"Poltergeist" released 1982

Poltergeist, written and produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by Tobe Hooper, was released June 4, 1982.  It starred Craig T. Nelson, JoBeth Williams, Dominique Dunne, Oliver Robins and Heather O'Rourke. 

It opened to mostly favorable reviews and was the highest-grossing horror film of 1982.  The New York Times named it as one of the Best 1000 Movies Ever Made.  The American Film Institute ranked it #84 on its AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills.  The line "They're here" was named the 69th greatest movie quote on AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes.

Poltergeist was nominated for three Oscars.  It won three Saturn Awards for Best Horror Film, Best Makeup and Best Supporting Actress for Zelda Rubinstein who played the parapsychologist Tangina.

The Bionic Woman episode "Ghost Hunter" airs 1976

The final episode of season 1 of The Bionic Woman, The Ghosthunter, aired May 26, 1976.  Jaime Summers (Lindsay Wagner) goes undercover as a governess to Amanda Curry (Kristy McNichol), who seems to be haunted by her mother's ghost. 

As it turns out, Cory has telekinesis and it manifests itself in her subconscious, which becomes deadly when she is dreaming.  Now, you can understand why it's my favorite Bionic Woman episode.

The Privateer's Cross available now from JMS Books!

Originally published under the title, Soumets-toi a moi, The Privateer's Cross has been published and released now from JMS Books!

Blurb:

Henry meets Cole in a spooky cemetery for a quick hook-up during Mardi Gras in New Orleans.  During their encounter, Henry finds a beautiful object in a pile of dirt.  They take it back to Henry’s hotel room and discover they have picked up an ancient and very valuable crucifix.  Suddenly, they are being followed by the ghost of a pirate, wanting his treasure returned.  They seek help for their situation only to find out it is Jean Lafitte, the French pirate who operated out of New Orleans in the nineteenth century.  Unfortunately there is no where to hide from a ghost, even among the thousands of people in town for the celebrations.  What must Henry and Cole do?  If they don’t give it back to him, the ghost has a particularly cruel fate awaiting them

Deadly Night by Heather Graham

Imagine being the recipient of a grand New Orleans mansion, pre-dating the Civil War. That’s the scenario that opens Heather Graham’s excellent ghost story, Deadly Night. Aiden Flynn and his brothers, Jeremy and Zack, inherit the house upon the death of an aunt whom they never knew existed.

It’s been neglected and in dire need of fixing up. Oh, yes. It’s also haunted. A Confederate soldier, his beautiful wife and his Union cousin still walk the grounds, giving the locals a juicy legend of family betrayal and murder.

Kendall Montgomery, a tarot card reader, lived in the mansion with the again Amelia Flynn until the old woman’s death. Slightly disappointed about not getting the estate, she gladly returns to her apartment in the French Quarter, leaving the Flynn brothers to their inheritance.

Meanwhile, Aiden has found human remains on the property and begins investigating in the face of ho-hum reactions from the New Orleans police department, still reeling from Hurricane Katrina. Flynn, with the help of his brothers, finds a string of mysterious disappearances of young women, dating back ten years. His investigation keeps leading him to Kendall and the jazz bar where her friends play in a band.

Kendall has been experiencing her own strange encounters with the paranormal. She never had any illusions that she could foretell someone’s future by reading tarot cards but, when the death card comes alive and mocks her, she begins having dreams that she is being stalked.

Although they don’t like each other at first, Aiden and Kendall are drawn together as the mystery of the plantation and the disappearance of the young women deepens.

Graham keeps the excitement building as Kendall receives more warnings with frightening and increasing frequency that she is in serious danger. When she moves back into the mansion with Aiden, she is visited by the ghosts of the Flynn ancestors, but are they malevolent or are they warning her of danger?

Graham’s depiction of New Orleans as a dark, gritty and dangerous place does not sugar-coat anything but does the great city justice by painting her as a place of wonder, mystery and magic.

There is a bit of cliché in that Aiden Flynn suspects serious crimes where the local authorities see none. Their excuse is Hurricane Katrina washed up many bodies out of their final resting places and hundreds more are still missing. The bones could be from anyone. It’s easy to see their point of view, but one would think they would be interested in body parts found on land where the flood waters didn’t reach even during the hurricane.

