This is the review for my holiday tale A Christmas Canticle from A Grave Interest website.
A Christmas Canticle is available on Amazon.com in both kindle and paperback.

Book Review: A Christmas Canticle by Frank E. Bittinger

For those of us who love a good ghost story, no matter what time of year it is, Frank E. Bittinger provides a fun holiday read with A Christmas Canticle.

Channeling Charles Dickens' novella A Christmas Carol for inspiration, Bittinger gives us his version of Ebenezer Scrooge - Bronson Ghostley, a demanding gothic horror author, paranormal television star, and all-around media personality who has no time for sentiment or holidays.

This twist on the familiar holiday tale has been up-dated to the 21st century complete with cell phones, DVDs and the internet. Although the story is predictable as to the purpose of the visiting spirits (And how could it not be?), Bittinger leads us along with enough interesting details that we accept Ghostley as a modern-day Scrooge.


His spin on Marley’s ghost is unique and interesting, especially when you begin to understand the backstory of Ghostley’s childhood. The Ghost of Christmas Past has a unique vision, offering Ghostley “two sides of the same coin.”

The Spirit of Christmas Present provides more illumination into what makes Ghostley tick, reminding him, and us, that “even when we can see, sometimes we are still blind.”

The final spirit, the dreaded Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come, is a “real bite in the ass” according to Ghostley. But the death coach that propels Ghostley into the future does seem pretty cool!

All in all, A Christmas Canticle is an enjoyable holiday read offering a message that transcends religious ideology and simply asks that we treat our fellow man, woman, and the animals, with respect and caring.

[The Youngblood’s 1960s song Get Together kept running through my mind as the perfect soundtrack for this book:
Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another
Right now]


The Author and A Friend
Bittinger originally wrote his book as a Kindle exclusive to raise money for animals in need.  Now available in paperback, a portion of the royalties from A Christmas Canticle are used to assist in rescuing and caring for animals that have been abused and neglected. So go ahead, order the book and enjoy the guilty pleasure of reading a rejuvenated Christmas novella by the fire knowing that you're helping to save lives, too.

A Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good read!

~ Joy


About the Author:
Over the centuries, Frank Bittinger has experienced many existences. In this incarnation, Mr. Bittinger is a vegan who lives and writes in Western Maryland, sharing his home with a menagerie of pets, several alternate personalities, and the occasional ghost. One of his favorite pastimes is taking walks in old cemeteries in the evening. Ancient Egypt holds a fascination for him; he has a scarab beetle tattoo between his shoulder blades as well as a collection of Egyptian items and books in his deep, dark red bedroom. Learn more about the author at his web site: http://www.frankebittinger.com


Book Details:
A Christmas Canticle by Frank E. Bittinger
Published and available at  Amazon   (2014)

Baltimore, Maryland, a very historic city, has its share of ghostly figures, one of the most famous being Black Aggie, but there are a number of others.

Westminster Presbyterian Cemetery, or Western Burying Ground, is located in Baltimore, MD, and arguably its most famous resident is the man himself, Edgar Allan Poe (19 January 1809 – 7 October 1849) is reputed to be Baltimore's most haunted cemetery, and it can indeed be found on many lists of most haunted cemeteries.

Upon learning of my lifelong desire to visit Westminster and the grave of Edgar Allan Poe, my friend and paranormal investigator Nancy Stallings encouraged me to do so. She told me about the time she and her team made their own midnight visit and said I would very much enjoy the cemetery, also telling me I would be safe as long as I showed my usual respect.

Finally, after all the years of anticipation, I was going to go and I couldn't have been more excited. So. on Saturday 19 September 2015, my good friends Tammy and Lea Ann took me to realize my dream of visiting Edgar Allan Poe.

Coming to a stop at the corner, I exclaimed “There it is!” to my friends Tammy and Lea Ann. If we had known exactly where we were going and had stopped just a few second sooner, we would have been able to park right in front of the open gate, right there where Poe, his young bride, and his mother-in-law are interred. It's a breathtaking sight to see the monument right on the other side of the wrought iron fence from the street. At least, it is for me. They knew what they were doing when they exhumed him, reburied him up front, and erected the big marker.

