Happy Halloween, everyone! I hope you’re all having a good/scary time and haven’t eaten too many Kit-Kat bars as I have. The town where I live had their trick-or-treat last night, so my festivities are now over and I’m onto thinking about the next holiday (Christmas!) and the rush of new releases coming up in the next two months. Where has the year gone???

But thinking about Christmas is perfect for my first November release! (Since I have 2 releases in November and my new Laurel McKee book, Duchess of Sin, in December, I am spending the next few weeks visiting blogs and running around to bookstores in addition to wrapping presents and mailing cards…) Snowbound and Seduced is my new Christmas novella in Regency Christmas Proposals

“Mary Bassington, Lady Derrington longs to be the carefree woman she once was. But she gets more than she bargained for this Christmas when she’s snowbound with old flame Dominick, Viscount Amesby, who reignites her passion for life–and love!” (from the back cover)

I had so much fun working on the Diamonds of Welbourne Manor anthology with Diane and our friend Deb Marlowe that I loved getting to re-visit the characters for this story. I had never really intended for Mary Bassington to have her own tale, but after I met her I became very curious. Why was she so sad? What was going on between her and Dominick? Snowbound and Seduced was my chance to find out and give them their very own holiday HEA (and also catch up with some of the Welbourne crowd!).

I also love snowbound stories, am totally addicted to them, so it was easy to devise a plot for Mary and Dominick that would get them together again and make them talk to each other finally (among other activities…). They have to join forces to set out in nasty winter weather in order to track down her naughty younger sister–who has eloped with Dominick’s cousin! On the way they find out the truth about the past, and discover that their love has never died. And they have a lovely, holly-berry Christmas too! (Regency Christmas Proposals also includes stories by Carole Mortimer and Gayle Wilson, so it’s a great holiday treat! It’s available at Eharlequin, and you can find excerpts and more info at my website)

“A heart-warming tale of unrequited young love that comes back to haunt and stoke flames of passion!” –The Season Reviews

My second November release, a Harlequin Historical Undone story with the all-encompassing title To Court, Capture, and Conquer, has nothing at all to do with Christmas, but it’s also a “cabin” romance! Set in Elizabethan England, Lord Edward Hartley is finally poised to take his long-planned revenge on Sir Thomas Shelton, a villain who once destroyed Edward’s brother. Edward will kidnap Shelton’s virginal intended. But he gets the girl’s beautiful, sophisticated aunt, Lady Elizabeth, instead! (It’s available at Eharlequin now as well!)

Trapped together in a country cottage, they find a passion neither of them ever expected–and a way to heal the wounds of the past. I loved seeing Edward and Elizabeth find happiness together, and I loved the setting too, the seamier side of the 16th century. Look for these characters to continue in a full-length novel next year, release date TBA…

You haven’t seen the last of me this year, either! I will be at various blogs in coming weeks (Word Wenches on November 24 to promote Duchess of Sin, followed by The Season on the 30th, Borders on December 15, and SOS on December 6, along with Nicola Cornick. Lots of chances to win! I also have a great contest going on at my Laurel site until December…)

What are some of your favorite holiday stories?? (I like to get out all my old Regency Christmas anthologies, which I used to buy every year, and re-read them around Christmastime!). What are some of your favorite holiday traditions? And do you enjoy the shorter-length stories? (I will give away a free download of To Court… and a signed copy of Regency Christmas Proposals to two commenters)

The new book was turned in yesterday! It is GONE! Hooray! So I ate a celebratory Kit-Kat, read a novel from the TBR pile, and am now getting ready to go grocery shopping and clean up the house, things which tend to get neglected when deadlines loom. (Oh, who am I kidding? They’re neglected all the time…) In the meantime, I have a new cover–To Court, Capture, and Conquer is an Elizabethan-set “Undone” coming out in November (only 4 weeks away!), and I also have the first review for Duchess of Sin (check it out here!).

It’s a good start to my favorite month of the whole year. I love October. I love the cooler weather, the way the leaves start to change color and pumpkins appear at the farmer’s market, I love shopping for cute new boots and sweaters. Most of all, I love Halloween! It’s a fabulous holiday, all costumes and candy and fun (not to mention cool stuff like fake tombstones and talking portraits from the Halloween aisle at Target), with none of the pressures of Christmas or Valentine’s Day. To celebrate, I’m going to do Spooky Posts each Tuesday this month, starting today with a few of the Most Haunted Places in England.

