Scary Reads?  Not all of the mystery novels I have reviewed are about a place as creepy as Cora Harrison’s Burren of Ireland (♥)or Martin Cruz Smith’s  Wolves Eat Dogs (♥♥♥♥). I’m wrapping up the two weeks of scary things and mystery novels with a list of some of the reader-preferred mysteries, with hearts to denote how fast they’ll make your heart beat.

And sometimes a creepy story doesn’t need a creepy place, and sometimes a creepy place has a tame story! I recently read two books that would have earned five stars for terror, but they really did not fit the criteria for A Traveler’s Library. So, if you want a really horrific read, try one of these unreviewed books that are based on real events.

♥♥♥♥♥Our Daily Bread by Lauren B. Davis Beautifully written and well-drawn characters but horrendous acts.

♥♥♥♥♥I Dreamt I Was in Heaven: the Rampage of the Rufus Buck Gang by Leonce Gaiter.  It may be based on real events, but the book seems gratuitously gruesome.

Keep in mind the stars are not for overall quality–just for the terror factor.

♥♥♥A Mystery in a National Park-High Country by Nevada Barr has her middle-aged female park ranger heroine scrambling across the back country of Yosemite National Park in California. Barr, a former park ranger herself, has written mysteries set in 17  National Parks, so far.

♥♥♥Spenser’s Boston. The Godwulf Manuscript. This post talked more about Boston as the setting for the many Spenser novels than about the books themselves, but Robert Parker wrote an extremely popular detective in Spenser. The post includes 5 restaurant recommendations from the Parker website, but he passed away in 2011, and those are no longer on the web site. However another writer has been hired to continue the 39-book Spenser series.

♥♥♥♥A Pair of posts proved popular about a Robert Wilson mystery and Lisbon Portugal. I wrote about A Small Death in Lisbon, and followed it up with a post called Plan Travel to Lisbon courtesy of Pack a Book.

♥♥♥♥A Vienna Mystery was shared by guest author Kristen Gough, who usually writes the tamer My Kids Eat Squid. She shared her own experiences in Vienna and the locale painted by author Daniel Silva in A Death in Venice.

♥♥♥♥♥ A Spooky Vienna Film to go along with the Vienna theme–is one of my favorites of all time, The Third Man. I called the post How to Find the Third Man in Vienna.

♥♥Exploring the Dark Corners of Venice talks about Donna Leon‘s mysteries starring the lovable Commissario Brunetti.  She keeps turning them out, and I’m falling behind, but loved the dozen or so I’ve read. Related Announcement: Venice is such a wonderful place to set all kinds of stories, that next week is Venice week at A Traveler’s Library.

♥♥♥♥American Road Trip Thriller–Greek novelist Alexis Stamatis wrote a Hitchcock-worth tale of mistaken identity and a chase across country in American Fugue. It is fascinating to see an outsider’s take on the American road.

♥♥♥♥Florence Italy Real Life Horror Story tells about a murder case in Florence Italy that Douglas Preston presents in his non-fiction book, The Monster of Florence. The way that the legal system functions–or doesn’t–made me glad that I did not know this story before I went to Florence.

♥♥In Raymond Chandler nails Southern California, I talked about the master American detective story writer and his masterpiece Farewell My Lovely. My love for Chandler is about the language and the attitude–not about the suspense and terror. But he does set a spooky scene!

♥♥In  Murder in Paris,I talk about Cara Black introduces a delightful young woman and visits the neighborhoods of Paris, book by book.  I chose  Murder in the Latin Quarter, because that is where Ken and I spent most of our time in Paris. I liked it because of its terrific heroine and great scene setting.

I want to thank the generous photographer who made this photo available with a Creative Commons license at Flickr.com. And although I did not include the usual Amazon links in this post, if you go to the original post, you can order any of the books directly, in case your local Independent bookstore doesn’t have it immediately available.

The Holiday Season is coming, and your Amazon gift orders through this site help me buy MY holiday gifts–or even better, buy a copy of the beautiful Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist for someone. Native American magazine just listed it as their top pick for special gifts for the holidays. (There’s a convenient Buy Now button over on the right hand side of the blog.)

