I sat down and wrote a ghost story yesterday for the upcoming Ghost Stories LIVE! event on May 20th. I usually write three or four stories for each event and then just grab one as I run out the door.
This one is about a young woman who is in the Nevada mountains with her cousin and his wife. They discovered an abandoned gold mine while hiking the previous year and invited her (she's a photo journalist specializing in ghost towns, abandoned properties, decaying and tumbling down old houses, buildings, etc) to come along while they explore the mine and take pictures.
She's sleeping when she awakened by someone in the camp site. It's the man who owns the mine, evidently. He thinks she's there to steal his gold. She tells him that she's just there take pictures. He offers to show her the mother lode he's discovered in the mine. She's a little wary, but wants the picture if she can get it, so she goes along. They go into the mine and it seems she's able to go deeper into it than she was with her cousin. Sure enough there's a streak of gold as wide as her forearm.
She uses her digital camera to take some pictures. The miner drops his torch and it goes out. The flash has startled him and he retreats. Alone in the dark, she starts to panic, but then uses her camera's flash to try to get her bearings in the mine- only to discover she's blocked in by cave-ins.
This story gave me anxiety to write- I am wildly claustrophobic. I do not like enclosed spaces. I would never go in a cave or a mine shaft or anyplace similar. That I trap her in the mine with the mother lode made my hands sweat!
I couldn't even read the story when I was done with it! Strike that one from Ghost Stories LIVE! I would NOT be able to read it aloud without freaking out!
I guess this is one ghost story that frightened the author!
(Kelly is editing it...so I may include it in a future volume of stories, but I'm NOT going to read it anytime soon!!)
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