the shelf, was a copy of the bible. Had people been afraid? Was this an age-old custom of moving home? And, now I wonder, did I keep the bible?

Ghost Stories

Things have been so quiet, lately. Even my dreams are pretty mundane. I can't seem to watch TV and I always have my nose in a book or magazine. In my spare time, I'm writing or reading and this isn't to say that I've had a lot of spare time.

The "channelling" experience happens more and more to me, too often to write everything down. I don't always pay much attention to it, either. Like so much of my experience in this regard, it has become commonplace.

I remember a fascination with the paranormal while growing up that manifested itself in a desire to read everything that I could. I see now that it was an attempt to understand what was going on. I needed to know that others experienced the same!

When you grow up watching fans having been turned on (while the switch remains in the 'off' position), hearing ghost children running up the stairs and singing, and having ghosts tap you on the head, it's bound to make you feel different from most people. Thankfully, once I discovered that all of my family were experiencing the very same things and once we experienced them at the same time, I felt better.

Until about five or six years ago, I collected every work of nonfiction that I could find on the subject of ghosts. I couldn't help it. I still have so many that I've yet to read. I even collected in the area of fiction. Once I accepted who I was, however, my fascination just kind of ended and I could get on with just being myself. So, devoting so much energy to collecting and reading in this area was really all about finding myself. I guess we all do it differently.

Anyway, as I browsed through a second-hand store on Tuesday, I came across a collection of the ghost stories of Charles Dickens. This time, as I took a book to the checkout counter, I realized that I was buying it because I like the genre.

The Complete Ghost Stories of Charles Dickens
Edited: Peter Haining
Hardcover
Franklin Watts (1983)

"I live too much with the dead. My mind is something like the ghost of an ancient, wandering about the world and trying mentally to construct it as it used to be, in spite of ruin and confusing changes." (George Eliot, Middlemarch)

I just love the above passage but it's really only a cut-and-paste fragment and has no meaning to this particular post.

I will be one year older in a few days and I think I'm a bit down about it.

My last post bore complaints but I'm determined to see the good in things.

First, I'm not doomed like Cassandra of Greek mythology. Apollo granted her the gift of prophesy but she was doomed to never be believed. This would have driven the poor woman mad. (Well, this and the fact that she had no fewer than fifty brothers.)