On this month's Special Page:
B.D. Prince writes about his experience on the 2024 StokerCon panel: Supernatural Experiences: True Stories from Horror Writers
AND
His own personal experiences with ghosts
B.D. Prince was born in Michigan and is a dark fiction and comedy writer who credits these proclivities to growing up near a cemetery and being endowed with a freakishly long funny bone. The author moved to California to pursue screenwriting and get a tan. Prince got his start writing humorous greeting cards and penning one-liners for Joan Rivers. Now an award-winning screenwriter, Prince has published numerous short stories and novellas andis currently writing a new horror novel and developing projects for film and television.
You can find him on facebook HERE
StokerCon 2024 Supernatural Panel
B.D. Prince at StokerCon 2024 with Ronald Malfi
B.D. Prince at StokerCon 2024 with his mentor, Mort Castle
HAUNTED MUSINGS FROM STOKERCON 2024
by B.D. Prince
It’s amazing how life comes full circle, I thought, as I sat on the 2024 StokerCon panel, Supernatural Experiences: True Stories from Horror Writers. I was pleasantly surprised when I received the invitation from noted editor Kate Jonez. The Horror Writer’s Association was looking for writers to recount their real-life paranormal experiences and share how they influenced their writing in the genre. It seemed like a perfect fit since my first supernatural encounter occurred at a horror writer’s retreat nearly a decade ago.
I probably should’ve expected something uncanny to occur that night, with the retreat taking place at the infamous Stanley Hotel (the inspiration for Stephen King’s The Shining). The paranormal encounter came after an evening of panels featuring the legendary Jack Ketchum, Daniel Knauf (HBO’s Carnivale), and a fresh-faced Josh Malerman promoting his first published novel, Bird Box.
B.D. Prince and Josh Malerman
By eleven-thirty, most attendees had dispersed to the whiskey bar or back to their rooms. Cathleen “Cat” Marshall, a fellow horror writer and traveling nurse, and I lingered behind the grand staircase, discussing the haunted history of The Stanley Hotel. Cat admitted that she often felt like a ghost magnet, recounting multiple occasions where she’d seen shadowy specters in the halls of some of the old hospitals where she worked.
I confessed to Cat that I was still a skeptic. I believe in the afterlife, but when it comes to spirits of the deceased roaming the earth and haunting places… let’s just say seeing is believing. And I hadn’t seen anything that I couldn’t discount as just the overactive imagination of a child raised on reruns of The Munsters, The Addams Family, and Scooby Doo. But that skepticism was about to be shattered.
As Cat recounted a run-in with a shadow figure in the bowels of an old hospital near the morgue, I was abruptly shoved from behind, knocking me off balance! I spun around, assuming it was one of my fellow horror authors fooling with me. To my shock, there was nobody there.
My heart racing, I turned back to Cat. Seeing my bizarre reaction, she asked if something happened. After describing the sensation of seemingly invisible hands pushing me, I hoped she could provide some rational explanation. After all, she was looking right at me when it occurred. But she confirmed what I’d seen for myself. There hadn’t been another living soul behind me.
Over the next few years, when I recounted the story to others, I was surprised by how many people had their own paranormal experiences—folks from all walks of life, not just fellow horror writers. The story that surprised me most came from an elderly pastor friend, who I was surprised to learn grew up in a haunted house in Detroit, Michigan.
Pastor Max first suspected his childhood home was haunted after an inexplicable experience while playing with his sister on the stairs. Hearing footsteps descending from the second floor, they turned, expecting to make way for their mother. But, like my experience at The Stanley Hotel, nobody was there. Nobody.
Those mysterious footsteps became a common occurrence, both on the stairs and in the upstairs hallway outside Max’s bedroom. Whether it was naiveté or the regularity of the paranormal activity, Max and his sister became accustomed to the presence of the disembodied spirit. Eventually, the family even gave it a nickname: The Cabbie.
When I asked Pastor Max why they called the entity The Cabbie, he shared a disturbing tale. At the end of their hallway was an extra room the family never used. One day, when Max and his sister decided to play in that room, he was surprised by what looked like a man’s shadow on the wall. On closer inspection, the shadow man appeared to be wearing a hat. The kind of hat James Cagney wore in those old gangster movies. A hat better known as a cabbie cap.
But this wasn’t an isolated incident. Often, when Max found himself at the end of the hallway, he would peek into the spare room and see The Cabbie’s shadowy silhouette silently watching him.
A chill ran up my spine and the idea for a story was born. What if a hearing-impaired boy’s family moved into a new house haunted by The Cabbie, and only he could read lips and decipher the shadow man’s dark whispers? I then added a unique twist to this haunted house tale and sold “Into the Shadows” to Scare Street Press for their Night Terrors Volume 7 anthology.
