Oct. 2, 1999:

The thoughts in my mind are of the voice mail that I just recieved; according to Jill had told me of the third floor. The floor that I will be staying on is the one that is haunted. What she described is quite horrific -- it must something Catholic Colleges are the ones that are haunted; I asked about St. Mary University because of something that I have came across while reading a book which is a directory of haunted places in the United States. Iowa -- I found out has a few places, nothing major. Though many years I been quite intrigued by such stories over the years; ever since the day that my mother and step-father decided to visit a psychic artist back in 1991.

I had never spoke of that day or of the times that I witnessed a seance at the Hallow'en party that I attended. It was here that I got into a few deep philosophical discussions about the supernatural with members of a coven. I kept this to myself for two years, about three months prior to writing "A Dark Place." The plot itself was written out in my mind as a nightmare invoked by all the ghost stories that I and a few others were telling. I relate this narrative between the coughing and the sneezing from a cold that I am dealing with -- but as I sit here in front of a keyboard, I am clad in a black, hooded sweatshirt, a pair of sweat pants that I owned while in the service, and coccooned in a green blanket. The recent days that I would sleep, the sleep that I would have is dreamless -- perhaps a rest from the nightmares that haunted me in the recent months. Thought the sleep had been dreamless, I kept having thoughts about when I spoke to Jeremiah Jackson; something that he had said to me about writing supernatural horror -- as a Christian, I should not be writing about ghosts and seances.

It was like that when I wrote my college paper about D.D. Home; the essays that I read about that mystic were startling because it is a knowledge that shouldn't be known as well as the knowledge of reading the Necronomicon; as don't know of the existance of that blasphemous book had been bound and each of the 800 pages were of dried human flesh; inked in human blood. I remembered a broadcast that I heard in 1996 about a demonic possession in River Grove -- they tried to drive the spirit out of him on the air. This is a creepy thing to think about, but as I have friend studying to become a minister; the issue of the unknown had been brought up. While I would sit in the Glenside Public Library, I used to read books about the occult and hauntings for content that I would use in a horror tale. As I would sleep after the car crash in December, three years ago, I dreamed that I saw a priest lay in a bed; slowly burning to death. I wasn't sure where the place was but the dream was on a college campus. When I read the abstract about St. Mary's College in Winona, Minnesota, in the the book that I showed a KMIT anchor while she was on a pause -- I stumbled across it by accident, it was while I was trying to come to terms that Marynoll College had been also haunted.

Oct. 3, 1999

As I slept the night before, I had the same dream again. This dream one would say that if I describe it would result in me returning to Five East which is Mason City's mental health unit because if one speaks of the unknown to a doctor, they would say that I have gone mad or if I spoken to a pastor; they would suggest that I should start returning to a church. I don't know if I could believe in God again after going into Five East because they would say that my psychological state is unstable, but as I am sitting in front of this computer I am writing with a sound mind and a strong conviction to write about the haunted dorm at St. Mary's University. I haven't felt this way in years; excited as a Christian at a Holy Roller Revival, exactly like the time when Bobby Lipper and Jason Hink brought me to Cuba Road for the first time; looking for the phantom car that inhabited White's Cemetery. It was ever since Brian Wallace had passed on back in 1989 that I had questioned if ghosts and the unexplainable exist. This is something that I kept to myself even while the times I had been attending church. This is something that lead me into reading H.P. Lovecraft and researching the philosophies of the occult. The conversation of this first came about in middle school -- about the subject of reincarnation; as many of my friends of the Wiccan tradition had believed this. My mother had believed that spirits of the dead walked the earth among with the living; especially when one had been a victim of a homocide or a self inflicted murder.

I sometimes ask myself this when they could not find the anchorwoman; the one they called Jody Husientruit. That as I would write this; I have watched the children pray at night -- hoping that they would find her in one peice. I have been looked at coldly because of the theories that my roommate and I have been coming up with on where they would dump her carcass if she had been killed; going back to the narrative about St. Mary's University, I had another dream about the place. I dreamed that I was walking into the room were the priest was murdered and according to the book that I read; there in Melissa's building, was the ghostly grandfather clock that I read about in the directory of places in the United States that are haunted. This in their minds; the minds of the Mason City locals would say that ghosts are nonexistant; the supernatural only exist in form of angelic or demonic behavior -- the act of a guardian angel, or the posession of something demonic. The one's that would preach this to me would say that I am not right with God if I have a morbid curiousity about ghosts and the occult. It is those that start the inquisition are the ones that have their own demons that fuck with their head.

