A Brush With the Paranormal - Guest Post, Giveaway, & Review

A Brush With the Paranormal 

By Lena Gregory

Have you ever had a brush with the paranormal? An experience that you couldn’t explain away, no matter how hard you tried? Have you ever visited a psychic?

In Death at First Sight, Cass Donovan leaves her psychiatric practice in New York City after a series of unfortunate events and returns to her childhood home on Bay Island. Though Cass doesn’t really consider herself psychic in any traditional sense, she’s always been very intuitive. She’s always had a gift for “reading” people.

As a teenager, Cass worked the beach and the boardwalk, approaching tourists and offering a glimpse into their lives. She only charged if her predictions proved accurate. More often than not, they did.

When she returns home, it seems natural to return to giving “readings.” Not because she wants to con anyone, but because she wants to help people. Helping to ease the grief many of her clients suffer helps Cass to heal. She offers individual readings, which tend to be more intimate, and group readings, which have become quite popular on Bay Island.

The idea for Cass’s character began with my own experience visiting a psychic. I’ve always been interested in the supernatural, fascinated with the idea of a world beyond our own. A number of people mentioned a psychic they visited to me. Jay. Supposedly, she was very accurate.

A friend of mine was having a difficult time conceiving and was undergoing treatments but not having any luck. She was starting to give up hope when she went to the psychic. Jay predicted the birth of her second son before she was pregnant and only missed his birth date by two months.

My sister went to see her, and she told her exactly what she’d be doing over the next few years, and she nailed it almost perfectly.

So I figured, why not give it a try?

One of the things I learned during my reading is that spirits don’t just sit down for a chat, at least, not with Jay. Instead, they send symbols and signs, which she then has to interpret. She mentioned my brother, who passed away about six months before I went to see her, but not by name. She said she saw something to do with hair. As silly as it might seem, our hair was always a big joke between my brother and I. When we were kids, I had stringy blonde hair. And he had a headful of thick brown hair with gorgeous natural highlights, you know, the kind women pay a fortune for! And, from the time he was a teenager, he always wore it long. Even after he was grown and working as an air traffic controller, he didn’t cut his hair.

I do have to say, Jay’s predictions about what I’d be doing within the next few years have proven remarkably accurate.

The one thing I found odd was the unexpected sense of peace the reading left me with. I’m kind of a high-strung person, always taking on too much then running around like crazy trying to get it all done. I move fast, I talk fast, and I rarely relax. I don’t sleep much, usually only a few hours a night. I worry about everything. And I do my best work under pressure.

Yet, when I walked out of Jay’s house, a sense of peace and calm I’ve never experienced before settled over me. I wasn’t in a rush to get anywhere. I didn’t feel pulled in twenty directions. I just felt calm, peaceful, serene. I would go back to her in a heartbeat, just to recapture that feeling.

So, back to my original question. Have you ever had a brush with the paranormal? Have you ever visited a psychic? Leave me a comment and let me know!

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Review

OCCULT AND BATTERY by Lena Gregory

The Second Bay Island Psychic Mystery

Let's have a seance in a haunted house. What could go wrong?

Looking to boost business during the off season Cass teams up with the Wellington Investment Company to provide a weekend of psychic readings at the Wellington's property before its grand opening as a B&B. Cass is thrown when her former fiancee and his girlfriend (her former best friend) arrive to attend the festivities and is taken aback when a seance is suggested. An unexplained apparition causes the seance to end abruptly, but it's a scream during the night that reveals something worse. The body of one of the Wellingtons has been found hanging in the cupola. Was it suicide or murder? The worsening blizzard has rendered phones useless while trapping everyone in the house. Cass desperately needs the money she was to earn from the weekend and is concerned everyone will want a refund. In order to save herself from the opening night disaster Cass will try to to solve this untimely death.

The more I read this series, the more I enjoy it. The trio of Cass, Bee, and Stephanie are the embodiment of true friendship. Despite differences and disagreements these friends stick together through everything and will run to each other's aid no matter the time or reason. We also see their antithesis in the relationships between Cass and her former fiance and "best friend" as well as the interactions of the Wellington family. My favorite aspects of the book are the glimpses we receive of the paranormal. Despite the fact that Cass doesn't believe she's truly psychic and doesn't believe in ghosts, we see glimmers of the truth behind the denials. I am also in love with Beast and hope that Cass figures out how to train him before something truly dire occurs!

OCCULT AND BATTERY brings the harsh realities of winter to an island community based on summer tourism. A fine mystery makes the past, present, and future collide while deep characterization brings heart to the story.

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