So was your favorite mystery from A Traveler’s Library on this list? Do you have a different one you’d like to nominate? Let me know in the comment section.

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Zombie at Rawhide's The Nest Graveyard

I was invited to tour The Nest, at Rawhide in Chandler, Arizona before it opened to the public this month. In one section, you walk through a graveyard and are confronted with zombies who may be real and may be animatronics. I’m not staying around long enough to find out!

This photo is part of Travel Photo Thursday and you can see many more travel photos from around the world at Budget Travelers Sandbox.

The photo is my own–all rights reserved, please. Rawhide invited me to a preview tour of The Nest for members of the press.

P.S. Still trying to figure out the Paris Mystery Photo?  I accidentally stumbled across what seems to be a sensible answer at this web site which is in Italian. Google translation is not terrific–but at least you’ll be able to figure it out. A deterrent it is–and although some still say deterrent of urination, the open work in my Paris Mystery Photo leads me to think that the first explanation they offer is more sensible.

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Haunted House

I’ve been to a few scary places while traveling–most of them because I got lost and wandered where I should not be. But today I’m thinking about scary places that people plan travel to–in Phoenix, Mansfield Ohio, and New Orleans.

THE NEST

For the second year now, Rawhide, just south of Phoenix, has been home to “The Nest.”  The ironically named Halloween attraction is based on the home of a mass murderer who killed off his Arizona family back in the 1940s. Jacob Kell and his idea of a good time– cutting people up and stuffing them in the fridge–forms the centerpiece of The Nest, but before you get to Jacob’s house, you traverse three mazes and a graveyard full of zombies plus a freak show.

Zombie in the graveyard

I’ll admit that I am cynical about haunted attractions.  I think my mind is still stuck back in the home-made haunted houses of childhood where someone blindfolded me and made me stick my hand in a pot full of cold spaghetti which they said was brains. Never did believe that stuff.  And going through a mirror maze was so lame because I could generally see through cracks and easily figure out where I was. But haunted attractions today have gone to Disney School–they are packed with special effects including animatronics and laser lights playing tricks on your perception.

Second admission–I actually got a kick out of The Nest, even though I went through in the daytime so I could see the tops of false walls and never truly got disoriented. I would like to go back when all of the 100 plus actors were there jumping out at people.

Snarling Joker

Some of it was downright beautiful, like the neon-painted, laser-lighted Turmoil maze that plays all kinds of tricks on your eyes.

Turmoil Maze

Some of it was gag-inducing. Finger sandwich anyone?

Kell's Kitchen Counter

This attraction was purpose built in a large warehouse on the grounds of Rawhide, an old West attraction. No one under 12 is allowed through, but that doesn’t mean the family can’t enjoy a Halloween visit to Rawhide, because out on the main street the younger set can enjoy Doomtown, including such wholesome fun as “Legend of the Zombie Hunters.”

Glenn Rea, main creator, is proud of the fact that 36,000 people went through last year.  Many of the actors (whom he says are “in to being creepy”) have been with him for 20 years as he developed every scarier scares. The secret of a good haunted house? Rea says he tries to recreate your childhood fears.  Fear of falling, the dark, being shut in, and of course the biggie–getting sliced up in little pieces.

DERANGED

I have not yet visited the Mansfield Reformatory in Ohio which not only sponsors night-time ghost walks all year round, but creates a special Halloween attraction called Deranged.  Like The Nest, this one strictly forbids anyone under 12 on the tours. Unlike The Nest, the creator, Myron St. John does not allow any photos and will not give out information about attendance (although he says they are in the top 2% in the country) or specific activities on the tour. He did say that they have more than 60 actors and brand new animatronics this year.

St. John says, “..a customer going through the prison will go through close to 90% of the structure(which is huge) and travel through cell blocks, solitary confinement, administrative areas and eventually to the basement which actually housed the prison’s morgue… The time is usually 40-45 minutes, although many only last about 5 minutes and leave early due to fright.”

