NOVEL
MEAN SPIRITS
"Captain Christopher Jones gazed out from his mid-deck remarkably composed, an island of calm, while his crew members, more nervous than frightened, silently wondered what he was planning. His ship was in a box, a tight box."
Prologue
"The pictures told the story. Swann placed them in succession across the kitchen table. The first one: a dark night, the two large bedroom windows, sterile and undisturbed. Then the next: two slight wisps dancing in front, perhaps reflections or an imperfection in the film. Then they grew into two dense amorphous clouds, two 'cold spots' at the foot of the bed. With each new picture, they took shape. Definitely heads, definitely shoulders, definitely arms."
p. 142
"She stood over him, looking down on him. She laughed, exposing her rotted teeth, vomit coating her lips. Summoning all the strength he had left, Pennfield tossed back and forth on the mattress, struggling to make her disappear. Yet, the more he struggled, the more power she consumed, unwilling to vanish until he had inhaled his last breath. She left him at last with no final moment of peace."
p. 196
An American Haunting
AUTHOR
Roger Chiocchi
NUMBER OF PAGES
250
YEAR OF ISSUE
2002
ABOUT THIS BOOK
The year is 1620. As the Mayflower tacks about to avoid the dangerous shoals of Pollock Rip off the Cape Cod coast, a young girl mysteriously jumps to her death.
Almost four centuries later the psychic imprints of that incident – and a string of related incidents – begin to wreak havoc in the lives of two prominent Americans. A corporate executive sailing in Nantucket Sound is unexpectedly barraged by a violent storm at sea-which no other vessel even detects on radar. A highly respected college professor swears he can see the outline of two large figures hovering over the foot of his bed, one brandishing a knife.
Both men have two things in common: They are scions of the privileged Pennfield clan-one of America’s great families, claiming an unbroken line back to the Mayflower. And, unbeknownst to them, their strange bouts with the paranormal have just begun.
The Pennfields soon realize these encounters are not isolated occurrences, but an orchestration of paranormal events haunting the entire family. Concerned, they enlist the aid of retired construction contractor turned ghost hunter, Ed Swann. In his methodical manner, Swann uncovers a mystery that unravels the dark underside of the Pennfields’ cherished lineage.
Swann discovers the Pennfield family have been victims of a centuries old curse dating back to that incident on the Mayflower as that servant girl took her own life after being threatened by family patriarch, Charles Pennfield.
As she struggled in the breakers, the young girl vowed to exact revenge from the Pennfield family. She vowed to curse them for generations.
And that she did; she returned every other generation — every 50 to 80 years — to cast shame, embarrasment and disrepute upon the Pennfield family as they grew into America’s ranks of the aristocratic.
She returned in Salem, Massachusetts in the late 1600s, luring Amanda Pennfield into a trap that would result in her being pressed to death as a witch.
She returned in the 1700s as a prostitute in Martinique, romancing Peter Pennfield, a profligate scion who signed on with a crew of pirates and caused a massive conflagration at sea.
In the late 1920s, she met her match in Benjamin Pennfield, one of America’s richest and most esteemed financiers. As she attempted to make a family member the next victim of the curse, intending to cast shame and derision upon an entire generation of Pennfields, the cagey captain of industry set a trap that smothered her efforts.
As Swann reveals the history of the curse to Jonathan and Christopher Pennfield in the 1990s, over 60 years since the servant girl’s last attempt to shame the Pennfield family, one question becomes clear.
When will she strike next and who will be her victim?