How to Survive a Killer Seance (33 page)

“Well, I’ve got to run,” Mother said, winding up the conversation. “I have bocce ball this morning, and Curves this afternoon. Then a bunch of us are watching a
Golden Girls
marathon. We’re going to dress up as our favorite character from the show. Guess which one I’m going to be.”

“Blanche, of course,” I said. The men looked bewildered.

“How did you know?” Mother asked.

I knew my mother all too well. And I hoped to go on knowing her for a long time to come.

 

Brad and I escorted my mother to Jonathan’s car while Jonathan wheeled his father along. He had picked up both his father and my mother from the care center, and promised to return them safely.

“Presley!” my mother said, suddenly looking alarmed. “I’ve lost my purse again!”

I glanced down at her side and pointed to her Coach bag. “It’s right there, Mother.”

She followed my pointing finger, recognized her bag, and clutched it tightly to her side. “Thank goodness!” she said as she stepped into the car, visibly relieved.

Just before he got into the driver’s seat, he paused and looked at me. “Thanks again, Presley—for everything.” I nodded. He slipped inside and drove away.

Brad took my good hand and we walked slowly to his SUV. Still feeling the pain of my bruised hip, I favored my good leg, and used Brad’s strong arm for support. When we reached the car, he held the door for me, then went around the car and got in. I had my iPhone in my hand and was scanning messages when he asked in an English accent, “Where to, madam?”

I grinned, shut off the phone, and dropped it into my purse. “To the Bat Cave, Alfred.”

“Ah, don’t tell me we have another case, Batgirl.”

“Not a case, a party. Where do you think I could rent some bats this time of year?”

Brad eyed me as if I now needed my own psychiatrist. “Bats? I hate bats.” He shivered.

“Well, you better get over that, because Lucas Cruz wants a ‘wrap party’ to celebrate finishing his latest film.” Cruz, the resident movie producer on the Island, rented one of the Pam Am Clipper hangars for filming. It wasn’t unusual to spot Robin Williams, Danny Glover, or Margaret Cho coming or going.

“A bat party?”

“Nope. A Vampire Party.”

“That should be interesting,” Brad said, raising a lascivious eyebrow. “Maybe we should go back to your place and get in the mood. I’ll wear one of your vampire costumes—actually just the cape—and you can . . .”

“Down, boy,” I said, giggling. “First we need to make a little side trip.”

“Where to?” he asked.

“Colma.”

“Colma . . . aka ‘The City of Souls’? What for? That place gives me the creeps. It’s nothing but cemeteries.”

I smiled. “I know. That’s exactly why Cruz wants to host the Vampire Party there. If we hurry,” I said, channeling Béla Lugosi’s Transylvanian accent, “we can look over the graveyards and be safely home before darkness falls . . .”

Brad grinned at me and started up the engine.

So you want to chat with Elvis? No problem—even though he’s been dead for decades. Just host a séance, hold hands around a crystal ball, and wait for the spirits to appear.... Ideally, at the circle you’ll want a few true believers, a couple of skeptics, and one or two who are open to the possibility of the supernatural. And don’t forget the medium—real or not. It’s time for a ghost-whispering Séance Party.

Invite the skeptics and believers with a “message from the beyond . . .” Cut out a white circle, glue the top edge to a black card, and write, “The Spirits Are About to Speak . . .” on the outside. Underneath, glue another white circle and include the party details. Or draw a ghost on a white card with a speech bubble providing the information. Or outline your palm, draw lifelines, and write the details along each line, indicating their “future” at the party. Include a tarot card or a lucky rabbit’s foot.

As the hostess, you might dress up as a gypsy, or wear all black with a lacy scarf. Tell the guests to come in costume, dressed as a character from the twenties, when the séance was in its heyday. Or suggest they come as a witch, sorcerer, or fortune-teller.

You’ll need a dark room to host the séance, one with draperies that will keep out the light from outside. Set a round table in the middle of the room and drape it with a black lace tablecloth. Set a crystal ball (or an upside-down fishbowl) in the center of the table. Light candles around the room and play spooky Halloween music in the background. Set hanging pictures at an angle, and string fake cobwebs along the lights and furniture, or in the corners of the room. Download creepy pictures from the Internet, frame them, and set them on tables or hang them on the walls. Get an accomplice to help you with some simple séance gimmicks while you summon the spirit world. (See Games and Activities for examples.)

Scare the goose bumps out of your guests with a few ghoulish games and spooky surprises!

Have a real séance with a hired medium. Or put on your own séance and set the scene with lots of spooky gimmicks. Have the attendees sit at the table and hold hands. While you close your eyes and mumble to the spirit world, have your accomplice do some of the following tricks. Tie fishing line to a picture on the wall and move it slightly. Do the same to the draperies. Knock softly, then louder, on the wall. Turn on a fan and blow out a candle or two. Start up a fog machine. Spray the guests with a sudden blast from a squirt gun. Have sheeted ghosts pass through the room. Use a speaker or karaoke machine to create the voices.

After the guests are thoroughly spooked by the unseemly spirits, it’s time to channel the dead. First, tell a little background to continue the spooky mood and put on a theatrical performance as you call the spirits. Then bring back someone famous from the past that everyone knows, such as Elvis, Queen Victoria, or Marilyn Monroe. Have the accomplice imitate the voice, and answer questions from the attendees, such as “Elvis, how did you die?” “Ah ate too many pork rinds—thank you verah much.”