The Mansfield Reformatory, closed since 1974, was the home of endless real horrors for many years. You’d recognize it as the location  for Shawshank Redemption, and probably agree that it  is about the last place that anyone would want to spend time normally, so naturally that makes it a great candidate for a Halloween Haunt.

And about those real ghosts at the Reformatory? St. John says, “Every year I have customers tell me about their hair being pulled, getting pinched or a shadow moving into or out of a wall and ask how we did it…well, we didn’t…that’s the supernatural part, obviously the spirits want some Halloween fun too.

The Mortuary

New Orleans, even before Anne Rice, has some extremely spooky corners. Take those above ground cemeteries, for instance.  And right beside one of the cemeteries stands a lovely old house built in 1972 that once housed a mortuary.  Now packed with electronic gear, TV cameras, sound sensers and thermostats, the morturary attracts ghost seekers year round as  Mystère Mansion.  Managers emphasizes the beauty of the house as they markets to event-planners. The only hint that something different lurks here, is the availability of a seance room.  Like the Reformatory, though, at Halloween it ups the ante with electronic ghostliness and becomes simply The Mortuary.

In the seance room of the Haunted Mortuary

You can read more about the Mystère  Mansion and its evil twin, The Haunted Mortuary in my 2009 article here.

And here are more scary places:

• FreeEEEEE  Halloween Events from National Geographic Travelers
• If you want to actually SLEEP with the ghosts, try this article:    Haunted Hotels by Kerri Campbell at Mainstreet.com
• Planing a trip? How about haunted highways?  Wandering Educators.com  invites you to…“travel down a narrow dark highway late at night” “In Haunted Highways … see what it is like to feel scared when you see hitchhikers dSite Statsisappear into thin air in your back seat, or … see the ghost train with Lincoln’s casket on board.”
• Scary songs and ghostly music from Music Road. (I like the one in which the murder victim’s bones turn into a fiddle.)
• Bake some Ghostly Brownies with My Kids Eat Squid.com.
• Some comic relief from all that scary stuff, from My Itchy Travel Feet and dogs in worldly costumes from Will My Dog Hate Me.

With the exception of the top photo which came from Flickr, all of the photos are the property of Vera Marie Badertscher, all rights reserved.  I saw The Nest on a preview press tour, and will soon travel to Mansfield Ohio Reformatory at the invitation of the Mansfield Convention and Visitor’s Bureau. My trip to New Orleans, when I visited Mystère Mansion was sponsored by the Hotel Monteleone. No matter who pays for the ticket, I only write about things I think you will be interested in.

Your turn. If you had to vote for the scariest Haunted  attraction you had ever visited, what would be your choice?

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And remember, there are still a few books to give away in the Giant 25-Book Giveaway. So subscribe, tell me in a comment you have subscribed, tweet a reference to @pen4hire, or leave a comment on any post. It would be frightening, if you did not win something. {THIS CONTEST OVER!]

Destination: Colorado

Book: The Perfect Suspect: A Catherine McLeod Mystery by Margaret Coel (NEW September 2011)

I will never look at Denver in the same way, and newspaper reporters who read Margaret Coel‘s Catherine McLeod books may reconsider their careers. I heard Coel speak about her Wind River Series–set on an Arapaho reservation–at the Tucson Festival of Books last year.  The fact that the author is an expert in the culture of the Arapaho fascinated me, and her crime-solving combo of Catholic priest and female American Indian lawyer sounded like a winner.  However, when I read The Spider’s Web, it did not hold my interest and I did not review it here. (In fairness, I should let you know that book won a Colorado Book Award for 2011.)

Downtown Denver Pedestrian Mall

Therefore, when the publisher sent me The Perfect Suspect it sat on my table for several months before I opened it.  The heroine here is part Arapaho, just discovering her heritage.  She works as a newspaper reporter in Denver and has a boyfriend who is a cop.  In the first book featuring Catherine McLeod, she was the victim of a stalker.  In The Perfect Suspect, she becomes the target of a tough but beautiful police woman who goes on a killing spree in an attempt to cover up her murder of a politician.

