Jekyll Island: A Paranormal Mystery (Taryn's Camera Book 5) (31 page)

Author’s Notes

And here is where I try to set some records straight about how much of the book is true, sort of true, and not true at all.

For starters, the Jekyll Island Club Hotel on Jekyll Island is very much a real place. It is beautiful, charming, and haunted. It truly was created as a playground for the rich and famous. The porch, bar, ballroom, croquet lawn, dining room with tea, and valet stand are all real.

The fire, however, exists only in my imagination. The hotel never burned down like it does in my book. Still, the fire is not entirely fictional. I actually based that particular storyline on a real fire that occurred in northern Kentucky at the Beverly Hills Supper Club. A popular nightclub, it caught fire during a busy night and killed many, many people. It’s considered one of our country’s worst entertainment disasters. If you do a little searching you can find interviews with the survivors, as well as lots of news stories and videos. It’s a chilling story and, unfortunately, real.

There are cottages that belong to the hotel. And yes, some of them do look like little mansions, containing as many as 15 rooms. Ivy House and Adena Cottage are fictional. Ivy House, however, is loosely based on Hollybourne, which is the only standing cottage that hasn’t been completely renovated. It is reportedly haunted and some of the tales Ellen mentions about the house are real stories I heard while on the ghost tour of the property.

The Horton House is a real place and is also reportedly haunted, much in the same manner that I describe in the book. There
is
a tiny cemetery across the road from the Horton House and the description of it is accurate. Rachel Hawkins (a fictional character) is not really buried there, though. However, the part about Taryn visiting the cemetery and feeling someone close to her sighing is a true story. It happened to me while I was there by myself.

Mary the Wanderer is a real ghost that haunts both Jekyll and St. Simon’s. I haven’t seen her.

Rachel and William Hawkins are fictional characters. The story about Rachel’s grave is a true ghost story, but takes place on St. Simon’s Island, not Jekyll Island. The story was told to us by our guide during the ghost tour of St. Simon’s. Apparently, a young woman was buried in Christ Church cemetery. Like Rachel, she was deathly afraid of the dark because her nanny used to lock her in the closet as a child. Supposedly, the woman had to light candles every night. One night wax burnt her and she developed an infection, an infection that eventually took her life. Each night visitors are meant to be able to see a candle light appear on her grave, a practice her husband started and apparently continues in death. Our guide told us that the cemetery became so popular with late-night visitors that they had to remove the headstone. I have no idea if this story is true or not, but I liked it anyway.

All of the beaches are real.

Yes, there are alligators on Jekyll Island, but they’re mostly on the golf course and what they call “alligator pond.” They don’t normally attack people.

Sea Turtles are protected on the island. If you’re there in the summer you’ll find markers for their eggs. Please don’t disturb them. The Sea Turtle Center is fun to visit and I recommend it, regardless of age.

The wildlife and vegetation of the island are much as I described. And there really are a ton of golf carts and bicycles. I borrowed a bike from a friend while I was there and rode all over St. Simon’s Island with my son.

The story about the airport having remains under it is true. There is also a park on St. Simon’s where native remains were discovered as well.

Lastly, all the characters in the story are fictional. None of them are based on any real people.

I truly did visit all the locations in the book. My family and I went to Jekyll and St. Simon’s twice over the course of a year for me to conduct research and spent an entire month renting a house there so that I could get a feel for it. It is magical, ghosts or not.

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Visit the book’s Amazon page at:

http://www.amazon.com/Jekyll-Island-Paranormal-Mystery-Taryns-ebook/dp/B014ZMXJI8/

Like THIS series? Rebecca has a brand NEW series coming out in December. Meet the Kentucky Witches!

http://www.rebeccaphoward.net/a-broom-with-a-view.html

Pre-order now for a December 15th release and save on the list price!

Liza Jane Higginbotham was a witch.

Mind you, not the kind of witch that put hexes on people or could make herself look like a supermodel with a wave of her hand (although both of those skills would’ve been very useful on a number of occasions) but a witch, nonetheless.

When she was twelve she’d watched a movie about a girl who came into her witchy powers on her sixteenth birthday. “Teen Witch,” it was called.

She wasn’t
that
kind of witch either.

Liza Jane had been born a witch, known it most of her life, and considered it as normal as her hair color.

(Okay, maybe not
quite
as normal. After all, her natural color was kind of a dirty brown. Thanks to Clairol and some plastic gloves, she’d fixed that.)

She couldn’t make herself invisible, the future she could see was rarely helpful, and she couldn’t turn people into frogs.

Nope
, she thought as she gave the last box on the U-Haul a good, solid kick with her tennis shoe and sent it flying down the ramp,
she was just a regular witch with few useful skills
.

Had she been a
TV
kind of witch, she’d have just wrinkled her nose a few times and sent those boxes flying into the house, where they would’ve graciously unpacked themselves. Then she would’ve spent the rest of the afternoon lounging on a perfectly made bed (
not
made by her, of course) feeding herself strawberries.

And then she would’ve turned Jennifer Miller into a frog. Or a cockroach.

Liza Jane hopped from the truck and watched as the box slid off the ramp and landed with a thud at the bottom. One side was caved in. She hoped there wasn’t anything breakable in it. She hadn’t taken the time to mark any of them.

Divorce was making her more unorganized than usual.

“What the hell was I thinking?” she muttered to herself as she turned and looked at her new house.

Well, technically, her
old
house. She had lived there, once upon a time. She’d been six then and now she was thirty-five so it had been…Well, she didn’t need to think about how many years ago that was. She was already depressed enough.

Her grandparents’ white farm house rose before her, proud and neglected. Paint had chipped from the siding and now sprinkled the brown, dead grass like dirty snow. An upstairs window was boarded up. She was almost certain the porch was leaning to one side. Liza Jane cocked her head now and studied it.
Yep
, she thought,
it was definitely crooked
.

“At least it has electricity and running water,” she stated cheerfully.

Nothing answered her back. She was surrounded by more than fifty acres of mountainside and pastureland.

Her divorce was almost final. Her high school sweetheart had left her for the woman at Starbucks who made him his coffee every morning. She’d lost her job as the administrative assistant at the nonprofit she worked at when everyone in the building overheard her yelling obscenities to her husband’s lawyer on the phone. She’d let the happy new couple have her house. Now, she was moving back into the only thing she owned–her grandparents’ dilapidated farmhouse in Kudzu Valley, Kentucky.

She was depressed.

“Well, maybe just a little something,” she muttered, flipping her hair back from her face.

For a moment the air around her stilled. The words she chanted rose from her like a gentle breeze, lifting the ends of her hair and making her lightweight jacket flutter. Her heart raced and for just a second she felt a surge of adrenalin. And then it stopped.

Smiling with satisfaction, she opened her eyes and studied the farmhouse again. The porch was perfectly straight.

“Yeah well, I deserved it,” she said to no one in particular and then proudly marched up her new steps.

Want to learn about Taryn’s beloved grandmother and get a glimpse of Taryn when she was a child? The companion novella to the Taryn’s Camera series entitled
Stella
is 100+ pages and available in the
Ghost Children
anthology.

For more information visit:

http://www.amazon.com/Haunted-Children-Collection-Stories-Beyond-ebook/dp/B0149ES7J8/

Want a FREE book? For a limited time you can download the FREE companion short story to book 4 in the series, SHAKER TOWN.
Pieces
from another character’s perspective, shares a ghost story not found in the book. Just follow the link to enter your email address!

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HERE
!

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