Dark Divinations: Ghost of St. John Lane

The Inspiration Behind “Ghost of St. John Lane.”

By Daphne Strasert

The inspiration for “The Ghost of St. John Lane” was threefold. Dark Divinations gave me the opportunity to blend several ideas that had long lived in my imagination, but had yet to find a narrative home.

First, the concept of a house haunted not by a spirit, but by a living person. I shudder at the thought of someone whose body persists, but their soul has moved on in grief. Blurring the lines between death and life is interesting to me. After all, can’t a living person be just as frightening as a dead one when they bring no life to the world around them?

Next, in divination, much is said about the ‘third eye’. Usually considered to be an internal ability, the phrase caught my attention from the first moment that I heard it. I was fascinated by the idea of the third eye as a physical manifestation, an outward mark of an inward ability. When imagining a psychic, I always pictured that they were mentally unstable, their mind torn between the past, present, and future, experiencing it all as a jumble.

Finally, while researching the Victorian Era and the Spiritualist movement that so influenced the times, I was struck by descriptions of mediums and, more importantly, false-mediums who used trickery to maintain their ruse. Their commitment to fooling others for financial gain struck me as singularly wicked and worth exploring.

Daphne Strasert is a horror, fantasy, and science fiction author located in Houston, Texas. She placed 3rd in the 2017 Next Great Horror Writer Contest. She has had many short stories published through HorrorAddicts.net and others. When not writing, she plays board games and knits.