Don’t worry, I’m not throwing out a spoiler by telling you that the policewoman is a killer.  The Perfect Suspect is not a Who Done It? It’s a What Next? The reader works alongside Catherine as she investigates the story and with her, you wonder who else may be killed. Things get pretty tense as Catherine gets closer to the truth and Ryan, the female cop, gets more desperate. The suspense builds as the cop and the reporter get closer and closer and their paths finally intersect.

This novel makes a great Halloween Season suspenseful read. This was a better book in many ways than The Spider’s Web.  I cared about the characters. Even the warped Ryan never fails to fascinate. I believed the actions of the characters. They fit their psychology. If I have any complaints about the drawing of the characters it is that we are repeatedly told how attractive protaganist Catherine and antagonist Ryan are. Okay, we get it. And if I had not been involved in politics myself at one time, I might have thought Coel was laying it on a little thick about the gubernatorial candidate who could persuade anyone how much he cared, when the truth was that he cared only about getting ahead. And he, too, was beautiful handsome beyond all mortals.  But I’ve seen such people in politics and could totally believe this character and his character flaws.

Aspen Colorado

And of course I loved the reality of the settings–the neighborhoods of Denver, the wealthy ski towns of Breckenridge and Aspen, the magnificent mountain scenery. I can see someone visiting the pleasant downtown area of Denver and thinking–this must be where Catherine met the informer, this is the route she took to her office–it is all very real.

The Perfect Suspect gets high grades for being an exciting and compelling read and for the traveler’s library criteria of showing us a place we would like to visit. When you travel to Denver, climb to the top of the State Capitol dome, visit the Denver Art Museum, linger in a restaurant on the downtown pedestrian 16th Street Mall. But steer clear of a part-Arapaho newspaper reporter named Catherine. She draws danger like a magnet.

Photographs here come from Flickr.com, with a Creative Commons license.  Please click on each photo to learn about the photographer and see more of his or her work.

Links to book titles provide you with a convenient way to purchase the book, and when you buy anything at Amazon after clicking on links from A Traveler’s Library, I earn a few cents to help pay the rent on the site. Thanks.

Whether you’re reading appropriately scary mysteries for Halloween, or you are just building up your place-oriented mystery library, where in the world would you like a mystery to take you?

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Clockwise from top left: Jessie Voigts, Edie Jarolim, Kerry Dexter, Jennifer Close, Jane Boursaw and Brette Sember

NEW COLLEAGUES AT THE LIBRARY

I hope you are enjoying the new contributors to A Traveler’s Library as much as I am.

You have now met five of the current six contributors who are bringing you new reasons to travel and new resources. Kerry talked about Nova Scotia Music on Monday; Jessie talked about Scottish Cultural Travel on Tuesday; I interviewed Jane (Wednesday Matinee) and interviewed Edie (Pet Travel) on Thursday; and Jennifer brought you various aquariums and a children’s book on Family Friday. The will be back the first full week in November.

But wait! There’s more! Brette Sember, prolific author and blogger about both legal matters and food, will be bringing us Tasty Travel on Tuesday in the middle of each month. Next week on Tuesday, I’ll interview Brette, but you can get a sneak preview at her life and work on the Contributor’s Page.

PRIZE WINNERS

Nobody e-mailed me a protest, so either you didn’t notice or you didn’t care–but I did not announce any new winners here last week, after Casey Freedland chose The Tapestry Shop, a story in the time of Robin Hood.

But since we had a new post EVERY DAY last week, I thought I’d just wait a few days and announce all the winners at once.

Remaining books are:

On the Road to Babadag: Travels in the Other Europe (non fiction, the Balkans)

The Bread of Angels: A Journey to Love and Faith (non fiction memoir, Syria)

Culture Smart! China. And just to spice things up, I’ll throw in today’s novel, Silk Road

The Floor of Heaven: a historical novel (real people) in Alaska’s early days

A Trick of the Light :mystery novel (Audio book, Montreal)

Contact Creede : a historical novel set in Creede, Colorado.

Our Daily Bread: dark novel based on real events in Nova Scotia

The Civilized World: Short stories about Africa

Chronicles in Stone: historical novel about wartime in Albania

At least two of these will wind up in my best travel-inspiring books of 2011 list, so leave a comment, subscribe to the blog, or tweet a message with @pen4hire in it. And I should be ready to announce the complete list of winners by October 20.

