Silent and still
sits the house on a hill
Between fields soon to be  tattered and torn..
and one more time
Her picture is mine
( she weatherd  quite  well throurgh Ike's storm)..
They say that it's haunted
and people have taunted
her frame as her time lingers still..
but i stayed far away
on the road down Her way
as she stood all lonesone and still...
Time hold holds the key
to Her mystery
and all the secrets she holds in her walls
but  no one is talking
(Close to her "No Walking")
Sad will be the day that she falls...

Sun sets on a dream,
a chance,
an opportunity.

Calmed by knowing
that things
will work themselves out
if we surrender
to the moment.

Still the lament
for closing moments
is breath-taking
in its finality.

In the last
few seconds of light
perhaps a prayer
or a meditation
or a fleeting memory,
as if to celebrate what was
before it is no longer.

Succumbing to the curtain
of night,
we sigh,
and take that first step
back
the way we came.

I don't know where
we thought we were going.
What kind of delusions must
we have suffered from to believe
in the possibilities that were
presented while drunk with love?

That's history, though, isn't it?

Much of what has ever happened
started because someone was
drunk on the elixir of love.

It's what happens when
to the veneer of possibility
when we start to sober up
and all that we saw was
really nothing more
than our imagination,
and our inadequacies
being reflected on
another and then shown
back to us.

What remains
in the stark light
of the morning after
presents us with a choice.

Taken from this place.

The new came in that
changed a perspective
of respect and trust.

Should've known better,
but again caught
trusting,
when I shouldn't have been
speaking at all.

The curse of too many words.

The curse of too much casual
discussion
amongst non-friends.

Nevertheless, the problem
is mine.
The loss is mine,
and that's what keeps me
thinking about it.

Accountability
and the inability
to deny the
facts; because no matter
what I have only myself
to blame.

Also not many pictures from the asylum made final cut as all windows were boarded up making for focusing pictures hard as it obviously wasn't as bright in the rooms as it appears in the pictures even with the help of those led light's I had in my camera bag of tricks.  

The pictures are seemingly out of order as the night's event's go but the first part of the gallery is images slightly tweaked in lightroom, the second half is not.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoy my photographic night.

i'm not having kids. my genes won't spread. thank god. can i get a thanks or maybe some money :) for not screwing up the gene pool.

i kid in a way. but i'm serious in a "i never want someone to go through what i have or had." i don't judge other people who choose to procreate. i'm pretty sure we need all types in the world. often at work i wonder where the creative, geeky people are. they manage to find careers that suited them. i don't have any talent.

i'm just floating.

i cried at work on thurs and friday. i never cry out loud - even when alone. my cry is completely silent. so to see me crying, you have to look at my face. i consider that an invasion of privacy. god dammit can a person have a private cry? stop looking at me! on friday i was listening to my mp3 player. when john mayer's "in repair" came on, it made want to cry more...i probably did. silently of course.

i was suddenly abandoned. i hate that. being abandoned is bad enough but SUDDENLY?  where's the empathy?

we need all types in the world. even the "social, how can you be that way" type :/

i know they thought i was being rude at the meeting. looking up when there is someone right across from me is daunting. i hate that oval meeting type. yeah, i didn't look up. keep judging, hating, & whatever.

this florida LSU game is making me nervous. i don't like most of the florida schools but for some reason i find the miami hurricanes -horrible name- tolerble. of all teams. heh.

i could type about nothing forever but i wanna get back to reading my book and watching this football game.

Art St. Louis XXIV opens Nov. 3rd and closes December 30th, 2008.  The opening reception is November 15th from 7PM until 9PM, with a pre-reception talk with the juror Mark Masuoka at 6PM.

Let me know if you will make it to the opening!