In the years that I sat in a church pew during a church revival, I spent an equal amount of time studying the things that should not be ranging from the suicide cults, serial killers, and the burning of numerous churches. I could just imagine the reaction one in the ancient history of the Apostle Paul would see if they would come across the knowledge of the 20th Century street violence that would inhabit Chicago or New Orleans; the thought would leave them shitting their pants claiming that Satan is born again on Earth. I spent days watching Xians slain in the Holy Ghost, and I look at the event as an agnostic. Though in the times that I found myself taking a bad mixture of medications, one cannot blame the lack of faith on the mental illness or the curiousity of the unknown as a pact with the Devil. Even as I was raised in an Italian family and most of the family is Catholic, my curoisity for the paranormal was something that I had grown into -- and heavy metal music such as Metallica, Testament and Black Sabbath had brought me into the horror genre.

While I was going to Eagle Cave; I was a young Boy Scout that had aquired the curiousity of a pagan -- a working history of what Hallow'en was; the pagan holiday of Samhain. They gave me strange looks because I found a book about vampyres and werewolves; it was one that explained the true story behind the shit -- I could not speak of what I read until now because it had conditioned me for what I was about to see in London in the summer of 1991 and the forcoming weekend in Winona, Minnesota. What I found out about the story at St. Mary's is that the priest had been murdered inside one of the rooms; I am still trying to piece together the dream I had about the place back in 1997 -- it was about a murder of a priest. This is something that I cannot write about in the open or talk about to in Mason City, Iowa, because they are frightened by what is not understood. The dream could of been something out of the lyrics of a song by Testament or the written words of Edgar Allen Poe. In the eyes of a Wheaton College student, I had been doing a forbidden dance because I touched into the downward spiral of the maelstorm. The nightmare of seeing myself being burned at the stake is all too fucking real to me now; because the small town population fears the knowledge born into the monstosity as an urban reality -- a drive by shooting. Shoot the mother fucker first, then later begin the inquistion. It was the usual thing in Wheaton to shun the ones who have a different set of ideas or to convert the bastard into what they are; it would be the similar thing in North Iowa, hate what they fear.

That what I describe in the dream is that I would be persecuted by the Christians who refuse to understand the thing that I would describe in much detail about the Grandfather Clock in one of the dormortory where I am going to spend the next weekend. I was the subject of persecution and mockery as I did in high school because of the curiousity which made me the ghosthunter that I become.

This curiousity; according to my ex, became an obsession, but yet I keep this journal because of the things that should not be are. Even as the shadows dance on the walls, their words write on the graves telling a horrific story of how they were laid to rest. It is as the Ravenswood district in Uptown Chicago, people getting hauled away because of riots invoked on the streets; if someone got erased in a drive by shooting -- they would sit there and laugh their asses off like they would not give a flying fuck if the bastard laid there slowly bleeding to death. That as I write this journal, the thoughts are of the college known as St. Mary's in Winona, Minnesota, and of the place that I visited in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, back in the fall of 1997. As of September 6, it had been two years to the fucking day. If one from Iowa would read this, and I know that it will happen, my ass will end up locked into the mental health unit of Mercy Medical Center North Iowa because they would think that I am on street drugs; what I am thinking and keeping a journal of is not of their normal culture. I find myself laughing my ass off because they stand there in their high school sweat shirts; my peers to be accurate and toting a Holy Bible because of the Columbine shootings.

The thought of a bomb scare had frightening the fear of fucking God into them; the older one gets and the more they see -- they see how fucked up things are. That as I would be relating the state of the human condition, one would say that I am not right in my mind because I believe in the fear of the unknown. In the mind of my classmates, some would think that I have become a failure; and the fear I will have is that my dreams will become unforfilled -- and the horrors that haunt my mind are that I will end up like Heather Donneau who disappeared without a trace and leaving behind her footage; no one knowing what had happened to her. That this search for the supernatural is childish and foolhardy, but I have to say that made the imaginitive reason to become a horror writer. It is a certain mind and imagination to sit in front of a keyboard; then try to scare the fuck out themselves writing something too obscure to concieve -- the story of the murdered priest at St. Mary's University is something too macabre for one to imagine. That it would be the plot of a Gothic tale, but what makes it a frightening nightmare is that that it really took place.