COMMENT LUV REWARDS YOUR COMMENTS

I also hope you will enjoy the new, improved Comment Luv below, which allows you to do even more than the old version. You can still post your latest blog post or a favorite site, but after you have visited and commented three times, retweeted, or posted the url of the blog post on Facebook or hit the Google Plus button, you can choose between many possible links to add to your comment. Don’t forget to add your twitter handle as well. If you are a blogger and want to get the new premium Comment Luv for your own blog, here’s a clickable link:

RANDOM POSTS

Now this is really fun! Look over to the right hand column–at the top, just below the Search by Category box. A random post displays. Click on the title and one of 434 Destination posts will pop up and a the title of a post on a new destination will be suggested. Discover new travel books. Plan trips. I can see where this could be addictive. What can you find? Where will you go?

COMING ATTRACTIONS

Please leave a comment  and then come back later to enjoy this week’s posts that visit China and India. The next two weeks will focus on Scary books (travel mysteries set in Ireland, Sweden, Spain, Denmark, Colorado for your travel library),  and Scary places (In Arizona, Louisiana and Ohio) in honor of Halloween.

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Cleaning

I’ve been sprucing up some of the things you may not notice at A Traveler’s Library.(If you receive this via e-mail, click through to A Traveler’s Library to see the additions and make a comment.)

Google + The newest new thing on the Internet, and I love it.  You can link to me and learn about my travels that I don’t cover on the blog. If you need an invitation to join Google +, just let me know at vmb@atravelerslibrary.com

And on the subject of + , you now have the opportunity to plus A Traveler’s Library–up there in the right hand column.  That helps us show up in search results, and tells your friends that you approve of ATL.  You can also rate posts and comments that you find particularly helpful. It’s all about YOU and what you like.

SPONSORS.  You probably have noticed that Amazon ad that sprawls across the middle of the front page. It lists some of my very favorite books of those I have reviewed, and I update it as new favorites arrive. In the sidebar, you can find my favorite American Indian biographies, including, of course my own Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist, written with Charnell Havens. If you order here, you’ll get an autographed copy.  I hope that since we are all about books and movies here, that you will sometimes be tempted to purchase a book or a DVD of a book or movie I’ve discussed. I am a big supporter of independent book shops and web sites, but just in case you DO go to Amazon, I put links to Amazon on the site for your convenience.

Just a reminder that every time you click and buy ANYTHING–not just the object named in the link or ad–A Traveler’s Library gets a small benefit. And those small benefits mean I can spend time reading and reporting for you rather than spending my time finding income in other places.

Fly.Com: An efficient search site for airline flights, is now a sponsor of A Traveler’s Library.

Viking River Cruises: This company has always fascinated me, and you can see their link over on the right hand side.

Marriott Hotels:  I’m happy to have this good hotel company continuing to sponsor A Traveler’s Library.

A Freebie: The ad for Lonely Planet Bloggers’ Photo Book is the best deal going. You’ll get travel photos from the top bloggers on the Web, and its free! Click on the ad in the sidebar to download.

PARIS IN YOUR POCKET. One of the most viewed posts on A Traveler’s Library is called Ten Places to Eat Cheap(er)  in Paris. Now you can get it in e-book format to carry with you on your smartphone, I-Pad, computer, or e-reader. Go to Barnes and Noble Nook store or Amazon for Kindle today. For only $1.99, you can save lots of Euros on food in expensive Paris.

 A MYSTERY. Just in time for Hallowe’en last year, we had a spooky occurrence at A Traveler’s Library. In January 2010, Anil Polat of the great blog, Fox Nomad, wrote a blog post on the book and DVD, Long Way Round. I would give you a link to it, but it DISAPPEARED!  A few days later, I was looking for a post I wrote in April about movies in D.C., and it, too had gone missing.  I have a lot of work to do before I can figure out what is going on with the Purloined Posts, but please tell me if you go looking for something you thought you read here and can’t find it. (Cue spooky sounds…..)