1) Red Lion Pub, Avebury: The Red Lion Pub (“the most haunted pub in England”) sits in the middle of the famous stone circle at Avebury, which dates from between 4000 and 2400 BC (the stone circle, not the pub…). The building itself dates to the early 1600s, and was a farmhouse until it became a coaching inn in 1802. There have been reports of at least 5 different ghosts and a variety of paranormal activity on the premises (which may or may not be due to all the ale and cider being served). The most famous ghost is “Florrie,” whose story is an old and predictable one–her husband was a soldier in the Civil War of the 17th century, who went off to fight and came back unexpectedly to find Florrie in flagrante with another man. He shot the man and stabbed his wife and threw her down a well (which is now a glassed-over table in the bar area). Florrie has been seen emerging from and disappearing into the well (which must be disconcerting when trying to have a peaceful drink with one’s date). She also throws salt and pepper mills across the bar, hangs around in the ladies’ room, and is particularly irked by men with beards.

There have also been sightings of two ghostly children, a phantom horse-drawn carriage, rooms that are extremely cold even in summer, and things vanishing only to appear in plain sight days later. It’s said guests often check out in the middle of the night and run away…

2) 50 Berkeley Square, London: This townhouse is said to be the most haunted spot in London (debatable, I think…). It was built in 1740, and from 1770 to 1827 was the home of Prime Minister George Canning, though it was after his time that the supernatural trouble started. After Canning a Miss Curzon lived there, until she died at the age of 90, and the house was taken over by a Mr. Myers–which is when stuff hit the fan at Number 50. Myers it seems was something of a male Miss Haversham, who went crazy when his fiancee (who the house was meant for) jilted him. He lived in a tiny room at the top of the house, all alone, and only came out at night to wander the house with his candle. There were also tales of an earlier inhabitant who locked his insane brother up in the attic. After Myers died it was hard to find a tenant for the house. Baron Lyttelton wrote in 1872: “It is quite true there is a house in Berkeley Square said to be haunted, and long unoccupied on that account. There are strange stories about it, into which this deponent cannot enter.”

Charles Harper in Haunted Houses (1907) was more specific: “It seems that a Something or Other, very terrible indeed, haunts or did haunt a particular room. This Raw Head and Bloody Bones, or whatever it is has been sufficiently awful, to have caused the death…of at least two fool-hardy persons who have dared to sleep in that chamber.” There are tales of a maidservant, a nobleman who slept in the room on a dare, and two sailors looking for an empty house to sleep in, all dying of fright at the sight of the Raw Head and Bloody Bones. (The one sailor who survived described an oozing, hideous, foul-smelling mass that filled the room). Since 1938 it has been the home of the antiquarian booksellers Maggs Brothers, with no reports of disturbances.

3) Borley Rectory: Borley Rectory was built in 1862 by Henry Bull, rector of Borley Church, on the site of a demolished Georgian house, and eventually enlarged to house the family’s 14 children. A new-ish, stolid house like this seems like an unlikely candidate for “most haunted place in England,” but it is on property that has been there since early Medieval times. The church dates from the 12th century, and its near the ruins of Borley Hall, once the home of the Waldegrave family. There were legends in the Victorian era of a nearby monastery where a monk and a nun were caught in an affair and horribly murdered (but this was debunked as having no historical basis in 1938; in fact, it probably came from a horrid novel).

Supernatural events began happening around the turn of the 20th century, when 4 of the rector’s daughters reported seeing the ghost of a nun hovering near the house, which disappeared as they approached it. The church organist declares that the Bull family “were very convinced they had seen an apparition on several occasions.” There were reports of phantom carriages driven by headless horsemen as well. In 1927 Rev. Guy Smith and his family moved in, and Mrs. Smith discovered the skull of a young woman in a paper package in a cupboard (how it was never seen before, I don’t know. Perhaps they were even worse housekeepers than I am…). The Smiths talked to a reporter from the Daily Mirror about bells ringing (whose strings had been cut), lights appearing in windows, and footsteps. The moved out in 1929, followed by Rev. Foyster and his wife Marianne and daughter Adelaide. The ghost seemed to really like Marianne, writing messages to her on walls and papers, throwing stones and bottles, ringing bells, etc. They left in the late 1930s, and a seance was then held which contacted “Marie Lairre” a French nun who had left her order and married a member of the Waldegrave family, only to be killed on the sight of the rectory. A second spirit called himself “Sunex Amures” and declared he would burn down the house that night. He waited over a year though–the house burned down in March 1939 and a woman’s bones found in the destroyed cellar.

