Special Guest Interview with Mark Spencer:

 A few weeks ago, I had the honor and special privilege of interviewing my favorite paranormal author, Mark Spencer, who wrote the best seller, A Haunted Love Story: The Ghosts of Allen House about his beautiful old home in Monticello, Arkansas.

          

           Spencer has been on a lot of the popular TV shows:  Paranormal Witness, My Ghost Story, Ghost Brothers, A Haunting, and several news segments regarding the Allen House. Spencer and his family have experienced many things in their home, including seeing doppelgangers, having items disappear only to find them days to years later, hearing voices, doors and cabinetry opening and closing themselves, and other phenomena since moving into their historic home 13 years ago.

          

            Spencer’s well known book, A Haunted Love Story: The Ghosts of Allen House, is about a real person: Ladell, a high-society woman who in 1948 lived in the home he lives in now. Spencer says one Saturday afternoon he was lead to his attic by Ladell’s ghost only to find many hidden love letters regarding a secret love affair between Ladell and a married man.

Spencer describes the fateful moment in his life. “A little voice was in my head that told me to go to the attic.” When he got to the attic the voice directed him where to look, and there he found an opening in the attic’s floorboards. “I reached into the opening and pulled out a brown envelope full of postmarked envelopes and letters addressed to Ladell.” Spencer says he even found some letters Ladell drafted but never finished. Some letters were from friends of Ladell’s but the ones that stood out were postmarked October 1948 and appeared to be love letters from  a married man named, Prentiss to Ladell just before her infamous suicide.

Spencer knew right away from scanning the flirty love letters that this must have been the real reason Ladell met such a tragic end and took her own life. Spencer says after he realized this he looked up from the letters and said aloud in the attic, “I’m sorry, Ladell.” He knew the sad outcome – that she had killed herself.

Before he found the letters, Spencer says he had not planned on writing a book about his home, only a few articles for the town’s interest; however after finding the letters, the well-known author states, “that was the day I decided to write a book.” Spencer explains he never did experience hearing the voice of Ladell again, but that day certainly changed his life forever!

          

           When asked him to describe his book for my readers, Spencer says his book “is a little of everything. It’s a memoir, it’s a ghost story, and lots more.” But most of all he wanted to create a narrative book based on a real person’s life that read a lot like a fictional story.   

This isn’t the first book the dean of the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Arkansas at Monticello has written. Mark Spencer originally began his career writing a collection of short stories in the 1980s. He also has written other novels such as: Love and Reruns in Adam’s County, The Weary Motel, and Images of America: Monticello, a local history, which he co-authored with Mary Heady.  He has earned many awards throughout his career.

After writing his popular first book about Ladell and the Allen House, Mark then wrote a second book from Ladell’s point of view after her death. In this book, titled Ghost Walking, Ladell is forced to confront her life and what it meant after learning she is dead. She seess reactions from her family and others in her small town after her suicide. She also sees her father as she journeys back through the times in her life. Now that she has died, she has the opportunity to examine her life and discover what it all meant and why she lived.

I asked the acclaimed author if he ever thought that Ladell (or her ghost) would have been upset after he had found the scandalous letters telling society why she had taken her life. “No,” he adds because she led him to find the letters in the attic. He thinks she was happy he found them.

In fact, Mark thinks Ladell is the one who lead him and his wife to BUY Allen House in the first place, which was a long battle, but eventually all worked out and the Spencer’s got the home. He states that he was even offered other jobs with a higher salary but through a series of many coincidences, Mark and his family were lead to the Allen House. Spencer trusts that Ladell did this all so he would find her letters and tell her true story.

He also states that throughout the years he has heard a popular opinion from the public that Ladell probably left after he had found the letters. But Mark says this simply isn’t true. Since finding the letters and writing his famous book, the family has found lots of evidence of Ladell during many ghost hunts and investigations in their home by TV shows and other private tours, and groups coming in their home. “She is definitely still in the Allen House,” states Spencer!

