Echo’s Guide to Dealing with Ghosts

On the whole, ghosts suck. In specific cases, they’re quite entertaining.

So what’s the best way to deal with the sucky ones and fun
ones?

Host a webshow, of course!

The Do’s and Don’ts of interviewing ghosts live on the
internet:

DO make sure you’re
protected.

Circle of salt (more than one if you can), thermal scanner (for
those who can’t see the ghostly guests), motion activated cameras (so it’s not
just you saying something happened!), EVP and EMF sensors (again, more proof
you aren’t crazy). Holden and Zara handle most of the electronics, but the salt
circles have saved me more than once!

DON’T make promises.

There’s always the chance the message your ghostly stalker
wants you to deliver isn’t a heartfelt proclamation of love to those they left
behind. Some are out for vengeance. If you promise a ghost you’ll do something,
they’ll hold you to that promise. By force, if necessary. Trust me, you don’t
want the kind of pain and nightmares ghosts can inflict on you.

DO set boundaries.

You’ve all heard the saying, if you give them and inch they’ll
take a mile, right? Ghost will takes ten miles! They won’t stop taking. My
rules are one ghost per show. Three questions from me have to be answered
before the ghost gets a turn. Only positive messages can be shared, unless you’ve
got the proof to back up any accusations. Oh yeah! NO secrets that will get me
in trouble with the FBI, please?

DON’T believe what
everyone else says about you.

Maybe this doesn’t have so much to do with ghost as it does
about surviving an ability almost no one else understands. Maybe it’s a gift.
Maybe it’s a curse. Maybe it’s an X-Men style mutation. It doesn’t matter. It’s
part of you. Accept. Deal. Move on.

Now, do you want to know a little more about The Ghost Host Show,
me (Echo Simmons), my life savers Holden and Zara, and how I got mixed up with
Malachi, his dead great grandmother, Nazi secrets, and the FBI?

Somehow I knew you would 😉 So here’s an excerpt from The Ghost Host.

My dad frowns, his fingers tightening where they’re gripping the door frame. “Any idea why the FBI would be at our house?”

“What?”

Shaking his head, he says, “Turn the game off and come to the living room, please.”

“Sure, of course. I’ll be right there.”

He turns and walks away, leaving me to shut everything down. It takes me a minute to process what he said and start to panic. I shut down the game and stand. Suddenly, my hands feel cold. Breathing is difficult. My thoughts seem jumbled. I’m not even sure how I manage to put one foot in front of the other, but I end up in the living room doorway a minute later. As soon as I appear, two suit-clad people stand. One is a woman with long, straight hair. The other is an older man with silver at his temples.

“Echo, please take a seat,” the woman says.

The fact that they know me by sight really freaks me out. The numbing cold spreads from my

fingertips up my arms. I sit down in an armchair next to the loveseat my parents are parked on. I look over at them, not heartened by the fearful expressions on their faces. My stomach turns as I force myself to face the FBI agents.

“What’s this about?” I ask quietly.

The older guy looks at me. His expression isn’t kind or unkind. It’s firm, but not in an intimidating way. “One of our agents saw your webshow this week, and we had a few questions. I’m Agent Morton and this is Agent Ellington. We were assigned your case.”

“My case?” I feel sick. I can’t be an FBI case. Surely no college will ever take me if I’m on some kind of FBI watch list, right?

“It’s more of an inquiry,” Agent Ellington says. “Just a few questions.”

“About what?” my dad asks. I nod, echoing his question.

The two agents look at each other and it’s Ellington who takes the lead. “We just need to ask you about the stolen secrets.”

“The what?” my dad demands. He looks over to me, like I have all the answers. My mom is staring at me, too. I can see it on both their faces, the panic that this last good year is about to fall apart. It kills me to see the panic in their eyes as they wonder if I’m going to slip back into what I used to be, to the nightmares and failing grades and constant fear. I have to look away from them to escape it all.

Facing the FBI agents, I say the only thing I can. “I don’t really know anything about it. I know you guys probably think my show is just a big joke, but…it’s not.”

I hear my dad groan, barely audible, but it cuts me to the core. Tears pool in my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall. I don’t blame them for not believing me, but it doesn’t stop me from wishing it was different.

“Are you claiming that Madeline Crew actually contacted you in some way, that she gave you the information you wrote on the board during your show?” Agent Ellington asks. I nod slowly and she frowns. “It wasn’t information you found online somewhere?”

Shaking my head, I try really hard to hold onto my composure. “No. I mean, I tried to look it up later, to see if I could validate anything, but I couldn’t find anything about the Nazi secrets. That sort of thing shouldn’t be on the web, right?”

“That’s exactly the problem,” Morton says.

My heads starts shaking back and forth. I certainly wasn’t trying to cause any trouble when I asked Madeline that question. It’s the same question I ask most of my ghost guests. She just happened to have a better answer than most. “She shared it with me,” I say quietly, knowing they don’t believe a word of what I’m saying.

“You’ve been in contact with Madeline’s great grandson, correct?” Ellington asks. “Malachi Fields?”

The room goes absolutely silent. I can practically feel my dad’s breathing pick up in anger even though he’s a few feet away. I don’t have to ask to know he remembers Malachi’s name from the text he saw the other night. He’s going to kill me. And ground me. I’m so dead.

“Echo?” Agent Morton asks.

“Yes,” I whisper. “He emailed my friend Holden after the show. He saw the show and heard his great grandma’s name mentioned.”

“Then Malachi didn’t tell you about his great grandmother’s service during the war?” Ellington asks.

Suddenly angry at them, I fold my arms across my chest and glare at the both of them. “If you know I’ve been talking to Malachi, then surely you know I’d never even met him before the show.”

“Then how do you explain the information about the Nazi secrets?” Agent Morton asks.

“I already told you!” I shout. My parents both look mortified, and really freaked out, but I don’t care.

“You don’t believe me? Fine. You said yourself that there’s no way I could have known that stuff without access to whatever secret files you guys have. Even if I did, why would I steal information like that and blab about it on the internet?”

Agent Ellington is keeping her cool better than I might expect, but she obviously thinks I’m lying, or just plain crazy. “You honestly expect us to believe the ghost of Madeline Crew told you she stole Nazi secrets.”

“You can believe whatever you want. I don’t have any other answers for you. Make me take a polygraph if you want. I don’t even know why this matters! It was decades ago.”

“It matters because you have information you shouldn’t,” Agent Morton says calmly.

Scared, angry, and ready to bolt, it takes everything I have not to run away. “Well, in the future, I’ll make sure to politely ask the ghosts who follow me around all day not to share any state secrets with me, okay?”

The Ghost Host is available now for Pre-Order on Kindle and will release on October 6th!

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