One of my favorite authors has a new release today from Samhain Publishing - Saving Grace Devine. She's here today to tell us about her lovely new book, so let's welcome up-and-coming writer: Catherine Cavendish who's going to tell us the spooky story that inspired Saving Grace Devine (and it IS spooky, just as I like it).
The Lady
of Lake Crescent
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In my new novel, Saving Grace Devine, a young girl is drowned, but her spirit returns to haunt the
lakeside where she met her untimely end. She seeks help from the living, to
help her cross over to the afterlife.
From my research, it would appear that my fictional
Grace is not alone. Many people have reported seeing ghosts of drowned girls
who are all apparently earthbound - searching for something, or someone. In
need of help from the living to help them join the world of spirit.
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Lake Crescent is an attractive resort in the
Olympic National Park in the far northwest of Washington State. The account
which follows concerns not an innocent young girl, but a mature woman of not
especially tender disposition. Hallie Illingworth was a 36 year old hard
drinking waitress in the local bar cum brothel, then called the Singer Tavern.
She was attractive and married for the third time, but her current husband was
a womanising, cruel and violent thug, who thought nothing of hitting his wife
in full view of everyone in the bar. Not that Hallie didn’t retaliate. She was
quite capable of throwing a few punches herself at anyone who upset her.
But however unsympathetic her personality
might be, she didn’t deserve what happened to her. One cold December night, she
disappeared. Her body wasn’t discovered until four years later by which time, a
curious chemical process had occurred. The waters of Lake Crescent are so high
in alkali that a process of saponification had taken place, converting the fats
in her body to a kind of soap. The water was so cold that the body had been
refrigerated in its icy depths.
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When a pair of fishermen spotted a
recognisably female body bobbing up and down on the surface, they dragged her
to the shore only to discover, to their horror, that her flesh just slipped off
her bones like soap. We can only imagine their reaction!
She had to be identified by a distinctive
upper dental plate which a dentist recognised. He had made it for her some
years before.
Hallie had been savagely beaten and bound with
rope, affixed with weights. There was little doubt as to the identity of her
murderer. Her husband, Monty, had gone to live in Long Beach California with a
woman with whom he’d been conducting an affair before Hallie died. He was
tried, convicted and imprisoned. He served nine years and was paroled in 1951.
He died in 1976 in California.
Had justice been done? Well, it appears it
certainly hadn’t been done enough for poor Hallie.
She is still said to haunt the lodge and
surrounding areas, clattering up and down the stairs, banging doors in the dead
of night. She is said to cause lights to flicker and music volume to go up and
down apparently by itself. Some people have claimed to see her - pale,
translucent and glowing faintly as she drifts along the shore, and over the
water.
Here’s
a flavour of Saving Grace Devine:
Can the living help the dead...and at what
cost?
When Alex
Fletcher finds a painting of a drowned girl, she’s unnerved. When the girl in
the painting opens her eyes, she is terrified. And when the girl appears to her
as an apparition and begs her for help, Alex can’t refuse.
But as
she digs further into Grace’s past, she is embroiled in supernatural forces she
cannot control, and a timeslip back to 1912 brings her face to face with the
man who killed Grace and the demonic spirit of his long-dead mother. With such
nightmarish forces stacked against her, Alex’s options are few. Somehow she
must save Grace, but to do so, she must pay an unimaginable price.
You
can find Saving Grace Devine in all
usual ebook formats here:
and in paperback here:
About the
author:
Catherine Cavendish is joint winner of the Samhain Gothic Horror
Anthology competition 2013. Her winning novella – Linden Manor – is now
available in all digital formats and the print anthology will be published in
October. She is the author of a number of paranormal horror and Gothic horror
novellas and short stories. Her novel, Saving
Grace Devine, has just been published by Samhain Publishing.
She
lives with a long suffering husband in North Wales. Her home is in a building
dating back to the mid-18th century which is haunted by a friendly
ghost, who announces her presence by footsteps, switching lights on and strange
phenomena involving the washing machine and the TV.
When
not slaving over a hot computer, Cat enjoys wandering around Neolithic stone
circles and visiting old haunted houses.
You
can connect with Cat here:
www.catherinecavendish.comhttps://www.facebook.com/CatherineCavendishWriter?ref=hl
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4961171.Catherine_Cavendish
http://twitter.com/#!/cat_cavendish