Its been an immensely fascinating year for me to deeply observe the last fragments of my dying neighborhood.   I've watched its last residents move on, and then come back to visit in tears.  I watched as abandoned homes were torched to blackened holes.   I've befriended the demolition crews who took my own home and learned of the human side of some of the Lambert officials.  I've stopped and talked to former residents who scavenge the plots of their beloved homeland.  I've been chased out by fast cars of wicked people up to no good.  I've been followed around by yellow Lambert trucks who think I am up to no good.   I've been waved at and begged to for directions on how to get out of this scary, desolate place they accidentially wandered into.  I've helped a carload of teenagers try and fix a tire in the night.  I've yelled at a man digging up a beautiful maple tree in the backyard of one of my favorite homes.   I've driven through in a hurry 'just to see.'   I've sat for hours on the grassy hillsides listening to the eerie silence in the minutes between the hallowed sounds of jets turbines close overhead.    After all this, I am still inexplicibly drawn to the area.

I've also been surprised and humbled by the large numbers of visitors to this modest site.  At first, I figured this would be just a place to keep notes about my time in Carrollton's last years.  Instead it has become a calling to the residents to learn whats new and whats left in Carrollton.  Its inspired me to not just keep a blog but to write a book about this particular place and the effects of eminent domain on families and communities in general.   I have learned so much about the community already and I have so much more to learn about the fascinating and humble history of the area.  I cannot thank enough all the people who have read this site, written to me, commented, and contributed their own stories and images of life growing up in this unique town.

Access to the majority of the neighborhood will soon be cut off.    The gates, the band-aid on this gushing wound, are going up on more streets than I had predicted.   In the past couple weeks, I found it amusing how I could drive around and lazily end up on the backside of one of their two-screw aluminum traps.  We joked about the stupidity of the gate's placements.  For example, they put a gate on Turon Court-  A street that was only 1/16th of a mile at most, both ends intersecting into Celburne.  It had maybe 5 houses on the whole street, yet they gated both ends of this tiny loop.  In the coming days, however, the only streets that will remain open are Woodford Way, part of Celburne, Brampton, and Hemet for access to O'Connor Park.   My own street of Brumley now has poles, ready for its set of gates.

They are going to leave the remaining houses to rot away behind the gates.   Hide it from the public and it all will go away.   The argument could be made that it is Lambert's land and if they choose to close off the streets, it is their business.  In fact, I truly do understand and support that notion.  I would completely be ready for the street closures if Lambert were to do one thing... finish this and demolish all the remaining homes first.   Behind the gates, some of them could sit for years without notice.   What a sad and demoralizing fate for the owners of those homes who already went through so much to lose them in the first place.   Once again, Lambert fails to do the respectful and honorable thing for the residents they threw out.   Just like the new runway itself, Lambert's gates on the streets of Carrollton are a short-sighted plan guaranteed to create more problems in the end.

My postings to this site will probably be more erradic given that access will be extremely limited and the grinding halt of any other activity in the area.  It doesn't feel like there is a conclusion to this story yet, not at least while there are still houses standing.  We only know snippets of the possible fate of Carrollton as a Chinese air-shipping yard, but even that can change given this fretful economy.

Meanwhile, I will continue to organize the information I have gathered, and wait and see what will happen. One last thing I've been sitting on for a while.  There is one last landowner in Carrollton, a family friend of ours.   When he bought property in Carrollton for Fischer & Frichtel to build, he neglected to build on one strip of land he purchased.  That particular bit of land has its own address separate from his adjacent home address, which was destroyed last winter.   Evidentially, Lambert was unaware of this land deed, and he did not go out of his way to make mention of it until demo crews attempted to remove some of his property.  As far as I know he still has the title to this bit.  I think gating off his street might be a tad bit illegal since he technically still owns his land.   Beautiful indeed.

It must be said that the "Tre Cancelle Doggies" were a genuine "hit" with our younger guests,

especially "Barney Dog" who always somehow manages to wheedle his way into everyone's affections !!! 

Here are some of the doggies' very special new friends ..................

[caption id="attachment_300" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Michael and Elizabeth"][/caption]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

SPCA investigators are preparing a report for Crown counsel proposing charges against the owners of an ill, malnourished dog abandoned beside the Old Island Highway in September.