Get out the Ouija board, choose a couple of guests to sit opposite each other, and ask questions. Take turns so everyone gets a chance to hear answers “from the Other Side.” You might even include some preformed questions the players must ask, such as “Who will meet the man of her dreams next?” or “Who in the room is keeping a deep dark secret?”

Read up on fortune-telling with tarot cards. Then predict each guest’s future using the cards.

Have the guests make up predictions for each guest. When everyone is finished, choose one guest to read her predictions—then guess who created it.

Rent creepy movies that feature ghosts and other strange creatures, such as
The Others
,
The Ring
,
Thirteen Ghosts
,
Ghost Ship
,
Ghostbusters
,
The Haunting
,
The Legend of Hell House
,
Poltergeist
,
The Shining
,
What Lies Beneath
, or
Ghost
. Share them with the group.

Make your own fortune cookies. Buy prepackaged sugar cookie dough. Roll out the dough as thinly as possible, cut into circles, fold the circle, curve it into a “C,” and pinch the ends, leaving a small opening. On small strips of paper, write down funny fortunes, such as “You will learn to play the violin,” “You will marry a clown,” or “You will come back as a mule.” When the cookies are lightly browned, let them cool, then insert the paper predictions. Make a devil’s food cake for a centerpiece, topped with tarot cards or the crystal ball.

Tarot decks make great prizes and favors, along with lucky charms, scary movies, a book of ghost stories, creepy sound tracks, and astrology books.

Invite a “real” medium, psychic, or tarot-card reader to your party to lead the séance or predict the future.

 

For more party ideas, check out
Ladies’ Night: 75 Excuses to Party with Your Girlfriends
by Penny Warner (Adams-Media).

It should have been a dark and stormy night, à la Hollywood, but the October moon was full and the sky cloudless. I stood quietly in the cemetery, feeling as if I were viewing a film. But there were no cameras, and this was no movie.

I watched as the tall, pale twentysomething man dressed in tight black jeans and a black chest-hugging T-shirt suddenly appeared from out of nowhere. He seemed to glide toward the wide-eyed, raven-haired young woman who waited for him. She wore a flowing white dress, sheer and low-cut, that displayed her obviously enhanced breasts. Leaning seductively against a towering headstone, her long hair swirling in the night breeze, she smiled at the man in black approaching her. He held a glass of bloodred wine in his hand.

I felt like a voyeur, but I couldn’t take my eyes off this mesmerizing couple.

He offered her the glass, not taking his eyes from hers. “This is very old wine. I hope you’ll like it.”

She wrapped a porcelain hand around the stem, her lacquered red fingernails tinkling against the glass. “Aren’t you drinking?” she asked, her eyes reflecting the bright spotlights. She took a sip.

Staring at her with intense dark eyes, the young man parted his full mouth, revealing white teeth that glinted in the light. “I never drink
wine
.”

I almost laughed out loud at the familiar line. Count Dracula had said the same thing to Renfield in the 1939 film. But when the man in black suddenly jerked, as if having a spasm, I gasped. Seconds later he shot up into the air like a rocket, and disappeared into the branches of a eucalyptus tree.

“Awesome!” I said, clapping. I could feel my heart racing.

I looked around, certain I’d be joined in a round of cheery applause. But when I saw frowns on the faces of those nearby, I stopped.

“No! No! No!” Lucas Cruz yelled from behind me.

Cruz, as everyone called him, was the eccentric producer/ director at CeeGee Studios, located on Treasure Island. Five years earlier he had set up his computer graphics/film company in one of the long-empty Pan-Am clipper ship hangars on the island. Since then he’d produced a number of sci-fi and horror films, which featured his cutting-edge special effects. One of his films had starred local San Francisco resident Robin Williams as Cosmo Topper in a remake of the popular 1937 ghost film
Topper
. In spite of Robin’s talents, the movie had quickly gone to video.

Cruz had hired me to plan a wrap party to celebrate—and publicize—the end of production on his latest horror film,
Revenge of the Killer Vampires
. I’d seen a few clips of the jump-the-shark spoof of vampire flicks that had ravaged theaters around the country. The two “hot” young stars—Jonas Jones, who played the vampire, and Angelica Brayden, the love interest—would no doubt become
ET
, TMI, and Gossip Guy regulars once the film debuted. And I was lucky enough to have just witnessed a preview of the mini-performance from the movie that would be performed at tomorrow night’s party.

The wrap party would have been simple enough to host if it hadn’t been for the fact that Cruz wanted the event held in a cemetery—“for the ambience.” After overcoming my initial resistance, I researched the possibilities online, and I found a
Wall Street Journal
article that mentioned the growing popularity of murder mystery events, scavenger hunts, and other events held in cemeteries. Hollywood Forever cemetery in Los Angeles projected movies onto mausoleum walls. Davis Cemetery in California offered bird walks and poetry workshops. Others presented Shakespeare festivals, family picnics, and even weddings.

The idea behind this: “To nurture warm feelings about the cemetery.”

Weird, I thought, but why not?

I made some calls and found San Francisco’s few cemeteries unreceptive to the idea. The City had been forced to move many of its cemeteries, due to rising costs of land and lack of space, and those that remained didn’t readily open their doors for entertainment purposes. But when I contacted the powers-that-be in neighboring Colma, I got lucky.