In 2019, I had my second physical encounter with the supernatural. It started innocently enough with a chat on Facebook with my friend and author of the Corpse Whisperer series, Mary Ann, aka H.R. Boldwood. We opined how cool it would be to have a reality show where horror authors go to haunted locations and confront real-life supernatural horrors. I jokingly proposed pitching the idea to producer Rob Cohen, whom we’d met at The Stanley Hotel retreat. I inadvertently tagged Rob in my post and he private messaged me for more details!
After catching up, Rob mentioned he was producing a podcast called Ghost Magnet with Bridget Marquardt, former Playboy Playmate and star of the hit reality series The Girls Next Door. Bridget was traveling to investigate a reportedly haunted psychiatric hospital in Traverse City, Michigan. He asked if I could lend a hand since I grew up in Michigan and knew the area. How could I pass up an opportunity like that?
Unfortunately, the management at the Traverse City State Hospital wasn’t as open to the former asylum’s haunted history as they are today, and the opportunity fell through, leaving me crestfallen.
Fortunately, Bridget planned to visit another abandoned asylum in Michigan and invited me along. Growing up in the Detroit area, I was frightfully familiar with the Eloise Psychiatric Hospital. Tales of the criminally insane and the rumored abuses occurring there were disturbing enough. But hearing that former staff and inmates haunted the remaining buildings made this a horror writer’s dream come true.
When my wife and I arrived, we met Bridget and her family in the parking lot, along with fellow Michigan author Josh Malerman and his fiancée Allison, whom I’d invited to join us on our ghostly adventure. Gazing up at the decaying four-story brick structure with the broken-out windows sent a chill through me. I couldn’t believe I was about to embark on a paranormal investigation inside an abandoned asylum.
Todd Bonner of Detroit Paranormal Expeditions (DPX) greeted us at the rear entrance with co-founder Jeff Adkins and psychic medium Brandy Miller. The DPX team led us inside the gloomy structure as my wife clung to my arm. Josh was unusually quiet, taking in the dilapidated surroundings and foreboding atmosphere. The building had no electricity. The meager light filtering through the grimy, cracked windows cast ominous shadows. Industrial green paint peeledfrom the walls as if they were leprous. Our footsteps echoed through the hallway as we ventured toward the abandoned rooms.
The DPX team recounted some of their supernatural experiences inside Eloise, like hearing footsteps, disembodied voices, and singing when they knew nobody else was there. Brandy witnessed a vinyl record fly across the room and smash at her feet. Memories of my encounter at The Stanley Hotel crept into my brain, but I quickly dismissed them. Surely that was an isolated incident, right?
Dust motes swirled in the air, kicked up by the others ahead of me. We passed a common area where mismatched chairs were arranged in a clumsy semi-circle around an old tube television bolted to the wall. It was like a scene out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
As we explored the second floor, we spread out to investigate independently. I tried to let the others get ahead so I could take unobstructed pictures and audio recordings, hoping to capture an EVP. As most of the group turned right at the end of the hallway, I went left. Little did I know what I was walking into.
I ventured down the hall lined with deserted administrative offices. Two-thirds of the way down, I stopped abruptly, feeling as if I’d run into an invisible barrier, the air suddenly sucked out of my lungs. Hoping to validate the uncanny experience, I did what any good husband would — I called for my wife to join me.
I studied my wife as she approached, and to my surprise, she, too, hesitated at the same spot in the hallway, exhaling suddenly. When I asked what happened, she described the exact sensation. Little did she know, it would only get stranger from there.
Noting the room numbers, I decided to investigate Room 217, same as the infamous room at The Stanley Hotel. It didn’t disappoint.
My wife tried to take a picture out the window, but her smart phone’s screen turned black. She tried relaunching the camera app but got the same results. Then, her phone stopped working altogether. After restarting her phone, she finally got it working again. By now, I had wandered out of the room and back up the hallway toward the others, assuming she would follow.
Halfway down the hallway, I heard my wife scream. “Bryan!”
I bolted back to Room 217, finding her terrified and shaking.
“Tell me you were just in here,” she pleaded.
I confessed that I wasn’t. “What happened?”
She recounted how, while taking pictures, she sensed me leaning over her shoulder, watching her. Feeling an icy breath next to her ear, she turned to talk to me, only to discover she was alone.
Or was she?
We searched the rooms at the end of the hallway, but we were the only living souls around.
*****
A few months later, Todd Bonner from DPX messaged me. A production company had contacted him about developing a TV show of their paranormal adventures at Eloise and elsewhere. Todd admitted he had no idea how to put together a pitch. Knowing I was a writer, he asked if I could help.