Numerous tips about the identity of the owners came in to the SPCA after news stories appeared about the large dog with acute ear, face and anal infections, said animal protection officer Erika Paul.

"We followed up with the information and are satisfied we have Rusty's people identified," she said.

Charges could be pursued under provincial legislation or the Criminal Code of Canada, she said.

The owners, who live in Langford, are already known to the SPCA, Paul said.

The dog, named Rusty by the SPCA, is recovering from extensive eardrum and ear canal surgery at Elk Lake Veterinary Hospital and, after being released from the clinic, will live in a temporary foster home until he is adopted, Paul said.

Initially, the dog's hair was so matted it was thought he was an elderly German shepherd cross, but, as he regained his health, he was identified as an eight-year-old retriever cross.

I just made up a few quick banners to promote my blog.

Feel free to snag the codes to put them on your site, in your journal, on your myspace, wherever!

let me know if you post them and I'll link back!

^_^

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Here are some of the drawings and paintings I submitted.  My concentration should come as no surprise to anyone reading this blog.

Harold's Furniture, Lebanon, PA. Notice that the neon reads, "Furniture"

Abandoned Silk Mill, Columbia, PA.

Abandoned Travel Trailer, Oatman, AZ

Music Store, Kingman, AZ

Nash, Cool Springs, AZ

Gas pump detail (work in progress) Cool Springs, AZ

Tiki

Owl Diner - Lowell, MA

Palace Diner - Maine

Diner - Winslow, AZ

Diner - Winslow, AZ

Motel- Holbrook, AZ - Painting won 2nd place at a Johns Hopkins art competition.

An abandoned,  rotting rickshaw, Surat, Gujarat, India.

DUBLIN, October 6 (Compass Direct News) – Militant Islamists in the southern island of Mindanao have stepped up their attacks on majority-Christian villages following the failure of a peace agreement that would have enlarged an existing Muslim autonomous region there.

With Muslim commanders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in the southern Philippines yesterday saying ongoing support from the international community was necessary to prevent a full-scale war breaking out in Mindanao, both Muslim and Christian residents in the disputed territories were fearful of what the future might hold.

“The problem is that many people living in these areas don’t want to be part of a Muslim autonomous region,” a source in Mindanao who preferred to remain anonymous told Compass.

“The closer you get to these zones, the more nervous people are,” he said. “The town of Kolambugan, where most of the fighting took place in mid-August, became a virtual ghost town for a while. It had a population of 25,000. But people are slowly returning to their homes.”

A Christian family from the area said many people were afraid to sleep at night because they kept hearing reports that they would be attacked at midnight.

“When MILF forces attack Christian villages, Muslim neighbors are afraid that Christians will retaliate against them, even though they have nothing to do with the violence,” the source added. “This has happened in the past.”

He also explained that some moderate Muslims are drawn to support the MILF because the rebels claim the Christians have stolen their ancestral homelands. Communities in Mindanao often struggle with extreme poverty.

“If MILF is successful in gaining control over these lands, the people assume that their economic situation will improve,” he said. “So although they want the fighting to stop, they sympathize with the MILF.”

While the conflict is primarily political, religion plays a significant role. As a member of the Moro Youth League stated in an Aug. 5 national television interview in the Philippines, “As a Muslim, in order to live in a righteous way, you need to be living under sharia [Islamic] law and with an Islamic government. We believe we have the right to fight for this.”

Other Youth League members on the program agreed that sharia was a primary objective of autonomy, and that Islam was the only “real path of doing anything in this world.”

Violence Erupts

Some 2,000 MILF supporters yesterday held a protest march in Marawi city, Lanao del Sur, appealing to the United Nations and the Organization of the Islamic Conference to compel the Philippine government to revive the aborted peace agreement that would have enlarged the existing Muslim autonomous region in the south.

Breakaway MILF commanders on Aug. 18 attacked several majority-Christian villages after the Supreme Court prevented the Aug. 5 signing of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD). The agreement potentially would have given the MILF power to establish an Islamic state governed by sharia law.