My Disorganized Library

BOOKS TO BE READ I have, at least temporarily, abandoned the attempt to keep you informed about what is on my TBR pile, and what I am currently reading, and what I have read.  If you think the information is valuable or interesting, let me know, and I may resuscitate that page. For now, suffice it to say that I have 13 books waiting in my TBR pile, and all want to appear on A Traveler’s Library before the end of October.  Puh-leeze. Ain’t gonna happen.

The tiger photo and the spooky scene are compliments of Creative Commons and comes from Flickr, the bookcase is by Vera Marie Badertscher, all rights reserved.

Your feedback is welcome on any or all of this insider blogging stuff.

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Cemetière de Loyasse, Lyons France

Destination: Cemeteries

Books: Ghosts in the Cemetery and Ghosts in the Cemetery II by Stuart Schneider

FYI: This book was published by Schiffer, the publisher of Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist, which I wrote with Charnell Havens. They gave me a copy for review.

I stop along country roads so that I can visit the dead.  The longer they have been dead the better.  That sounds rather irreverant? But the choice of burial markers and inscriptions hint at stories of whole lives–even regions.  I cannot resist seeing the ghosts of former lives revealed in a cemetery, even while I feel a bit creepy about it.

Cemeteries can be gardens, or woods–peaceful places for contemplation.  They can be displays of wonderful carving by unknown sculptors–stonemasons who in former days might have been building cathedrals. The writing on the stones can be terse or poetic. The size of a monument can say “modest”, “died broke”, or can arrogantly proclaim “I was rich and important.”

Ghosts in the Cemetery and Ghosts in the Cemetery II (and his soon to be released book III) take the “ghosts of former lives” phrase I used in the first paragraph much more literally than I do with my tombstone tromping.  Schneider and “Rebecca Benjamin,” who is listed as the photographer in the first book*, do not just photograph the stones and trees and mounds of earth, they photograph the ectoplasm–the wispy remains–the ghosts.

As Stuart Schneider‘s web site says:

“Old cemeteries are like outdoor museums or stone gardens. They have character.  The headstones and mausoleums are all that remain of the stontmason’s art and nature has weathered the stones, adding moss, age, and patina.“

Schneider, who has eclectic interests, has written or– excuse the expression– ghost written dozens of books. One of his subjects is Halloween, and these two Ghost books fit right in to Halloween thoughts.  He takes the photographs for these books, and wisely is not telling HOW he takes them, beyond the fact they are taken with a digital camera. That is key, because official ghost busters only accept film photos where they can examine the negative as well as the print.  He says he has no interest in convincing skeptics. Fair enough. That might be a full time job in an age when we can no longer trust digital photographic evidence.

Besides, it does not matter to your enjoyment of the book whether you are skeptic or believer. The photographs are beautiful in themselves, like this evocative shot taken in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, in the area made famous by Washington Irving with his spooky stories.

Ghost in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

Not only are the photos lovely to look at, but Schneider’s research has turned up delightful stories to go along with each place he photographs.

If you want to use these books as a kind of travel guide to cemeteries worth seeing, the first book features the northeastern United States and one place  in Quebec. Book II, subtitled Farther Afield, also features many in the eastern United States, but wanders to Arizona for the mining town of Jerome and the San Xavier Mission Cemetery in Tucson. Without any particular logic, the book visits one foreign country, going to the Pere Lechaise in Paris and to Lyon, France.  Pictures from that one at top of page and here…

A small ghost in France

*Rebecca and Benjamin are Schneider’s two children–so Rebecca Benjamin is, in effect, an ectoplasm herself. The author/photographer invented “her” for his first book because he was afraid that he would anger people who bought his other books, particularly ghost hunters. Since he got acceptance, he “lost” Rebecca in subsequent books.

All photos here are the copyrighted property of Stuart Schneider. You can see more of his ghost photographs at the Schneider web site.

Your turn. Do you visit cemeteries? Any to recommend? Every photographed a ghost?

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In the séance room of the Haunted Mortuary

Destination: New Orleans

Venue: The Haunted Mortuary, aka Mansion Mystére

I promised I would tell you the spookiest place I had ever visited and here it is.