Spencer also goes on to say that he believes that, “Ladell can cross between dimensions and go back and forth which explains the difference between residual haunting and intelligent haunting.” Spencer adds his wife has witnessed on many occasions Ladell’s parents going about their everyday lives in the house – as if they were living! Once, he says his “wife saw Ladell’s father sitting around smoking a cigar and it did smell of cigar smoke. You could smell it!” says Spencer.

I addition, I asked Mark if he had ever experienced Ladell’s lover, Prentiss in their home? However he told me they haven’t and they don’t expect him to show up anytime soon.

I then asked Mark if he would tell me things that he and his family have experienced after his book was published. He described three incidents:

First, in April 2014, Mark walked into his bedroom and saw his wife with her back to him looking out the window. He couldn’t see her face, just the back of her hair as he walked up to her. “I was about to ask her a generic question and stopped behind her about to speak when she suddenly vanished as if she was never there.” After his “wife” vanished into thin air, Mark says, “a cold air swept over me. Then my real wife walked in through the same doorway I had just walked through a minute ago, and said, ’Why you standing there looking so stupid?’”

Second, another occurrence that seems to happen commonly since moving into the Allen House is that Rebecca, Mark’s wife, seems to lose small items such as her bank cards, and her cell phone. Little things seem to disappear in the house and they are found in random places, often places that they already checked previously. For example, Spencer told me of a time when Rebecca lost her cell phone. He says he came home and his wife was searching the house for her cell phone saying she had been looking for it for hours and just couldn’t find it. Mark says his thought was it must be in the attic because Allen, Ladell’s son, had been a trickster in life and liked to take and often hide their things. So he went up into the attic to look but it wasn’t there. 

Then, as he randomly walked through the house into their kitchen on the second floor, there his wife’s cell phone lay, clear as day, atop the kitchen counter for all to see. He knew he this room had already been searched and the phone hadn’t been there when they checked earlier.

Thirdly, when Spencer’s son was 4 years old, he would ask his dad when he got home from work if he (Mark) would take him (his son) upstairs to the attic to play with his friend. When Mark asked his son one day who his little friend was, his son said it was a little boy named Allen. Allen had been Ladell’s son who died at a young age but not when he was a child.

Another very interesting event that took place was on Ladell’s birthday. Rebecca went up into the attic to wish Ladell a Happy Birthday. She was streaming the encounter live on Facebook. As she was speaking to Ladell and interacting with her, Mark says, “Ladell answered indicating she did indeed know it was her birthday.”

FB: Ladell Birthday Video: 

https://www.facebook.com/theallenhousemonticello/videos/10156175307863788/

I then went on to ask the well-known author what the main thing he wants his fans to take away from A Haunted Love Story? Mark simply states very modestly, that he told Ladell’s life story “correctly and that people who read it reflect on their own lives and think about some things they have never thought about before.” He also wants readers to be entertained by the story and its history.

  I asked Mark if he has anything new coming out soon? To which the author replied, “No, because last fall his latest book was released An Untimely Frost.” This is quite a different genre then the author’s past works. Spencer describes his new novel as having “a bit of gruesome, a little horror, action, some psychological aspects, and some love and romance.” Spencer says his new novel “takes place on the Ohio River in Kentucky where people along the river see zombies coming out of the water. However past loved ones of the zombies, don’t see a zombie, they simply see the person they knew and loved, while the people who don’t know them see a zombie and are frightened.”

             So if you haven’t read some of Mark Spencer’s work I would definitely recommend picking up a copy of one of his books! Perhaps, A Haunted Love Story, (which is my favorite, of course), will be your choice or the author’s new book, An Untimely Frost where you can get a little zombie action! Either way, any of the popular author’s books will be enjoyable for sure!

      ©Rosella C. Rowe

For More Info:

Mark Spencer Website: www.authormarkspencer.com

Allen House Website: http://allenhousemonticello.com/Welcome.html

FB: Allen House: https://www.facebook.com/theallenhousemonticello