Christian leaders in Mindanao appealed to the Supreme Court when they realized that if they voted against inclusion in the proposed Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE), their majority-Christian villages would become small islands in the midst of MILF-administered territory. As a result, they feared, they would be forced to move elsewhere.

Incensed by the 11th-hour stalling of the agreement, three MILF commanders on their own initiative led attacks against towns in North Cotabato and Lanao del Norte provinces on Aug. 18, burning homes, seizing livestock and killing at least 37 people. Another 44,000 residents immediately fled the area.

When some Christian residents armed themselves in defense, Secretary of Interior Ronaldo Puno warned that anyone carrying weapons would be disarmed.

The MILF has only 11,000 active fighting men, according to local estimates. But by Aug. 20, the National Disaster Coordinating Council had reported a total of 159,000 people displaced by the rebel attacks.

The Philippine army quickly retaliated, sweeping villages in an attempt to seize the rebel commanders.

After two weeks of violent clashes, the Philippine government officially abandoned the MOA-AD. Spokeswoman Lorelei Fajardo said President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo would seek a new agreement based on consultation with legislators and local politicians rather than negotiations with the MILF.

Furthermore, the government would concentrate on the “disarmament, demobilization and rehabilitation” of MILF cadres, Fajardo said.

In response, MILF leaders rejected any renegotiation of the peace deal with Arroyo’s administration.

Overcoming Prejudice

An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on Aug. 7 stated that the MOA-AD would only reinforce prejudices between Christian and Muslim communities.

Under the agreement, WSJ claimed, the government would further divide Mindanao into Muslim and Christian enclaves, increasing the likelihood of territorial disputes. Separating Muslims from the rest of Philippine society, it stated, would encourage a vision already held by MILF to help create a pan-Islamic state covering several countries in the region, including Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore.

Finally, the WSJ said, less Philippine control of Mindanao would “invite even more terrorist activity in an area that already has strong ties to al Qaeda.”

While there are proven terrorist leanings in groups such as the MILF and the Abu Sayyaf, not all area Muslims approve of or engage in such activities.

Camilo Montesa, a key figure in peace negotiations, in his blog on Aug. 30 described an encounter with a young man who believed that Muslim residents would readily seize property from Christians once the BJE were formed.

Others told Montesa that, “Muslims were scouting and marking the big houses of Christians in Cotabato and staking a claim over them in anticipation of the signing of the peace agreement.”

“The hearts and minds of the people are the battlefields, and not some hill or base camp,” Montesa concluded. “There is a limit to what arms and war can produce ... It is unfortunate that we are so divided as a people at this point in our national life.”

Reclaiming ‘Ancestral Domains’

As Islamic identity strengthened in the Middle East after World War II – and as many Philippine Muslims traveled to study in Middle Eastern countries – certain sectors of the Bangsamoro population became committed to reclaiming “ancestral domains.”

Their claims dated back to the rule of the Sultanate of Sulu, which existed prior to Spanish colonial rule in the 1500s, and the establishment of the Commonwealth of the Philippines in 1935. When the last sultan died in 1936, the fledgling Philippine government refused to recognize his heir, effectively eradicating the traditional Bangsamoro power base.

When the Philippines became a republic in 1946, its constitution allowed for the establishment of an autonomous region in Muslim Mindanao. Initially the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) fought alone for this autonomous territory; in 1977, however, MNLF member Hashim Salamat – who had studied in Saudi Arabia – and his followers seceded from the movement and founded the rival MILF.

The Philippine government signed an agreement with the MNLF in January 1987, and territories were added to the resulting Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) through a series of plebiscites or referendums in 1989, 2001, 2002 and 2006.

MILF commanders later laid claim to a further 712 villages outside the ARMM.

Negotiations between the government and the MILF began in earnest in June 2001. Both parties were to formally sign the resulting MOA-AD on Aug. 5, a deal which could have led to the creation of the separate Bangsamoro Juridical Entity, or fully-functioning state, replacing the ARMM by 2010.

