Wait Till Helen Comes

When I was in..oh I think it was about fourth grade the mobile book fair came to my school. I remember the smell of new books mixing with fumes from the bus when I stepped in. I had read a few things before that, I think perhaps a Judy Bloom novel or two. My eyes scanned the rows and I was just about to settle for a unicorn bookmark when the cover of a book caught my eyes. It was Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn. I had to have it.

“It’s going to scare you,” my teacher told me.

And holy crap she was right. It scared the crap out of me and God help me, I loved it. Every second of it. Every word and flip back to the cover to study the little ghost girl’s profile, making sure I had the right images in my head because that’s where the story was playing out. The words were making a movie in my head.

That pretty much did it for me. There was no turning back. I read everything I could get my hands on and yes, I had a tendency to get my hands on the paranormal books. To this day, I can’t pass up the opportunity to be scared half to death, whether it is by a movie, or the movie in my head. If you ask me if I believe in ghosts I will say no. Do I believe in the paranormal sightings people claim to have? No. But I want to and I wish I did.

Maybe that’s why I write about these things. Because I hope that one day, it won’t be fiction I am writing. I’ll be telling a true story, that happened to me.