4) Chillingham Castle, Northumberland: So, we’ve looked at a pub, a townhouse, and a rectory, now we come to a castle! And one that looks like it ought to be haunted, too. It was the seat of the Grey family and their descendants the Earls of Tankerville from the time it was built in the 13th century until the 1980s. In medieval times it occupied a strategically important place along the border between England and Scotland, and was repeatedly attacked and besieged. In the 17thc century the need for a military stronghold in the area declined and the castle was remodeled into a stylish home, with residential wings, a banquet hall, and library, with the moat filled in. Landscape designers were brought in during the 18th century to make it more elegant. During WWII the castle was used as an army barracks and fell into disrepair after that, until the 1980s when it was bought and renovated by the Wakefields, who have opened the castle to the public. They seem to enjoy marketing it as “the most haunted castle in Britain.”

The most famous ghost is the “Radiant Boy” who would moan and cry in agony at midnight from the Pink Room. When the wails die away, a bright halo of light appears around the old canopied bed, and anyone sleeping there can see the figure of a boy dressed in blue, approaching them in a cloud of light. Another well-known specter is Lady Mary Berkeley, a wife of one of the Greys. She wanders the hallways looking for her husband, who scandalously eloped with her own sister! She also sometimes steps out of her own portrait to follow people around. The silver pantry is haunted by a “white figure” who locks people in. There are also phantom coaches and a ghostly funeral procession. The house has been featured on shows like Most Haunted and Ghost Hunters International.

There you have it! Four spooky places out of thousands in England. Have you ever visited any of them? Which one would you most like to see? What’s your favorite haunted house???

And next week–famous ghosts! If you have any suggestions, let me know…

Happy Halloween week, everyone! I can’t believe the holiday is getting so close, I need to go buy more candy and put the finishing touches on the decorations. The weather is finally cooperating here, getting cool and crisp, with leaves drifting to the ground and cloudy, spooky evenings, perfect for little trick or treaters…

I thought, since we’ve looked at various haunts and ghosts this month, we’d wrap up with a little info about the Halloween traditions we still do today. For one–costumes! This is my favorite part of the holiday, since I love to dress up. (This is my Alice in Wonderland costume, which I wore to the Ghouls Gone Wild Halloween parade last weekend! You can’t see it in this pic, but I have a great Alice headband I bought at the Disney Store). The practice of dressing up in costumes and going door to door asking for treats dates back to the Middle Ages (though not quite in the same form we use today!) and is part of the same tradition as Christmas wassailing. Then it was called “souling” and people would go from village house to village house on Hallowmas (November 1), asking for food in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls Day (November 2). This seems to have originated in Ireland and England, but there are details that show it was in practice as far south as Italy. In Two Gentlemen of Verona, Shakespeare has a line about “puling like a beggar at Hallowmas.” Wearing costumes can be traced back to an ancient Celtic tradition of wearing masks and disguises to fool the spirits on this day, when the veil between the two worlds was thinnest.

“Souling” also involved using candle lanterns carved from turnips to commemorate the dead. Large turnips were hollowed out and carved with scary faces, then placed in windows to keep spirits away. (Pumpkins started being used in the New World, where they were widely available and larger, thus easier to carve than turnips!). I don’t think Hello Kitty was a motif used back then, but I love this pic…

There always seem to be games at Halloween parties, like bobbing for apples. Traditional games seem to involve divination of some sort–a traditional Scottish practice said that to divine one’s future spouse you should peel an apple in one long strip, then toss it over your shoulder. It will form the spouse’s initials. (This seems pretty iffy to me!). Unmarried ladies were also told if they sat in a dark room and looked into a mirror on Halloween night, the face of their future husband would appear in the mirror. But if they were to die before they married, a skull would appear instead! (This seems to be a variation of the “Bloody Mary” game so beloved of slumber parties…). Thsi sort of thing seemed so popular in Victorian/Edwardian times that there was a wide range of postcards available for the holiday.

I have a couple of great books that tell more of the history and traditions of Halloween! If you’d like to read more, check out Nicholas Rogers’s Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night and David J. Skal’s Death Makes a Holiday: A Cultural History of Halloween.

If you happen to be in the UK for the holiday (as I wish I was!), Hampton Court is offering Ghost Tours, and the Tower is having rare after-dark Twilight Tours I will just be dressing up my dogs in their costumes and handing out candy to trick or treaters, but I guess I can pretend it’s the Tower….