When details of the agreement were leaked to the press, however, Christian politicians in regions of Mindanao affected by the agreement appealed to the Supreme Court, which in turn issued a temporary restraining order on the signing of the agreement on Aug. 4.

Report from Compass Direct News

It would have been fantastic to see how well the guys played on the away turf but looks like we'll have to wait for the real thing. No casual practice match to help the team out this time. This also means that I have to wait for Thursday for my live scoreboard fix. I will miss most of the game because of Firebreed Youth (Youth Ministry at Dunedin Elim Church that I am a leader in) but maybe I'll be able to get txt updates like I did last season.

So the next (and first) Black Caps game is on 9th October at about 4pm NZT (09:00 local, 03:00 GMT). It's an ODI against Bangladesh.
The first test is 17th-21st October at about 4.30pm NZT (09:30 local, 03:30 GMT).

Note: If you were looking for information and did not find it in this post or have a question, please leave me a comment and I'll get back to you.

I was built on the sand. Crudely created by pink children in brightly coloured suits, fat fingers upturning buckets. Chubby legs toddling up the beach, bringing water from the salty wash to fill the protective moat they laboriously scraped to surround me. Turrets decorated with coastal plunder; crisp, reeking seaweed, broken shells and discarded lollipop sticks.

Majestic, I could be viewed from the promenade. Easily the most attractive on the beach. Perfected over hours of sun creamed seaside fun. I rejoice in the attention, passers-by point and comment.

I wasn’t made to last. Here for one day only. I will melt away like whipped ice-cream, trickling down sodden cornets. Running rivulets to meet the sea.

As the sun drops lower in the sky, crystallised children are wet-wiped down and ferried home by their reddened mothers. Couples sidle along the shore back to ray-baked cars, swinging their sandals from lazy hands. Tanned and white blonde, an angry youth stubs his cigarette butt out in my tallest tower. Spurned and sullied I shrink and crumble back from the addition of a poisonous B&H chimney.

I find myself abandoned on the sun burnt sands; alone I face a stand-off with the sea. I have no foundations, nothing underneath to keep me stable. What chance do I have a fragile sandcastle against the incoming consuming tide? My battlements are crumbling, my moat becomes awash with my very self. Passive, I allow the encroaching sea to swallow me whole. Drawn under the water with head thrown back, dragged feet first down the shore.

Tomorrow there will be nothing left behind, no evidence I was ever there. The patch of sand where I once stood, with my broken shells pearlescent in the sun, raked clean and flat by receding tidal waves.

I’d like to think that I will feature in a wax crayon picture, scrawled by my creators when they return to school on Monday, entitled ‘my beautiful sandcastle’.

(click image to enlarge)

There's a totaled jeep parked on the corner of berry and and metropolitan, and judging from the note left on the driver side window, the neighbors are not too pleased. Although parked legally, the car looks as if it has not been moved in days and according to the locals, has become an eyesore.

Someone has thrown a tree branch in the backseat, the windsheild is smashed, and there are several notes attached to the car. The picture above is of a note that was adheared to the driver's side window. Click on the image for an entertaining read!

I'm not sure where this vigor comes from. All I know is that the first time I found a stretch of forgotten asphalt was the coolest thing I'd ever experienced. Here's a photo from that day, of a bridge over White Lick Creek on former US 40 west of Plainfield, Indiana. (Here it is on Google Maps.) A new bridge was built when the highway was straightened and widened to four lanes in about the 1930s. The old bridge was bypassed, and it is well hidden by trees and brush today. For 70 years, vehicles have zoomed by on four divided lanes of US 40 a hundred feet away while nature has slowly reclaimed this space.