With lackluster response from law enforcement, the story takes a unique twist as the ghosts take matters in their own hands and help Aiden and Kendall solve the mystery but also save Kendall’s life.

Deadly Night is a great haunted house murder mystery for everyone, including those that may not enjoy horror.

Ghost Ships: True Stories of Nautical Nightmares, Hauntings and Disasters by Richard Winer

The cover of Winer’s Ghost Ships trumpets him as the New York Times best-selling author of The Devil’s Triangle, released in the early seventies. A quick search on Amazon.com shows not many works since then until Ghost Ships, copyrighted in 2000.

Although Winer cites one ‘ghost ship’ incident in 1998, the remainder of paranormal episodes in his 33-chapter, 265-page chronology occur prior to 1978. The lion’s share of the spooky events takes place between the beginning of the twentieth century and the completion of World War II. The one post-1978 story is about a ship that disappeared without a trace in 1998 during Hurricane Mitch, one of the most powerful and deadliest hurricanes recorded in the Atlantic basin. Gasp.

It seems as though Winer conducted his research into the ghost ships immediately after the success of The Devil’s Triangle, but never carried through on the project. Until now. I got the feeling that Winer needed to publish again after a long dry spell, so he pulled his notes from long ago, threw in a couple of recent incidents and released Ghost Ships.

The book focuses on vessels found with no one on board or that vanished without a trace. Only a handful of the stories actually chronicle paranormal phenomenon.

Winer’s work has few surprises and no scares but is rich in history. Although the book doesn’t deliver on ghosts, it does have a number of interesting chapters in maritime history, including a number of WWII tales that weren’t mentioned in the history books.
If you’re looking for ghosts or horror, search elsewhere. Unsolved mysteries? This can be the place.

Pirate Ghosts: Tales of Hauntings at Sea

This compilation of horror shorts written by such literary giants as H. P. Lovecraft, Robert Bloch and Washington Irving promises the reader ‘with bloodcurdling buccaneers, spectral ships, uncanny experiences under the Jolly Roger and eerie spirits from a historic past that refuses to stay dead’. Pretty high expectations, huh?

The anthology could have been renamed Caribbean Magic Ghosts with some Piracy Themes Thrown in the Mix. Few had pirates as main characters and just as many did not even contain any manner of sea rovers.

This is not to say that the anthology, compiled by Frank McSherry, Jr., Charles G. Waugh and Martin H. Greenberg isn’t an entertaining read. The short stories contain some great horror themes and effectively scare the reader.

H. P. Lovecraft’s The Terrible Old Man is one such story that eschews the piracy theme but is as creepy as Robert Bloch’s The Red Swimmer, a great story of revenge on a bloodthirsty pirate.

The lengthiest short, Henry S. Whitehead’s Seven Turns in a Hangman’s Rope is a tedious read as he lays on one subordinate clause after another, extending sentences into paragraphs. The detail in which he describes the depth of the white witch’s knowledge and experience into voodoo and obeah was unnecessary, gauging its lack of impact on any of the climatic scenes.

August Derlith’s The Blue Spectacles, Carl Jacobi’s The Digging at Pistol Key and John Masefield’s Anty Bligh, along with the tales of Irving, Lovecraft and Bloch are just plain spooky fun. These are wonderful tales of vengeful ghosts, macabre magic (and a pirate or two) all thrown in with eerie tropical settings. Since I recently reviewed a biography of Jean Lafitte by Jack C. Ramsay Jr., I was pleased to see the dashing pirate appear in The Blue Spectacles. It and Irving’s story were the only two with pirate ghosts.

Clark Ashton Smith’s A Vintage from Atlantis is a short read that contains some of the best pirates in the book, but tended to get preachy. Before I Wake by Henry Kuttner is a slow-moving tale of a young boy haunted by dreams of sailing to magical places. Pirates are mentioned as part of his fantasy while the story clutches the island magic obeah tightly to its breast.

Lady Eleanor Smith’s No Ships Pass could probably be the forerunner of the Twilight Zone-esque ‘you are here now and there is no way back’ theme. Again short on pirates, but a great story.

Pirate Ghosts is a must read for lovers of the horror genre but not for the pirate aficionado or fan. The Caribbean magic has interwoven a spell among the pages and presides over the stories, and gives us a nice tropical scare.