What are your plans for the holiday??? (And don’t forget, I will be back here on Sunday, the 31st to talk about my November releases, a new “Undone” short story, To Court, Capture, and Conquer and “Snowbound and Seduced” in Regency Christmas Proposals. I’ll be giving away copies, too–a sort of Halloween treat…)

I can’t believe it’s almost the end of October! It’s flown past and soon it will be time to think about Thanksgiving and (gasp!) Christmas. But there is still plenty of time left for more spookiness….

Last Tuesday we looked at some famous ghosts of the UK (Anne Boleyn, Mary Queen of Scots, etc)–today we’ll look at some interesting apparitions, not necessarily ghosts (whatever we think a “ghost” is) but stuff that is pretty creepy anyway. In many parts of the world, there are lots of legends of spirits and “phantom lights” wandering roadways, hitchhiking or just generally floating around being creepy. (When I was a teenager, I remember tales of a certain spot outside town where ghost lights could be seen, and the spirit of a girl who was run over on a railroad track and pushes cars over the fatal spot. But I was never brave enough to go look for myself…) There are also ghost cars and phantom carriages pulled by ghoulish horses and headless coachmen. The streets can be dangerous places.

There are also lots of haunted World War II airfields in England, places where scores of young men flew off to their doom and now keep coming back to their airstrips. One legend combines the haunted airstrip with the roadway ghost. At the remains of RAF Metheringham, a young woman is spotted standing by the road just outside the gates between 9 and 10 at night. She wears a pale green coat and gray scarf with an RAF wings badge pinned to her collar. She stops passers-by and asks for help, telling them her boyfriend had a motorcycle accident and is injured nearby. She looks quite real–until she suddenly vanishes, and leaves a feeling of fear and panic behind, along with an unpleasant smell. (Legend has it she was killed when riding the motorcycle with her fiance).

Biggin Hill airfield is perhaps the most famous of the “haunted airfields”–phantom Spitfires fly overhead, heard but not seen, and sometimes airmen dressed in trench coats walk through the village before disappearing. Another similar spot is Bircham Newton, where doomed airmen are said to play squash in deserted buildings.

One famous manifestation of the “phantom carriage” is Lady Howard, a 17th century noblewoman who was widowed 4 times and also lost her young son. Strangely, in life she had a good reputation, despite a horrible father who was detested in the local village (and killed himself) and one abusive husband who (shockers!) divorced her, but her other 3 marriages were content enough and she was charitable and well-liked. Now in death she is cursed to ride each night in a carriage made of the bones of her 4 husbands and accompanied by a huge black dog with blood-red eyes and driven by a headless coachman. The ghostly-white figure of a lady can be glimpsed inside. It leaves behind a foul smell, and it’s said that if it stops at any door or for anyone on the road, that person will die.

Welcome to the second Spooky Tuesday of October! As I was looking around online and in library books for suitable Halloween-ish material for this month, there was way too much to choose from. Today we’ll look at some Ghosts of Famous People, next week some unusual apparitions….

The Tudors provide an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the spirit world. All of them seem to haunt one (or several) places, with lots of shrieking and carrying of heads and things like that. We’ll start by taking a look at some of them:

Hampton Court is rumored to be haunted by at least two of Henry VIII’s wives, Catherine Howard and Jane Seymour. Wife five, Catherine was charged with adultery and placed under house arrest at Hampton Court. The story says that one day she broke free from her guarded rooms and ran down the gallery to try and reach her husband to plead for her life while he was at prayer in the chapel. She was soon retrieved by the guards and dragged back to her rooms, kicking and screaming. Sometimes she can still be heard, and even seen, running and shrieking down the gallery. Ernest Law’s A Short History of Hampton Court (1897) says she runs “towards the door of the Royal Pew, and just as she reaches it, has been observed to hurry back with disordered garments and a ghastly look of despair, uttering at the same time the most unearthly shrieks, till she passes through the door at the end of the gallery.” In 1999 two women on separate tours on the same evening fainted at the same spot in the gallery and declared they suddenly felt frightened. There’s even a rumored video of a “ghost” (possibly Catherine), but I do wonder why the ghost seems able to close the doors so carefully…

Jane Seymour, wife three, is a much more placid ghost (as she was probably a more placid person in life!). She walks through the cobbled courtyard carrying a lighted candle and disappears into a wall.

Anne Boleyn is probably the most active of the Tudor wives, and the most dramatic! She is seen at the Tower, with numerous tales of sitings by guards and tourists. She walks near the White Tower, close to the place where the scaffold was erected, and in the chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula where she is buried (sometimes she even leads processions of the executed up the aisle). At Hever Castle she’s seen in the gardens, and on a bridge over the River Eden on Christmas Eve. It’s also said that every year on May 19, the anniversary of her death, a black coach drawn by four black horses races up to Blickling Hall with Anne sitting inside with her head on her lap. The coach stops and she gets out and disappears into the house….