We worked together for two years developing multiple series for various production companies who pitched them to Travel Channel, Discovery, Netflix, and others. Unfortunately, COVID hit and everything shut down. Ultimately, none of the shows made it to air. And that, as they say, is show business.
Once television production restarted, Todd was contacted by a talent scout searching for paranormal teams to star in an upcoming Netflix reality series. Although the entire team auditioned via Zoom, only psychic medium Brandy was chosen.
The Netflix series 28 Days Haunted, hosted by Aaron Sagers from Paranormal Caught on Camera and Tony Spera, Director of Ed and Lorraine Warren’s Occult Museum, became a top ten worldwide hit for Netflix. Shortly after Brandy finished filming the series, she contacted me and asked if I would consider writing her biography.
My initial reaction was to say no. I write fiction, not biographies. And, no offense, most people are not that interesting. But when Brandy told me her incredible life story: growing up in a haunted house, discovering her ability to communicate with the dead, her adventures investigating some of the most haunted places in America, and her harrowing ordeal locked down for 28 days straight for a hit Netflix series… I was sold.
I spent the next several months interviewing Brandy, researching the history behind the many haunted locations she investigated, writing, editing, and even designing the book’s cover. Brandy and I then debuted the book 28 Years Haunted at the exact haunted location where she was locked in for the Netflix series.
Thanks to the success of 28 Years Haunted, I received an invitation to speak on a panel about the supernatural at The Horror Writer’s Association’s annual StokerCon (this year in San Diego), which brings me back to where we started.
The panel was hosted by author Shane Hawk. We were joined by fellow authors Pedro Iniguez, Corey Farrenkopf, Sapphire Lazuli, and Erika T. Wurth, each of whom had brushes with the supernatural.
I went first, sharing my otherworldly experience at The Stanley Hotel. To my surprise, I spotted my sole eyewitness, Cathleen, sitting in the second row.
“If you don’t believe my story,” I told the audience, “You can ask Cat herself because she’s sitting right there!”
All eyes turned to Cat, who smiled and nodded in confirmation.
Corey shared a story from his time as a cemetery groundskeeper when a woman came up behind him to ask him a question. Unable to understand her over the sound of his weed trimmer, he apologized and turned off the lawn tool. When he glanced back up…the woman was gone.
Corey now works at a library that is also notoriously haunted. He and the staff regularly glimpse mysterious shadows, hear footsteps when no one else is around, and even have locked doors suddenly open on their own.
The most hair-raising tale came from Pedro, who recounted being awakened in the middle of the night by a heaviness in his chest. When he tried to sit up, the pressure only increased, as if someone or something was holding him down. The harder he fought to rise, the harder it pressed down on him, pinning him to the mattress. Was he experiencing sleep paralysis or something more sinister?
Despite being an avowed atheist, Pedro did the only thing he could think to do: he began reciting The Lord’s Prayer for the first time, with a real sense of meaning. By the time he finished the prayer, he was released from the bondage of the demonic entity.
The following morning, he questioned whether last night’s events were merely a nightmare. But when he peeled off his shirt to take a shower, he noticed something startling in the mirror — an enormous red handprint on his chest.
After our panel wrapped, a familiar-looking bearded man sitting in the back made a beeline toward me. It was Mike McCarty — special effects artist, author, and fellow attendee of The Stanley Hotel horror writer’s retreat. Like me, his experience at The Stanley Hotel continues to haunt him to this day.
Mike lived in a house haunted by the spirit of its former owner, who took her life in the bedroom with a bullet to the back of her head. The residual haunting plagued him and his wife since they moved in. Mike regularly caught glimpses of her in the same blue dress she was buried in. Visions of her invaded his dreams. More than once, he found himself startled awake by the sound of a gunshot.
On the last night of our horror writer’s retreat, a local paranormal investigation team led the attendees in reaching out to any spirits who might want to communicate. We expected, if anything, to hear from F.O. Stanley, Lord Dunraven, or perhaps the maid who lost her life in room 217. Mike was shocked to hear the name of his home’s late owner come through the spirit box.
Startled yet still skeptical, Mike questioned the spirit to ascertain whether it was really her. Every answer from the spirit box only confirmed her identity. Had she followed him to The Stanley Hotel, or was there some spiritual connection allowing her to locate him from the netherworld?
Shaken by the experience, Mike took the advice of the paranormal team as he left, audibly commanding any spirits who might be following him to remain behind at The Stanley Hotel as he crossed the threshold. Since returning home from The Stanley Hotel, Mike and his wife have not had any further encounters with the ghostly woman in the blue dress.
As for me, even after all these years, the spirits of The Stanley Hotel and the friends I made there continue to haunt me. And as a horror writer, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
B.D. Prince is the author of 28 Years Haunted and the upcoming novella, Eye for an Eye.