Haunted Houses
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About this ebook
Can houses be haunted by some other forces besides hatred, fear and anger?
Stephen Goldin
STEPHEN GOLDIN is a Nebula Award finalist science fiction and fantasy writer who was born in 1947 in the city of Philadelphia. When he was 13, his parents moved to California and, upon reflection, he decided to accompany them. It was a lucky thing he did, too; otherwise, when he went to college, the commute to UCLA would have been quite difficult. He eventually graduated from UCLA with a Bachelor's degree in Astronomy.His first job out of college was as a civilian space scientist for the U.S. Navy. The urge to write was strong, though, and after several years he left to try writing full time. He only regretted the move every other Thursday, when he would have gotten paid.After several years of genteel poverty, he took a job as writer/editor for a pornographic humor paper, the San Francisco Ball. In retrospect, this was a great crucible; because of deadline pressure, he had to learn to make his writing dirty, funny, and one draft.At about this time, too, he began selling novels on a regular basis. While he has, from time to time, held down other full-time employment (he helped design the Star Trek: The Next Generation computer game "A Final Unity" for Spectrum HoloByte and has also written manuals and game design documents for Maxis), his real love is fiction writing and he continues to pursue it.His first wife was fellow author Kathleen Sky. Their medieval-style wedding was a Saturday morning program item at the 1972 World Science Fiction Convention in Los Angeles. In the 10+ years of their marriage, in addition to their individual works, they collaborated on a pair of stories ("Painting the Roses Red" and "The Devil Behind the Leaves") about the diMedicis, a family of interstellar swindlers.Mr. Goldin's current wife is fellow author Mary Mason. Their wedding took place the night before EclectiCon 1 in Sacramento, at which Mr. Goldin was the Guest of Honor. They currently live in the San Francisco East Bay area. So far they have co-authored two books in the Rehumanization of Jade Darcy series: Jade Darcy and the Affair of Honor and Jade Darcy and the Zen Pirates. More books in this series are planned.Mr. Goldin is an atheist whose interests include Broadway show albums and surrealist art. He has lived with cats virtually all his adult life.Mr. Goldin served the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America as editor of the SFWA Bulletin and as SFWA's Western Regional Director.
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Haunted Houses - Stephen Goldin
HAUNTED HOUSES
Stephen Goldin
Published by Parsina Press at Smashwords
Haunted Houses. Copyright © 1991 by Stephen Goldin. All Rights Reserved.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Haunted Houses
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Haunted Houses
There are Great Truths to be learned in haunted houses.
I was twelve years old when I learned my first Great Truth. Twelve is a particularly good age for haunted houses. Much younger than that and you can’t really appreciate the depth of what’s going on. Much older and you become cynical, jaded by your adolescent omniscience. But at twelve you’ve become aware of all the rotten things the world can do to you, yet you’re still defenseless against most of them. A very good age, twelve.
And of course it was Halloween. Arbor Day doesn’t work well for haunted houses. Neither does Memorial Day, even though we’re supposed to think about the dead then, too. Somehow I have the impression that any ghosts you met in May would be in their military uniforms, with ribbons on their chests. Impressive, maybe (if they were of high enough rank), but not horrifying.
But Halloween, when the trees have changed and the year is shriveled up and dying, that’s a good season for spooks.
Halloween, age twelve. Hey, throw in nighttime for good measure. Stir well.
Santa Barbara, when I was twelve, was one of those in–betweenish sort of places. It hadn’t yet grown into the urban center it is today, but it wasn’t exactly Hicksville, either. It had been settled for quite a while, but there were still large areas of wilderness—or at least, a twelve–year–old’s idea of wilderness.
There was an old Victorian house alone on a hill,