When I was in New Orleans earlier this year, I visited the 1872 Mystére Mansion, “at the very dead end of Canal Street“, that has been certified haunted by 7 ghosts. Would a ghost hunter lie to you?

And if you don’t believe the professionals, you can attend some training and be set loose in three stories of the Mystére Mansion which once was a funeral home. It must be haunted. It sits right on the edge of a cemetery, and everyone knows how hard it is to keep the dead in their place in New Orleans. Your ghost hunting training includes seeing videos from the cameras posted in corners of all the rooms and running all night to capture ghostly excursions.

If an hours worth of ghost hunting does not sate your appetite for the spectral, you can even book a room. Only one suite available, and no one guarantees a good night’s sleep.

Ghostly Bride at the Mansion Mystere

Would you believe that brides book the haunted mansion for their weddings? Perhaps they have not seen the mannequin upstairs representing the ghostly bride–of Frankenstein? Will they have the bridal dinner around the séance table, surrounded by skeletons and weird symbolic art works?

This time of year, the mansion becomes The Mortuary –the biggest, scariest,  haunted house in Louisiana. I dare you to go through the Mortuary and then return to stay overnight at the Mansion. And they invite you to spend the night on Halloween Eve. Good luck. You may need it.

—————————————————

And now a few scary posts from my friends, starting with a family outing and homemade treats for Halloween. (Remember when we actually knew our neighbors and could accept home-baked cookies for the Trick or Treat TREAT?)

A Halloween outing to Legoland from The Baby Bonding Book for Dads website.

Ghoulishly gluten-free cupcakes from over at Wasabimon.

Munch those cookies while watching a scary film recommended by Film Gecko.

Five places to scare your family from Jen Miner at Fodors.com

Is your Halloween distinctly American? Here’s a comparison with Ireland from Wander Mom.

Caught on the Web points us to a site with really yucky pumpkins.

If you have not done your Halloween reading yet, here’s A Traveler’s Library suggestions for some ghostly guide books.

I know I must have missed some, so feel free to recommend your favorite reading for Halloween in the comment section below. (Back to semi-normal with France on Friday tomorrow, but scary stuff continues on Tuesday next week as I interview the author of Decoding The Lost Symbol. Will the world end on December 12, 2012? Does a secret order rule Washington D.C.? Tune in Tuesday.)

Photos by Vera Marie Badertscher.  All rights reserved.

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Haunted House

Destination: Another Dimension

Books: Galore

Only 9 days to Hallowe’en. Just time to book a spooky trip.

I decided to poke around the Web and see if I could find some travel guide books for ghostly travel. Fear not–or rather Fear A Lot– there are ghosts wherever you are traveling and there are more writers writing about ghosts than there are ghosts to write about.

I just love this web site where you can find all the scary places to travel: A Ghost in My Suitcase.

The web site’s title is also the title of a book,[amazonify]0974039454::text:::: A Ghost in My Suitcase: A Guide to Haunted Travel in America[/amazonify] which it promotes, but the site generously catalogs dozens of other books by state and under a miscellaneous category. Each has a link to a place where you can buy the book.

It seems there is no category of travel without its ghosts–lighthouses, restaurants, jails and railroads. I was surprised by some, like[amazonify]1595800093::text:::: Haunted Hikes: Spine-Tingling Tales and Trails from North America’s National Parks[/amazonify]. Written by a former park ranger, it provides fright factor ratings:

• 4 icons = “Gave me nightmares, and I’d rather not discuss them.”
• 3 icons = “I get chills just thinking about it.”
• 2 icons = “Very disturbing, but clowns are scarier.”
• 1 icon = “Makes 7-year-olds giggle.”

And if you wanted to buy an inclusive guide, would you choose The International Directory of Haunted Places, which I found in an About.com article? Or would you choose the brand new Encyclopedia of Haunted Places: Ghostly Locales from Around the World, which I found reviewed at Flyaway Cafe?

What’s your favorite Haunted Travel Experience? And tune in on October 29 to hear about my favorite Ghostly Travel Experience. I definitely give it 3 icons.

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