Writing the Memoir I Was Afraid to Write

For years, people told me I should write this book. And for years I said no. I wasn't afraid of the paranormal content — I'd been living with that my entire life. What frightened me was everything else: the abuse, the addiction in my family, the kind of personal truth that doesn't fit neatly into a ghost story. Writing about hauntings was one thing. Writing about what made me vulnerable to them was something else entirely.

The moment I decided to write Friend or Foe, Forever Haunted wasn't dramatic. There was no sign from the other side, no voice telling me it was time. I was sitting at my kitchen table in Saint James City — before my move to North Fort Myers — reading through old case notes, and I realized that every investigation I had ever conducted was, in some way, an attempt to understand my own story. The people who called us were living versions of what I'd experienced — frightened, isolated, desperate to be believed. And I thought: if I don't tell the truth about what happened to me, who will? Who will show them that they're not alone?

Writing this book was the hardest thing I have ever done — harder than any investigation, harder than any encounter. But when I finished the last page, I understood something I hadn't before: the most haunting thing in my life was never the entity that followed me. It was the silence I kept for so long. This book is the end of that silence.