We turned left at the corner and parked on the right hand of the street, and then walked back up to the front gate to enter. Just seeing the wall and gate and church from the street is an experience.

The Screaming Skull of Cambridge, Maryland, rumored to be the skull of a murdered minister, is buried here—allegedly encased in cement with its mouth bound to stifle its horrendous screams—but we didn't as about that and there weren't any muffled, horrific screams shattering the atmosphere. Perhaps on the next visit.

For being in the midst of the city, the grounds were eerily quiet and very peaceful. All three of us remarked on that as soon as we walked through the gate. It felt as though the sounds of the city faded away.

Strangely enough, even though we were informed by the volunteer there were other people in the cemetery, not to be afraid if we see someone, there wasn't anyone else until we'd strolled through the property and taken all the pictures we'd wanted to take. Then we noticed other people had begun to enter the cemetery.

Finding the original resting place of Edgar Allan Poe, his burial spot from 9 October 1849 to 17 November 1875, is exceptionally easy. All one has to do is follow the brick path from the front entrance, where his new spot and the large monument is located, to where the bricks end, all the way to nearly the back corner.

Sources indicate Poe was technically reburied on 1 October 1875, the dedication ceremony was held on 17 November 1875.

For a man who was originally buried without a gravestone and didn't have one for many years, except for a simple sandstone block that read “No 80,” he ended up with two very nice ones.

Westminster Hall and Burial Ground—formerly the Westminster Presbyterian Church—was constructed over a part of the original cemetery, approximately a third. The church is immense considering the plot of land it was constructed upon, so I can see how it would cover at least a third. The graveyard still exists as a catacomb underneath the church. Lea Ann, Tammy, and I did not get to see the catacombs during our visit on Saturday 19 September 2015. Touring the catacombs is by appointment only and we decided we'd just have to make an appointment and come back for another visit.

The cemetery is very well-kept and not nearly as big as I'd anticipated. An atmosphere of serenity, peace, calm, however you wish to term it, permeated the grounds on the day of our visit. The weather was very nice—neither too warm nor too cool. Of course the sun brightly, but there were still corners filled with shade from the trees and the walls of the burying ground.

We followed the brick path until it ended at nearly the rear corner, and found Mr. Poe's original resting spot. Of course, the first thing I did after greeting him, just in case he was hanging around the spot, was lie down and take pictures of what his view would have been. Truth be told, I could have closed my eyes and taken a nap if I could have been sure no one would have called the police to come and cart me away, that's how serene it was.

Before my friends caught up with me, I read my poem/song lyrics Beneath the Shadow of the Raven to Mr. Poe since I'd had in mind dedicating it to him when I'd originally written it. I know he appreciated it and gladly gave me because I received what I interpreted as a sign while I was still prostrate upon his original grave site: a bird landed on my chest and stared straight into my eyes before taking off. Now, I know it wasn't a raven or even a crow, but I believe it was a sign from Mr. Poe himself, or one heck of a coincidence.

A very similar, if not the same, bird landed on the grave stone right before Tammy snapped a picture of me. It landed, looked at us, Tammy exclaimed, “Look at that,” and then it flew off again.

I leave it up to you to decide.

Do you believe? (Cue The X-Files whistling theme music now.) Do you want to believe?

In what? you might ask.

In life on other planets, of course. With scientists estimating 8.8 billion (that's billion with a B) Earth-like habitable planets in our galaxy the Milky Way alone, Vegas would give you great odds on there being life on at least one of those planets. That's just possible habitable planets; there are many billions more not estimated to be habitable--by our standards, at least. Who's to say our standards for habitation are the only possible standards anyway?

Now just attempt to imagine, if there are an estimated 8.8 billion habitable planets in our galaxy alone, how many there could possibly be in the entire never ending universe. (I don't think I can say entire in the same description as never ending.) Try this one for size: scientists can only seem to agree on an acceptable range of estimation and it is at least 100 billion to 200 billion or more galaxies in the observable universe.

That is awesome in the true definition of the word.

And why am I bringing this up?

The answer is simple: I believe there is intelligent life out there somewhere in the universe and I would like to share an incident with you that happened over a century ago in a small town, well before the infamous Roswell, NM, incident. What surprised me is it doesn't seem as though a whole lot of people seem to know about it.