It's also common for bridges to be removed when a road is abandoned. Here's a shot of abandoned State Road 37 between Indianapolis and Bloomington. About five miles of the road were rerouted to bypass a little town, and this short segment was cut off. (Here it is on Google Maps.) In this photo, I've climbed down the creek bank, tried not to get wet as I picked my way across the creek, and climbed up the other side to see where the road starts again. Notice the thick cement pad! Also notice the old couch sitting in the road ahead.

Sometimes, an abandoned road is plain to see. As you drive down US 40 in eastern Illinois, an old brick road runs alongside. It was US 40 until the 1950s. Illinois never bothered to tear it out! This photo is of a short segment not far west of the Indiana state line. (Here it is on Live Search Maps.)

I've learned a couple things while out on the abandoned pavement. First, it's a good idea to explore with a friend. Many abandoned roadways are well hidden from view and make a great place for people to do things they don't want the world, including you, to see. There's greater safety in numbers. Second, look for "Private Property" and "No Trespassing" signs, and heed them. I didn't notice one once, and got to experience being chased away by the police. Better a cop than an angry dog, I suppose, but either way I'm too old for that kind of excitement.

I've felt kind of lonely in my abandoned-road bliss. Hoping to find some kindred souls, I recently fired up Flickr and typed "abandoned road" in the Search box. To my delight, images by the hundreds of forgotten asphalt, cement, brick, and dirt filled my monitor. So I created a group and invited them all to join. Well, all those who have geotagged their photos, anyway, because someday I may wish to visit all those roads in person, and I'll need to know exactly where they are! If your twig is bent in this direction, too, I invite you to upload and geotag your abandoned-road photos and join us at the Flickr Abandoned Roads group!

However, as my TBR pile grows, I'm coming to the conclusion that I simply shouldn't waste my time on books that I don't enjoy. If I do, I'll never get around to trying Georgette Heyer, Barbara Pym, or Penelope Fitzgerald; I'll never finish working my way through Thomas Hardy's body of work (and then going back through them all again). I'll never have time to reread my beloved Austens, Tolkiens, Sayers, or (lest you think I'm a dreadful snob) my Gunslinger books by Stephen King.

So, even though The Memory Keeper's Daughter is proving to be a quick read (I read the first fourth of the book in a little over a hour), I'm just not going to spend any more time on it. Now, I will say that it's not a terrible book---it's not nearly as annoying as Outlander. If I were reading it for book club, I would finish it and wouldn't be totally cranky about it. But, still, it's not for me.

So why don't I like it? Well, it's not the disturbing storyline. (It's 1964. A doctor and his wife have twin children. The daughter is born with Down syndrome, so the father has her sent away and tells his wife she died. The nurse who was at the delivery raises the child in secret.) The dark premise is the best thing about the book. I would have been better off reading the back cover and imagining what Ruth Rendell would have done with it. (And believe you me, she could have worked some serious mojo on this premise.)

The trouble is, Kim Edwards takes this dark premise and bathes it in annoying metaphors and imagery, as in this description of the moments after delivery:

The doctor was then intent on delivering the placentas, which came out beautifully, dark and thick, each the size of a small plate. Fraternal twins, male and female, one visibly perfect and the other marked by an extra chromosome in every cell of her body. What were the odds of that? His son lay in the carrier, his hands waving now and then, fluid and random with the quick, water motions of the womb.

Okay, I'm not easily grossed out, but the word placenta and plate do not belong in the same sentence, ever.

And then there's the nurse: "Caroline Gill was thirty-one, and she had been waiting a long time for her real life to begin." Okay, lady, you're thirty-one---you're living your real life. But apparently she needs a baby for real life to begin. Also, a truck driver who appears out of nowhere---twice. Whatever. And Edwards feels compelled to explain everyone's feelings because these people are so inscrutable. Only they're not.

Clearly, I am not the intended audience for this book. This kind of thing just doesn't appeal to me. But lots of other people have loved this book, and I'm glad that it will be going off to a better home with amandasue, who won my copy in my "What Should I Read in October?" giveaway. Amandasue, I really hope you enjoy it more than I did. But, hey, there's one more off my bookshelf, and I've crossed a hurdle in my bookish life! So hooray!