Mary Queen of Scots is one of busiest ghosts in all of England. She seems to haunt every place she ever lived in or even passed by one day. She haunts Stirling Castle, where she’s a sort of pinkish shadow; Borthwick Castle, where she appears in disguise in boy’s clothes (a disguise she used to escape her captors there); Loch Leven Castle; Hermitage Castle in the Borders (she never stayed there, but Bothwell did once); Craignethan Castle; Holyroodhouse (where the blood stain of Rizzio still can’t be washed away…); Bolton Castle; Turret Castle; and the Talbot Hotel in Oundle, which houses the staircase from the demolished Fotheringhay Castle, which she walked down to her execution. It makes me tired just thinking about how much energy all this haunting must take! (But her birthplace at Linlithgow Castle is only haunted by her mother, Marie of Guise)

Castle Rising was built in the 12th century, and for a time (1330-1358) was the home/prison of Queen Isabella, “the She-Wolf” of France. Isabella was the wife of Edward II, and it was said she and her lover Roger Mortimer had the king murdered, and her son then imprisoned her at Castle Rising. It wasn’t quite as dour as that–she lived in her accustomed royal luxury with a full household, but it was said she descended into dementia as she aged and spent her last troubled years locked in the upper story rooms. She died in August 1358, and then came back to the castle. Visitors have reported hearing her shrieking and laughing on the top floor, and residents in the nearby village say they can hear her screams and laughter at night as well.

Moving ahead to the Regency, George IV is said to be haunting his Pavilion in Brighton, the place he loved so much he just couldn’t leave it. In Richard Jones’s Haunted Castles of Britain and Ireland, “It is said that his ghost can still be seen walking the underground passages that link the Pavilion to the Dome. This building at the time was the Royal stables and is now used as a concert and exhibition center. He has also been seen in the tunnel linking the old cellars to the nearby pub the Druid’s Head…” (I think Diane and I actually ate at the Druid’s Head on the Splendors of the Regency tour, at those tables outside with some other friends! If I’d known Prinny was hanging around I would have shared my fish and chips with him)

Ham House in Richmond is rumored to be haunted by Elizabeth, the Duchess of Lauderdale, who taps her cane along the floors. It’s also strangely haunted by one of Charles II’s spaniels…

Speaking of Charles II, Nell Gywn is said to haunt Salisbury Hall and also the Gargoyle Club on Dean Street, where her house once stood (her presence is signaled by a strong scent of gardenias and a glimpse of a gray, shadowy figure)

At Byron’s family home of Newstead Abbey, there’s said to be another canine spirit, that of the poet’s Newfoundland Boatswain, who is buried on the estate under an elaborate monument. This is the verse on his obelisk: “NEAR this spot/Are deposited the Remains/of one/Who possessed Beauty/Without Vanity/Strength without Insolence/Courage without Ferocity/And all the Virtues of Man/Without his Vices/This Praise, which could be unmeaning flattery/If inscribed over Human Ashes/Is but a just tribute to the Memory of/”Boatswain” a Dog/Who was born at Newfoundland/May 1803/And died at Newstead Abbey/Nov. 18 1808″

Hall Place, whose earliest sections date to the 14th century, is haunted by the Black Prince (1330-1376), who is said to have courted his wife Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent, there and appears in his dark armor as a harbinger of bad fortune. In the Evening Post of November 29, 1924, an article appeared that declared “Black Prince’s Ghost Said to Have Warned Britain”. Lady Limerick says in this article, “The last time I saw the ghost was on a Sunday evening. The figure was standing by the fireplace in the morning room, and when I went into the room with a friend it glided away through the window into the garden…Sometimes there have been faint sounds of music.”

One weird little story I came across says that in the 1830s, when Wellington was Prime Minister and quite unpopular for his opposition to the Reform Bill, the ghost of Cromwell appeared to him at Apsley House and warned him to let the Bill through Parliament. The Bill passed in 1832. Why Cromwell thought to bother himself with it I don’t know.

These are a lot of ghosts, but they are just the tip of the spirit iceberg! Now it’s your turn. If you could meet the ghost of anyone at all, and actually have a coherent (non-scary) conversation with them, who would you choose? What would you ask them? And which of these ghosts would make the best Halloween costume???