I started reading ghost stories as a child and enjoyed the chill that the best of them sent up my spine. I began writing ghost stories, with a sci-fi and mystery twist, almost ten years ago when I wrote my first Bad Vibes Removal Services story. The series features Lea, a young history graduate student, working in a new service industry. She sanitizes and neutralizes the lingering emotional history from buildings and homes using newly invented equipment. She was drawn to the job because she’s always been sensitive to emotional atmosphere in rooms and has always been able to see ghosts.
The technology she uses in her job was created by a private detective named Montgomery in his quest to create a device to read the subatomic changes in soft materials caused when sound waves pass through them. Montgomery wanted to be able to read the recordings of conversations held in rooms in order to solve crimes. He ended up being able to track the emotional energy left in walls along with the sounds. In order to put his new technology in the public eye, he started Bad Vibes Removal Services to serve as a sister company to his own Montgomery Investigations business.
Lea, with her team of coworkers, soon discovers that she can’t neutralize the lingering emotions in a house if the source, a ghost in distress, is still present. Many of the ghosts she encounters died under questionable circumstances, leading to murder investigations.
The series started with one story. But I liked the characters so much that I wrote more stories, which led me to write a novel, The Walls Can Talk, then more stories, and another novel, Degrees of Deceit, then, more stories. The series currently has 15 or so published short stories and two novels. The latest story in the series, called “Wedding Vibes,” was published in Black Cat Weekly #145 courtesy of editor Michael Bracken. The story features Lea’s wedding reception being crashed by both a ghost and thieves trying to steal gifts. Luckily, her boss, Montgomery, her coworker and Maid of Honor, Kamika, and the rest of her friends are on the case. The thieves chose the wrong reception to crash!