It seemed only fitting to start off our reviews this month with a frightening ghost story.  Ghosts have always intrigued me from the days of checking out horror anthologies from the library again and again every Friday on library day in grade school.  I spent one summer in junior high attempting to read every word Stephen King had ever written.  Anne Rice, Poppy Z. Brite, and Rick Reed were some of my favorite horror authors in college.  Also while in college, I took pride in living in a house believed to be haunted.

Now, living in St. Louis, the infamous Lemp Mansion has become a favorite visiting place of mine, and I have been known to visit a cemetary or two with camera in hand.   I continue to seek thrills from authors like Troy Taylor and any other genious author exploring the supernatural.  I can now add Dana E. Donovan to my list of favorites.

Abandoned revolves around a character named Mike Riley.  Right from the start, Mike begins telling his story to the reader in a very passive voice, but Donovan does a great job of keeping the reader intrigued while they learn the back-story of Riley's life and why it is so important.  Here's an intense cliff hanger right on page one...

All right then, where do I start? Do I begin on that hot August day when I returned to the house in which I spent my summers as a child? Perhaps I should tell you about the first time I realized the house was haunted? Better yet, maybe I need to go all the way back to the day I killed my little brother, Patrick. But no, I’m not ready to talk about that. Not yet anyway.

What follows is a detail of Mike's days growing up with his brother Patrick and being raised by his grandmother.  Donovan's writing has a nice "Our Town" feel to it.  He has a keen eye for detail that really paints a picture of the setting of the story, New Castle.  The only problem the story suffers from at this point is maybe a bit too much detail as this story weighs in at over 600 pages.

After thirty years, Mike returns to his grandmother's farmhouse.  Like many of those tortured souls horror fans love to read about and connect with, Mike has been struggling with what happened to his brother and he hopes that by reconnecting to the place he loved so much as a child, he will learn to accept his past and be able to move forward.  But as Mike will soon learn, his past is not the only thing that's haunted.

There are odd noises at night in the old farmhouse.  Furniture moves across the room all by itself.  Mike hears voices although he's all alone.  Or is he?  This house would be a paranormal investigator's dream come true.  Donovan's vivid details really pay off in some of these scenes where Mike begins to explore what is happening. Mike soon discovers that Grandmother's old farmhouse is actually haunted by the ghost of his brother Patrick, and Patrick is not very happy that Mike has returned.

What follows is an intense struggle between the two brothers to resolve the anger and distance between them, but that's a little hard to do when Patrick is in the afterlife and wants Mike dead as well.  The author has plotted his story out very well, and as I said, it contains all the key elements that a book of this genre needs to capture an audience.  Abrubt cliff hangers to keep you interested, a taste of foreshadowing, and certainly lots of eerie moments to send chills down your spine, readers who enjoy a good scare then this book is for you.

I recall a scene early on where Mike comforts Patrick as a child over a ghost story which their Grandmother told them to keep them from playing near the well.  Nuances of the spirit world like this, sprinkled throughout the brother's life together on earth, create a nice balance with Mike's reactions to meeting his brother as a ghost later.  The emotional reaction from Patrick (as a ghost) toward his brother Mike really help to support the overall story, again echoing the supernatural elements Donovan has presented his characters with as children.  In other words, Donovan's story of this conflict between man and ghost is actually believable and not too over the top.

In the horror genre, obviously Stephen King embraced the saga-length novel early on.  IT is over 1,000 pages and so is The Stand. As an old King fan, books like Misery still resonate with me more today as a favorite, and Misery is actually only 352 pages.  I can honestly say that 300+ pages is enough for me; 500 would certainly be pushing it and it better be a damn good book.  Donovan's book at 600 pages did indeed keep me interested, but looking back at it now as I write this review, I think a professional editor would indeed probably chop 200 pages off easily.  But don't let the 600 pages scare you!  Take full advantage of Donovan's book being a FREE download right now!  If you like a good fright, you will not be disappointed!