As this is ‘Magic Thursday’ I thought I’d write about the magical moment I experienced when writing my new paranormal romance, Ghosted, which helped to inform the story and infused it with a magic all its own.
When I first started writing Ghosted, I originally had it set in the real town of East Hampton, Long Island, New York. My aunt lived there, and I had visited a few times. Exploring the area in her borrowed car. Driving to Sag Harbor and Montauk and through all the Hampton townships in-between. I knew East Hampton had an intriguing first settler history; it was the first English settlement in the state of New York. There are a raft of historic and even First Period homes in the area — perfect for a haunting. And most importantly, the place brims with a quaint (if very fancy) US small-town charm. It’s also not that far from New York City, but far enough to allow my characters to stay out there rather than travel back and forth to their apartments downtown. It seemed like the perfect place to set my spooky, swoony romance.
But there was a hiccup with my story. I had this whole idea around historic witch trials being at the heart of the mystery that weaves its way through Ghosted. But as most people know, the US witch trials took place in Salem, and I couldn’t make up a fake history for a real town. So I parked the whole witch idea, focusing solely on ghosts as I started writing the tale of my romantically entangled ghosthunters, Holly and Callum.
But the witch thing wouldn’t leave me alone. (My ideas have a habit of doing that.) It haunted me. I just kept coming back to this concept that witch trials had to be the key to my mystery. I didn’t know why yet, just that they had to. Of course, I could have change to a fictional town, which I eventually did do for other reasons, but at that stage of the process I was set on the East Hampton location. So I finally did what I should have done in the first place. I Googled Witch Trials East Hampton ...
It was the February of 1658, and the fledgling township of Easthampton was only ten years old. The sixteen-year-old daughter of the town’s most prominent citizen lay feverish and delirious after recently giving birth. It was in her final moments, surrounded by those tending her, that she started screaming while pointing to the end of her bed, "A witch! A witch! Now you are come to torture me because I spoke two or three words against you!”. She would die a day later, but not before accusing a quarrelsome neighbour named Elizabeth Garlick of being the “black thing” at her bed’s feet at night, ready to pull her "in pieces." Here would begin the first witch trial in North American history. Yes. The first ever witch trial in North America was in East Hampton nearly thirty-five years before the infamous Salem trials.
This, of course, changed everything for me.
The outcome of the Easthampton trial was very different to the Salem trials. The town came out in force, telling a litany of colourful tales cataloguing various witchy behaviours against Goody Garlick, someone many of them knew and already had a beef with from their time as neighbours in Lynn, Massachusetts, before the establishment of the new Easthampton colony. But when the case was deferred by the Easthampton magistrates to the higher court in Hartford, Connecticut, Goody Garlick got lucky. John Winthrop, Jr., who would oversee her case, was a rare thing in Puritan society: a sceptic. In today’s terms he would probably be called a scientist. He sort to explain the mystic rather than cower from it. He saw witchcraft cases as a community pathology, and any that he oversaw (several in other districts over the next decade) he took a moderate approach to, ensuring not to offend the town while pressuring the ‘witches’ to better conform to societal norms.
In the end, Elizabeth Garlick was found not guilty. Not quite the same as innocent, but enough to save her. It ensured the town was not disrespected in their fevered persecution but also sent a message for the emerging community to sort its s**t out.
“It is desired and expected by this court that you should carry neighborly and peaceably without just offense, to Jos. Garlick and his wife, and that they should do the like to you.”
- John Winthrop, Jr.
There were no more accusations of witchcraft in Easthampton after that. The township would go onto prosper and grow into the place we now know as the modern, glamorous East Hampton locale, with none of the smear that would fall on the town of Salem after it was caught up in witch fever, hanging nineteen of its citizens and being forever tied to that horror.
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| (Eleni: gorgeous sprayed edges!) |
It was a magical moment in the development of Ghosted when I discovered the Goody Garlick story. I couldn’t believe it. It sort of felt fated. It set in my heart a special feeling for this book that I carried with me, never losing faith up against the indifference to paranormal romance in the traditional publishing space, until the hunger for these stories was recognised again, and Ghosted finally got its chance.
I used the story of the Easthampton witch trial as the jumping off point for the witch aspect of my mystery. I utilised names from the trial throughout the book, mixing them up a bit to make them my own. I stayed true to the first settler history of the area, tapping into historical points, studying the architecture pre and post-civil war, and familiarising myself with old maps and the changing landscape. Even reading up on local haunted tales, another springboard for a scene in the book. I think this ended up enriching my story — having this historic aspect at the heart of my very contemporary romance. It gave it a depth and a layer of realism to the otherwise fantastical premise.
I did end up moving Ghosted to a fictional town called East Mill, an amalgamation of East Hampton and Mill Pond — two Long Island townships. But the reason for moving away from a real place to a place of my making was because, at the time, we weren’t allowed to travel off our giant island in the middle of the Pacific, and the research trip I had booked got cancelled when we were all grounded.
But I’m so glad I moved to a town of my making, because it absolutely freed me up to make that town my own, even if East Mill is still steeped in the surprising, true, and little-known, witchy history of East Hampton.
It’s amazing what happens when you’re writing a book. The little moments that can drive your story in one direction or another. Writing really is a magical experience and Ghosted is definitely filled with that magic.
Ghosted
The dead aren't the only ones with unfinished business...
It’s been two years since professional ghost-whisperer Holly Daniels ghosted Callum Jefferies — successful paranormal podcast host, unsuccessful boyfriend. So when he reaches out asking for her help investigating the infamous East Mill haunted house, Holly is hesitant to get involved, despite his infuriating charm.
But Holly’s curiosity gets the better of her, and when they arrive in East Mill and take up adjoining rooms at a rundown bed-and-breakfast, something in the air stirs up old feelings. If only the local ghosts would give her some peace and quiet to work out what those feelings are . . .
As their investigation unfolds, Holly and Callum unearth a string of suspicious deaths linked to the house, one of which is bound up with East Mill’s seventeenth-century witch trials. But Callum is hiding something, and with vengeful spirits around every corner, Holly will have to risk everything — including her psychic powers — if they’re going to get out of this house of horrors alive.
Amy Hutton
Amy is in a long-term relationship with Disneyland. She loves to travel, is passionate about Halloween, and has a fierce and unwavering commitment to Hallmark Christmas movies. When not busy toying with her character’s emotions, she’s probably hanging out with her rescue dog, Buffy, or lost in the pages of her latest favourite romance read.
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