Friday, October 5, 2012

Famous Ghosts: True Encounters with World Beyond


The election season is well underway, making it a perfect time to take a look at some of the ghost stories about Founding Fathers, such as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, that have been reported over the years.

Famous Ghosts: True Encounters with the World Beyond.


Barnes and Noble
Amazon

1. George Washington's Ghost: The South was threatening to secede from the Union and the nation was in an uproar. But no one was more upset than America¹s first president, George Washington. One night, Senator Calhoun of South Carolina woke up to see Washington¹s ghost standing over his bed. The apparition warned him of the impending perils of splitting the Union and threatened that if Calhoun supported secession, ³his signature would be a black spot on the Constitution of the United States.² Calhoun sided with secession anyway, and a dark spot appeared on his hand‹a spot that would not vanish and for which doctors had no adequate explanation.


2.     Woodrow Wilson, the Piano-Playing Ghost: The late president Woodrow Wilson is said to still haunt the Woodrow Wilson House in Washington, DC. Guides and tourists have often mentioned seeing his ghostly figure sitting at the piano and hearing eerie piano music. Other visitors claim that Wilson¹s ghost preaches for peace. Once, a viewer heard his spirit say, ³God rest the soul of man; it will win. Man¹s soul will be free to know its own importance.² Is the restless spirit of the ³Peace President² warning us to maintain peace? Or is he simply looking for an encore?


3.     Thomas Jefferson, the Posthumous Ladies¹ Man: Perhaps America¹s famous Founding Father wasn¹t always a model citizen. Holzer spoke to numerous inhabitants of Jefferson¹s old haunts who have reported seeing Jefferson¹s ghost with various women. After carefully describing these visions, historians identified one apparition as the beautiful daughter of W. Skelton, a local gentleman who worked in the area.  

4.     John Wilkes Booth, Unwilling Accomplice: The mystery behind Abraham Lincoln¹s assassination continues, but the spirits might have some answers. The spirit of Edwin Booth, John¹s brother and an actor like his sibling, spoke clearly through a psychic medium one night. The ghost said that John was hired to kill Lincoln by several prominent figures, including double agent John Surratt of the Confederate Army, War Secretary Edwin Stanton, and the unidentified ³Major General Gee.² Bribes were exchanged and guns were supplied. Edwin¹s spirit is still desperately trying to clear his mad brother¹s name.

5.     Aaron Burr, Heartbroken Dad: Famous for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel, Aaron Burr has been persistently misunderstood. Accused of treachery, forced to leave America, shattered by the death of his first wife and daughter, and deceived by his second wife, he wore out a bleak, solitary life. His ghost, not surprisingly, still haunts his old living quarters and stables on West Third Street in New York City¹s Greenwich Village. Always angry or sad, the spirit is often hiding from solders or demanding truthful answers. But more often then not, his paternal instincts take over, and he yells out, searching for his favorite daughter who was lost at sea, his beloved Theodosia.


What did you think of these stories? Go buy it now if you're interested in reading more! Check the links above, and remember by clicking on the links your helping out Stuffed Shelves, which I must say is pretty awesome! Thanks! 



Elements of Rebellion by Coral Moore {Book Stop}


Elements of Rebellion
Coral Moore
Genre: Fantasy Romance
Publisher: Bared Teeth Publishing
ISBN: 061564841X
ASIN: B0084V2V04
Number of pages: 284
Word Count: 85,000
Cover Artist: Amanda Kelsey 
http://razzdazzdesign.com 

All Romance | BN | Amazon | Smashwords

Book Description:
After spending most of her life an unwilling captive in a brothel, Sindari is sold to Lord Devin, a man with a reputation for unspeakable cruelty. In the arms of this man who must pretend he cares nothing for her, Sindari finds compassion, making the journey through her barren homeland all the more perilous. Along the way she discovers she can channel elemental forces that compliment Devin’s ability to manipulate fire.

Harnessing this power, she battles the Dominion, an unrelenting foe that has broken the spirit of the Eldari people through twenty years of savagery. Trapped by the brutal empire that has enslaved millions, Sindari and Devin fight against hopeless odds.

Warnings: Graphic Violence and Sexual Situations

Author Bio:
Coral Moore has always been the kind of girl who makes up stories. Fortunately, she never quite grew out of that. She writes because she loves to invent characters and the desire to find out what happens to her creations drives the tales she tells.

Prompted by a general interest in how life works, her undergraduate schooling was in biology. She follows science news and enjoys conversations about genetics and microbiology as much as those about vampires and werewolves. Coral writes speculative fiction and is pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Writing at Albertus Magnus College.

Currently she lives in Connecticut with the love of her life, who offers both encouragement and kicks in the tail when necessary. Also in residence are two mammals of the families Canidae and Felidae.

Check out Coral Moore at:
Her Blog 
Twitter
GoodReads
Facebook

my read shelf:
Elizabeth Barbarick's book recommendations, liked quotes, book clubs, book trivia, book lists (read shelf)

Edge of Oblivion by J.T. Geissinger


Edge of Oblivion
Night Prowler Novels Book #2
J.T. Geissinger

Genre: Paranormal Romance
Publisher: Montlake Romance
ISBN: 1612184197
ASIN: B007SX0246
Number of pages: 384
Word Count: 98,000
Amazon

Edge of Oblivion (Night Prowler, #2)

Book Description:
Morgan Montgomery is waiting to die. Branded a traitor by her tribe, the Ikati shape-shifter has no hope for mercy—until Jenna, the Ikati’s newly crowned queen and Morgan’s former ally, offers one last chance for redemption. Morgan must infiltrate the Rome headquarters of the Expurgari, the Ikati’s ancient enemy, to destroy them once and for all. The beautiful renegade has just a fortnight to complete her mission or forfeit her life. Because she does not travel alone…

Xander Luna is a trained assassin and the Ikati’s most feared enforcer, famed for his swift brutality and stony heart. Fiercely loyal, he is prepared to hate the traitor under his watch—until they come face to face. For Morgan Montgomery arouses something unexpected inside of him, something that threatens everything he believes in and the fate of the tribe itself: a love as powerful and passionate as it is forbidden.
Sensual, thrilling, and action-packed, Edge of Oblivion will enthrall readers with nail-biting suspense and heart-pounding passion.