17 April 1897. Aurora, Texas. What is known as the Aurora Airship.

This picture to the left is of the original newspaper article that appeared following the incident in the Dallas Morning News.

As with the Kecksburg, PA, incident, there were a multitude of witnesses to what they referred to as an "airship" as it streaked across the sky early that morning. The opening of the article seems to reference the fact that this airship wasn't a whole big surprise, stating "the airship which has been sailing across the country."

This statement leads me to believe there had been sightings of it before the date of the crash on Judge Proctor's farm, where the airship struck the tower of the windmill and exploded. Indeed, the author of the article, Mr. Haydon, writes of the airship's flight trajectory and states it sailed directly over the town's public square, basically in full view of the people, as it flew over Aurora. And not at a high altitude, either. The airship is described as flying low.

Why would this sight of an airship in the sky in 1897 startle and astound people?

This incident occurred easily over six years before the Wright brothers took their historic first controlled, sustained flight on 17 December 1903 at Kitty Hawk, so there could not have been any flying vessels cruising through the skies in 1897 because we hadn't invented them yet. Or should I say there couldn't have been any Earthly flying vessels cruising over Aurora, Texas, early that April morning?

Several documentaries have been made about the Aurora, Texas, airship as well as a 1986 television movie called The Aurora Encounter. The film has only the most tenuous connection with the facts as we know them concerning this incident.

There are those who claim it was debunked as a hoax, that the article was written as a joke, but the proof of that is as scarce as the evidence of a real spaceman crashing in Aurora. Mr. Haydon is long dead so we can't ask him about his motives. And permission to excavate the grave site has been repeatedly denied. One potential explanation I've come across concerns an epidemic of cholera during the time period causing deaths and since these victims are buried in the cemetery, the town is loathe to stir up the soil. From my research, it seems the outbreak was spotted fever, a tick-borne infection with Rocky Mountain spotted fever being the most lethal, and not cholera. I don't know which spotted fever caused the outbreak, but I can understand the desire to not stir up the burial ground after the outbreak victims were buried, even if it is over a century later.

So who is to say who is buried beneath the bent limb of that old tree in the Aurora Cemetery? I'd still like to visit, just because I want to do so.

Now, I'm not trying to change your beliefs. Either you believe life exists elsewhere in the universe or you don't, and nothing I can present to you will sway you one way or the other. I simply want to make you think, and if you're going to think it might as well be about something as interesting as this.

I remember being entranced many years ago by an article I was reading about a dollhouse built by a loving father for his little girl. In fact, the article had such a profound effect on me I cut it out and kept it pressed between the pages of a big, thick book for safe-keeping, taking it out to reread every so often. The article remained pressed between the pages of that book for nigh unto twenty years.

After I'd bought my home in my late twenties, I eventually got around to doing what I'd always wanted to do--frame the article to hang in my office/library in my house. The picture hung on the wall from then up until 28 May 2008 when an arson fire destroyed my home along with my possessions.

Miraculously, after all the debris had been cleared away and contractors had worked on the house enough for me to move back home, I started finding some things around the house I knew had been destroyed in fire, finding them in places such as in the new upper cabinets in the kitchen, under the cushions on the new sofa, in the new bathroom medicine cabinet. I still to this day believe the ghosts tried to save things they knew held great sentimental value to me and brought them back to me, but that's a whole different story for another day.

One of the items that made its way back to me was the framed article about little Nadine Earles and her dollhouse that had hung on the wall of a room that had been completely gutted by fire. The frame and glass were somehow intact. The article itself had a few water stains on it and it's yellowed, but other than that it was in perfect condition. This is the framed article. It is doubly valuable to me because it is something from my childhood and because it somehow managed to find its way back to me after the fire.

Like Rosalia Lombardo, I also wrote a little bit about Nadine Earles in my book Angels of the Mourning Light.

The place is Lanett, Alabama. The year is 1933. Four year-old Nadine Earles has been hinting she wants a dollhouse for Christmas. In November, she was diagnosed with diphtheria. Her parents, Julian Comer Earles and Alma Earles, hoping to make her feel better, gave her early Christmas gifts of a doll and a tea set. But what Nadine really wanted was her dollhouse, which, unbeknownst to her, her father had already begun to build on the property.

