Just in time for Halloween is Ed Okonowicz's latest ghostly work, "The Big Book of Maryland Ghost Stories," recently published by Stackpole Books.
Since 1994, Okonowicz, who lives in Elkton, has written more than 20 books devoted to the macabre, apparitions and other weird, unexplained sightings that have haunted the Free State and nearby Delaware and its weak-kneed citizenry (especially this time of the year) since Colonial days.
"It's a thick one, and I'd say there is 70 percent new stuff in it with the remainder being stories I found in old books, newspapers, historic documents or stories from earlier books of mine that are now out of print," said Okonowicz, who celebrated his 63rd birthday Halloween Eve, in a telephone interview the other day.
"I think after all these years, I'm about ghosted out," he said with a laugh. "Even though the book is 170,000 words, I still had to cut out 20 stories."
Okonowicz said one of the big challenges was trying to come up with story titles that didn't use the words "ghost," "spirits" or "phantom."
"It wasn't easy," he said.
He has organized his tales regionally, with chapter headings such as Eastern Shore, Central Maryland, Annapolis and Baltimore, Southern Maryland, Western Maryland and Along the Mason-Dixon Line.
Okonowicz traveled across the region seeking out new material, passing endless hours in libraries and historical societies blowing the dust off of and immersing himself in old books, yellowing newspaper clippings and long-unseen files.
"I even found, in a number of those old files, interviews with people," he said.
In addition, he spoke with paranormal experts, museum curators, guides at supposedly haunted historic sites and homeowners who have ghostly residents.
Even owners of "possessed possessions" relayed the tales of woe and bad luck that those items brought to their owners — like an Eastern Shoreman only identified as "Dexter," who found an old coffin handle in a cemetery.
In an interview with Okonowicz, Dexter said he took the handle home, polished it up and placed in on his fireplace mantel.
That's when his troubles began.
Dexter said that very night, there was an electrical fire in his kitchen; the next day, the brakes on his wife's car failed, and she hit a telephone pole.
Several days later, Dexter was cleaning his gutters when his ladder suddenly veered to the right and he fell two stories to the ground, breaking an ankle.
A dinnertime conversation with his wife convinced him that there must be some connection between the coffin handle and the couple's spate of bad luck.
"That night, right after supper," Dexter told the author, "I went out there with a flashlight and shovel. I dropped the coffin handle right back in the spot I found it. Then I said a prayer and an apology, and headed home."
For added emphasis, Dexter knocked on wood, said Okonowicz. Dexter then told him, "I figure that we put the hex to rest. But I'll tell ya: That's the last time I'm going to ever take anything outta a graveyard."
With a little bit of added Eastern Shore wisdom, Dexter added: "If you're looking for bad luck, takin' a coffin handle from the graveyard is one sure way to find it."
One of Okonowicz's favorite stories is "The Walker," which is the tale of a man named Darryl and his family who moved to a weather-beaten old house in a lonely patch of country up near the Mason-Dixon Line in the 1980s.
It wasn't long, Okonowicz writes, before the unexplained began happening: slamming doors, flickering lights, shadows moving across walls, the dining room chandelier suddenly swaying back and forth, and personal items suddenly vanishing and then reappearing an hour later.
What got Darryl's heart pounding one morning, while he was alone at home in the kitchen eating breakfast, was a scraping sound as a silverware drawer began opening by itself.
"I just stared. I didn't know what to do," Darryl told the author. "Part of me wanted to say something; another part of me wanted to run out the door."
Darryl and his family were afraid to tell anyone of their paranormal experiences for fear they would be seen as crazy.
Husband and wife agreed that they had been withholding their singular experiences from one another.
Darryl's wife said the sounds of heavy footsteps traversing the second floor unhinged her the most, and she christened the spectral intruder as "The Walker."
After the couple's 16-year-old daughter relayed her encounter with a teenage girl with bulging eyes and wearing a white gown who floated above her bed, and Darryl's midnight tangle with something unseen in an upstairs darkened hallway, the family decided they had had enough and moved out.
When the farmer and his wife who owned the old house came to return the couple's deposit, Darryl and his family finally learned the identity of the girl who supposedly haunted Darryl's daughter's bedroom.
The farmer's daughter, Missy, had returned home from a school dance where some of the other girls had made fun of her homemade dress.
"Children can be cruel," the old farmer told the family. "Our little girl, Missy we called her, she got a rope outta the barn an' hung herself in the attic, just above her bedroom. The same one your girl slept in."
"I just love that story. It's about a lonely old farmhouse and the people who just happen to move into it," Okonowicz said. "I want readers to know that I just didn't sit down with a couple of glasses of scotch and make this stuff up."
In fact, he has included an extensive list of online sources in the back of the book that readers can go to and check out the original stories.
For his next project, Okonowicz is writing about "Monsters in Maryland," which will tell the stories of snallygasters, Chessie and other monsters who are said to be in our midst.
Okonowicz has a warning for those who wish they could have such paranormal experiences: "Be careful what you wish for," he said.
He has had only one brush with the spirit world, and that happened two weeks after his father's death in 1971, when he saw his father's head on someone's else's body while walking outside his Wilmington, Del., rowhouse.
A friend, who was along with Okonowicz, corroborated the sighting.
Some years ago, Okonowicz told me that when on his ghostly ventures, he carries a bottle of holy water and sometimes his recently blessed religious medals.
He also said that after concluding a visit to a haunted site, he continually "checked out the rearview mirror when driving home."
Happy Halloween!