About the Author:
A life-long lover of reading and a self-professed “book addict,” J.T. Geissinger didn’t realize her dream of writing a novel until a milestone birthday forced her to take stock of her goals in life. Always believing the right time to commit to putting pen to paper would magically announce itself, it took waking up one cold January morning with a shiny new zero as the second number in her age to kick start her determination.

More than a year and two unsold novels later, it was time to take stock again.

But her determination matched her initial procrastination, and she kept on writing and learning and trying to improve, trusting that if it was meant to be, it would be.

Then, during a trip to Italy in honor of their 10th wedding anniversary and the honeymoon she and her husband never took, she received an email that would change her life. It was from a literary agent, and it contained the three words every aspiring author longs to hear: “I loved it.”

The manuscript was sold to Montlake Romance who published it six months later. Hitting the Amazon bestseller lists in both the US and the UK within weeks of publication, Shadow’s Edge was book one of the Night Prowler Novels. Book two, Edge of Oblivion published October 2nd, and book three will follow in the spring of 2013. Three additional installations in the Night Prowler series are planned for the future.

Read an excerpt: 

Once, we were gods.

Ages ago, idyllic, uncounted centuries before man or his sly, sprawling civilizations had even been dreamed, we ruled sovereign over all other creatures in the deepest, virgin heart of equatorial Africa. Divine and resplendent, reveling in the bounty and glory of our many Gifts, we took the name Ikati—Zulu for “cat warrior”—because it most closely described our stealthy perfection, our feline, sinuous grace, our cunning and lethal prowess.

We lived and loved and raised our children there, beside the pristine, glimmering waters of the Congo, beneath the nourishing sun and the endless blue sky and the lush, dappled shade of the baobab trees. We wore crowns of gold and green garnet and tanzanite, we walked naked among nature and one another and knew no shame. We honored our dead and hunted our food and slept in the fat, crooked arms of acacias and marulas, we passed the stories of our illustrious history to the next generation. We celebrated our Mother Earth and her great magic, and all was well. All was perfect.

But Time is a merciless thief, even for creatures so blessed as we, and slowly things began to change.

Invaders came. Clumsy, ugly, two-legged beasts with spears to stab hearts and arrows to pierce flesh and fire to burn homes. They stole through our forests and poached in our grasslands, they poisoned our rivers and captured our children, our old and weak. We fought our enemies back; we had no choice. Year after year we fought, decades of struggle, war, blood, death. Battles were won, only to begin anew with the next generation. There were so many of our enemy, and so few of us. In time, our numbers dwindled. In time, our enemies gained the advantage.

So, like all creatures must, we adapted to survive.

We learned the human ways. We spoke the human tongue. We wore human clothing and raised human crops and built homes of mud and grass, then wood, then brick, as they did. We learned to hide our true nature. And in this way, we began once more to thrive.

In secrecy. In silence. With seething hatred in our hearts.

Then one day came a different sort of man, a man with no spear or sword, a man with open arms and a gentle voice who claimed to be our friend. He offered a truce and the return of what was already rightfully ours, the rivers and the mountains and the verdant, untouched forests. Trust me, the man said, and, tired of so much war and bloodshed, we did.
For a long, long while, the arrangement suited us both and we prospered. Our children grew up together. Our clans lived side by side. Because we were so beautiful and Gifted, unfixed as they were in a single aspect of flesh and bone but mutable, pliable, evanescent, the two-legged invaders began to worship us as the gods we truly were. Offerings were made, statues of gold and ebony and oiled stone were carved, temples were built—the Sphinx, most famously—all in our name. We even mated with our former enemies, bearing half-Blood children, offspring that might one day be as Gifted and blessed as the pure-Blooded were.

Or might not.

A Queen arose from one of these unions. Cleopatra she was called, meaning “the glory of her father,” because he was Ikati, one of our own Blood. More beautiful and cunning and sensual than us all, she ruled empires and seduced hearts and convinced a human man to turn against his king. And with that, she sealed all our fates.

The coup failed. The Queen and her lover died. And the Ikati were hunted once again. We were hated. We were driven out of our homeland, nearly extinct.
The few that remained remembered how they had survived before the human pestilence came, before clever deceptions blinded their eyes and stole their glory, and made a pact to return to the old ways of pretending and lying, of keeping to themselves. They fled their beloved Africa and found other places in the world to call their own, small, wooded places, cloaked in silence, far away from prying eyes.

Untold eons have passed, and still we live in secrecy and silence, bound together by honor and betrayal and a tradition of iron-clad rules to protect us from the greatest threat of all: Forgetting.

Our kingdom of peace and perfection was stolen from us by you, covetous, ambitious, treacherous Man. And though we have learned to live alongside you, though we have learned to survive, though we may smile and nod as we pass you in the street, we are always, always ready to eat out your hearts.
Beware.


Check out J.T. at: 
Website
Facebook
Twitter
GoodReads
Newer Posts Older Posts Home
Follow on Bloglovin

NewShareThis

'; d.innerHTML = code; container.insertBefore(d , footer); } } return true; }; SHR4P.blogger_addDiv("shr_class");

LinkWithin