Showing results by narrator "Lori Schafer" in Biographies & Memoirs

There's no such thing as ghosts. It's always a trick, a scheme devised by mere mortal men to keep people away from the site of the haunting or other creepy phenomenon.

It was the spring of 1989. I was 16 years old, a junior in high school and an honors student. I had what every teenager wants: a stable family, a nice home in the suburbs, a great group of friends, big plans for my future, and no reason to believe that any of that would ever change. Then came my mother's psychosis.

This is the moving yet deeply disturbing story of a middle-aged mother and a teenaged daughter torn apart by the sudden onset of the mother’s insanity. It details the severe paranoia and absurd delusions that began to control my mother’s behavior. It follows her transformation from loving parent to violent psychotic and my transformation from obedient daughter to terrified runaway. And it depicts the overwhelming revelatory moment when I finally learned she had died - six years before.

From the author of On Hearing of My Mother's Death Six Years After It Happened: A Daughter's Memoir of Mental Illness, Stories from My Memory-Shelf is the story of my life, told in short fiction and essays. Features author commentary on the real-life events that inspired the stories.  

Ever dreamed of spending a summer working in Alaska? I did...until I actually got there and saw what it was really like! A biographical short story/travel memoir. Also includes "Funeral for Charlie", a humorous real-life short story about a goldfish funeral gone awry.

My thoughts are inside me. They can never be exposed by a mere choice of outfit. Also includes my short essay "What I Learned from Watching Scooby-Doo."

The house was haunted. Everyone was sure of it....