Her father told her she would have to wait until Christmas, to which Nadine replied, in the true fashion of an expectant child, "Me want it now."

Unfortunately, little Nadine would never get to play in her dollhouse. Weakened from the respiratory tract infection, she contracted pneumonia and died the week before Christmas, on 18 December.

Nadine Earles was laid to rest on Christmas Eve 1933.

Her favorite wanted to fulfill his promise to his little girl. He had the partially-built dollhouse moved to the cemetery. By the Spring of 1934 little Nadine finally had her dollhouse. Nadine's dollhouse was built over her grave so she would always have it. And each year on birthdays and holidays her parents would place gifts they'd bought for their daughter inside the dollhouse. They even held Nadine's fifth birthday there, celebrating with cake and ice cream.

Inscribed on the headstone inside:
"Our Darling Little Girl, Sweetest In The World
April 3rd, 1929 – December 18th, 1933
Little Nadine Earles
In Heaven We Hope To Meet"

Along with Nadine's demand:
"Me want it now"

Visitors can still visit the cemetery and see it for themselves. Over the years different people and organizations have taken it upon themselves to see to the upkeep on Nadine's dollhouse, cleaning, painting, fixing, and even decorating for holidays and occasions. Visitors come by, some stop to talk to Nadine, others leave notes and cards in the dollhouse's mailbox.

Her mother and father are now buried in the little yard that surrounds the dollhouse, not far at all from their beloved little girl. Instead of a macabre tale, it's a demonstration of the profound love a parent possesses for their child.

I have always wanted to visit Rosalia Lombardo in Palermo, Sicily, and Nadine Earles in Lanett, Alabama. Perhaps one day I will have the opportunity to do just that.

There is nothing I enjoy more than reading a good book, unless it’s watching a good movie, and the best movies sometimes are adaptations of good books. So I decided I would compile a list of exactly that:

13 of My Favorite Horror Films Based on Novels

1) Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin (1967)

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Both the book and film are hauntingly stylish on a subdued grand scale. Perhaps my favorite film of all time. It’s fun to root for the bad guys when they are this fantastic. Beethoven's Für Elise being played on the piano in the background, coming from another apartment somewhere in the Bram, only ups the creep factor. The phrase "Rosemary’s baby" has become part of the lexicon to describe a certain type of child.

2) Psycho by Robert Bloch (1959)

Psycho (1960)

If you don’t know the name Norman Bates then you must have never had access to books, television, or films. This film can scare the hell out of you, even if you go into it telling yourself it’s a black comedy. Hitchcock reportedly bought the film rights for $10,000 because Bloch had no idea to whom he was selling them, and Hitch tried his best to keep the plot of the film a secret for as long as possible, including buying up copies of the book so people couldn't read it and see the ending.

3) The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham (1957)

Village of the Damned (1960)

Village of the Damned (1995)

Knowing Cuckoo birds are notorious for destroying the eggs of other birds and replacing them with their own for the other birds to hatch and raise is a stunning parallel for the children in both the book and movies. The unknown origin of the children is one of the things that makes the storyline so successful.

4) Audrey Rose by Frank De Felitta (1975)

Audrey Rose (1977)

It’s a haunting story that sheds light on the possibility of previous existences. It also shows how far a parent will go in the name of love for a child.

5) Haunted by James Herbert (1988)

Haunted (1995)

Possibly my favorite haunted house book because it includes all the creepy ambiance you could ask for. The film version is a good adaptation—as a standalone film it would be very good—but it would have been much better had it not altered some extremely significant plot points from the novel. I won’t give spoilers, but they should have kept these plot points the same.

6) The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty (1971)

The Exorcist (1973)

Deeply disturbing and engrossing storyline. This, like Psycho had done, terrorized the audience in a whole new way. I still say Linda Blair was robbed of her Academy Award.

And

Legion by William Peter Blatty (1983)

The Exorcist III (1990)

This book and film are vastly underrated; both are well-done and stylishly dark, and the film contains a scene that makes me jump every time I watch it even though I know it’s coming. It's creepy in a spectacular way.

