Title: Haunting of LaBelle: Back to Hell
Author: J. Thayer McKinney
ISBN: 13:9780692220115
Purchasing link:
Author bio:
J. Thayer McKinney lives with her husband in a log home in the mountains of easternWest Virginia. She is a wife, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother.
She is the owner of Cedar Loft Productions, a small publishing company along with being a writer and a paranormal researcher.
She loosely bases some of her fiction books on her paranormal research. So far, she has not encountered many malevolent spirits but before she does research she grounds herself for protection. “You can never be too careful with the unknown!” She says. She is an ordained minister and holds a PhD in Metaphysical Parapsychology. She has also earned a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and an Associate’s degree in Electronics.
Prior to retiring from the corporate world, she had a very successful and rewarding technical career. She managed the IT department at a healthcare facility and prior to that position she was an industrial controls technician and a telecommunications technician for a power company. When she isn’t writing or working at her publishing company, she enjoys traveling, ghost hunting or sitting on the front porch listening to the sounds of nature.
Excerpt:
Haunting of LaBelle: Back to Hell
By J. Thayer McKinney
Debra Baxter was sitting at her desk at Baxter Properties. She had a concerned look
on her face as she spoke with her client. Cory Jenkins was sitting in the chair across from herand was visibly upset. His property, LaBelle Mansion
Debra had
owned Baxter Properties for ten years
and was accustomed to dealing with unhappy clients but Cory was a high priority and she worried about losing him as a client. A sale of this
property would bring in quite a
hefty commission for the company and the listingagent.
“Are you
promoting my property or just sitting on
it?” he demanded.
“We’ve been
advertising it in the property books,
online and in the newspapers from dayone,” Debra assured him. “There’s an open house there this weekend and we’ve aggressively advertised that. It
seems no one is interested and
I’m not sure why. The
price is certainly competitive if
not low for the type of property.”
“My wife is
adamant about selling and the sooner the better. She wants shed of this
property no matter what. It’s been five years now and we need to either sell it or give itaway!”
He remembered back to that day when he found his mother-in-law in the carriage house. Things hadn’t been the same since and he was sure it was because of some-
thing that existed on the property.
Five years
ago, his mother-in-law, JoAnne was a happy go-lucky artist who didn’t actnear her seventy years. JoAnne came to visit Cory and his wife, Jill, for a few weeks and decided to set up a
small art studio in the carriage
house while she was there. She spent hours painting getting ready for a show at the Castle Art Gallery in northern Virginia
One
afternoon, Cory and Jill had business in town
so JoAnne took the opportunity to paint without interruptions. She took a pitcher of iced tea and some cookies out to thecarriage house, turned on her favorite music and
proceeded to paint. Sometime in thelate afternoon, she thought she heard muffled laughter so she went to the door thinking Jill and Cory had
returned and were stopping by to
check on her. When she
looked out, she didn’t see any-
thing except what appeared to be shadows swirling around. My goodness, my eyes are playing tricks on
me, maybe I should stop for a while and have some tea, she thought
with a smile. She poured a glass of tea and settled into her chair to admire the work she had done so far.
As she sat
sipping her tea, the laughter grew louder and she saw the shadows fly though the wall. They swirled around the room, slowly at first and then
faster and faster as they
turned darker and darker. The laughter was soon almost unbearably loud and JoAnne
dropped her glass of tea and put her hands to her ears to try to stop the noise. To her surprise, she was unable to get up from the chair. Frantically
she looked around the room but all she could
see were the shadows swirling. Soon the shadows stopped swirling and seemed to be standing beside her canvas. She couldn’t make out features, just dark images.She looked at her canvas and where her painting should have been were three grotesque faces that seemed to
be in agony. One appeared to have no hair and the other two seemed to have long dark hair and beards. One of the faces with a beard
had a triangle shaped scar on its cheek. Soon the look of agony on the faces was replaced by evil grins and the
eyes seemed to penetrate into JoAnne’s brain. She closed her eyes tightly to blot out the
horrifying images.
Once again
the shadows started swirling around
the room and the laughter began again, getting louder and louder. JoAnne tried to scream but no sound would come from her throat. She just sat
there with her hands over her
ears and her eyes clamped tightly shut.She sat for what seemed like hours and finally she seemed to pass out.
When she came to, her hands were still over her ears but
the shadows and the laughter were gone. She looked
out the small window and saw that it was dark outside. The
room was dark with only the light of the moon to illuminate it. She saw car lights
coming up the drive but was unable
to move. The car pulled up to the carriage house and she heard
the doors close as both Cory and Jill got out. Please
come help me, she whispered but the words wouldn’t come out. She felt so helpless and was so frightened.