7) The Bad Seed by William March (1954)

The Bad Seed (1956)

Children can be damned creepy in horror films--Gage Creed in Pet Sematary is arguably the finest example of this—and the young actress who plays Rhoda does a bang-up job in this film. And, :Ike Rosemary's Baby, the phrase Bad Seed has become a description for a certain type of child.

8) The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker (1986)

Hellraiser (1987)

Utterly original, grossly terrifying, and you cannot tear your eyes from the page or the screen. This is the origin of the iconic horror figure the Cenobite Pinhead. Clive Barker has a way of uncovering nightmares and bringing them to life.

9) The Woman in Black by Susan Hill (1983)

The Woman in Black (1989 British television film)

The Woman in Black (2012)

A dark, Gothic ghost story that captures your attention. The story unfolds in such a way you are on the edge of your seat, and the woman in black elicits both your sympathy and your terror as her secrets are revealed.

10) Ghost Story by Peter Straub (1979)

Ghost Story (1981)

It is just what it promises: a ghost story. And, man, is it well-done. The book is well-written, the film is well-acted, and it’s an experience to enjoy on a winter’s night. It just goes to show you the past can come back to haunt you because it doesn't have an expiration date...and sometimes revenge is better than Christmas.

11) Uneasy Freehold by Dorothy Macardie (1941)

The Uninvited (1944)

Not an horrific ghost story, not an especially scary one, but significantly creepy and sometimes that’s all you need to have to enjoy an evening. Settle in and allow the creepiness to unfold.

12) Thor by Wayne Smith (1992)

Bad Moon (1996)

The book is different from the film in that it tells the story from the German Shepherds point of view, a unique way to tell a story. The movie version met with unfavorable reviews, but I liked it and I’m not a werewolf type of guy.

13) The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1891)

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

Disturbing. That’s the best way I can describe this story. Delightfully disturbing and this film version is the one I enjoy watching the most out of all the versions I’ve seen.


And maybe some time in the near future there will be a film version of my own Into the Mirror Black.

Good evening and welcome to my lair.

There are so many interesting true stories out in the world, stories which fascinate me to no end. One such story concerns Rosalia Lombardo, the Sleeping Beauty of the Capuchin Catacombs.

I incorporated a little bit about Rosalia in my novel Angels of the Mourning Light, the book I refer to as a different kind of ghost story.

Born 13 December 1813, little Rosalia died from pneumonia on 6 December 1920. She was one of the last to be entombed in the Capuchin catacombs of Palermo in Sicily. Yes, those famous catacombs.

What makes Rosalia's story so infamous is not her life or her death but what happened after she died. Technically what didn't happen after she died. You see, little Rosalia's body was embalmed in such a way, using a formula and technique that was thought lost until only recently, that it didn't decay. So good was the embalming that x-rays of her body have shown intact organs still inside.

The photo below is very nearly the same image I first saw of Rosalia when I read about her for the first time quite a number of years ago and it has stuck with me. It hasn't haunted me, at least not in a bad way.

The nickname the Sleeping Beauty comes from the very same reason for which Rosalia is famous: for almost a century, little Rosalia looked as if she was a sleeping child instead of an embalmed corpse.

Such was the love her father had for her that he sought out the best embalmer of the time. Yes, the formula and technique used by Alfredo Salafia, a famous embalmer of of his time, preserved Rosalia in such a manner that the first signs of decomposition, mainly a discoloration, did not begin to show until about 2009.

Steps have been taken to help keep Rosalia out of the grips of decomposition. Originally, she reposed in her glass-topped coffin in a small chapel at the end of the catacombs. Now, she and her coffin have been moved and placed in an hermetically sealed glass enclosure filled with nitrogen gas to stave off decay.

I've always found myself fascinated with this story. The scientific aspect of the near-perfect embalming technique/formula aside, wouldn't it be nice to imagine the love her father had for her kept her in such life-like condition for nearly a century?

Here is an informative video about the Sleeping Beauty.

And you may enjoy this video, as well. Please be aware some words in the English subtitles are incorrect but the meaning can still be understood.