Paul's
Lair
Read the Interview with Lady Seer Here
Read the Garage Man of Marysville
Here
Read the Old Hag Syndrome article
here
Read Crop Circles: Doug & Dave Here
Read A Haunting in Pioneer Here
Read Morphing Transforming UFO's
Here
Read about Alese Osborn: Psychic
Diagnosing
Here
Read about Notorious BIG Here
Read about the Avatar or Hope vs. The
Avatar of Evil- Shannon & ROLDA.org
Here
Paul's Review of Brad Steiger's
new book
"Real Vampires"
Read about a Vampirish Goth Night
Here
Read about Xara the Zombris (Zombie)
Here
Read about Demonic Possession Here
Chantal and the Zombie Here
Read about A Haunted Night in Truckee
Here
Read the Ginger Henderson story here

Paul Dale Roberts, HPI General Manager, Paranormal Investigator & Ghostwriter

Shannon McCabe's HPI
Haunted and Paranormal Investigations International
www.HPIparanormal.net

Paul on Wikipedia

President of Jazma Online!  
www.jazmaonline.com

WPRT Paranormal Radio - Content Editor

Order Now!
Brad Steiger’s Real Vampires, Night Stalkers, and Creatures from the Darkside!

Email:
Pauld5606@comcast.net

Paranormal Cellular Hotline: 916 203 7503
(for comments on this story).

If you have a possible investigation call:
1-888-709-4HPI

Copyright 2009 Paul Dale Roberts, HPI Ghostwriter Copyright 2009 all rights reserved.
Romanian Animals need your help!
Please
donate to Shannon & Paul's
favorite Cause, ROLDA.org
Witchapalooza!  Kristy Swanson &
Malcolm McDowell interviews
here
Haunted Gay High School, TX Here
"Crystal"
Stevie Nicks
Practical Magic Soundtrack
A Haunting interview about FEMA here
Interview with Pamela Glasner, Author of “Finding Emmaus”
Interviewed by Paul Dale Roberts, President of
www.jazmaonline.com - HPI General Manager
-
www.hpiparanormal.com

Please note: nothing said in this interview is a
spoiler —- everything here is either something
that is established in the very beginning of the
book or is stated in such a way so as not to
give away any part of the suspenseful story.


Question: Pamela, give us a briefing on what
“Finding Emmaus” is all about.

Answer: Francis Nettleton, a 17th century Empath
living in Puritan New England, a society steeped
in myths and intolerance, grows into adulthood
believing himself to be insane. Inadvertently, he
sets in motion a murder which will reverberate
through four families and three centuries.

Wiccans have their Book of Shadows;
Christians have their Bible. Even the
secular world has its encyclopedias, but
for Empaths there was nothing until Francis
sacrificed everything to spend his life creating
one authoritative body of knowledge, a central
set of guiding principles meant to put an end to
the relentless persecution and needless suffering
of anyone who did not - or could not - fit the
societal mold.  He named it The Lodestarre.

opportunity: a second chance at life.  At fifty-four, after she is told that, rather than being insane, she’s
more likely Empathic, she sets out to find Francis and the legendary Lodestarre, both 300 years gone,
in a last-ditch hope that she can finally learn to live. In the process, she unwittingly becomes a
champion for the voiceless millions who are being victimized by a corporate machine of such
omnipotent political power that she puts her life in jeopardy when she challenges the all-but-Three
hundred years later, Katherine Spencer, after years of hospitals and drugs, is given a rare unstoppable
pharmaceutical industry, America’s most powerful and affluent lobby.

“Finding Emmaus” is a very dark fictional yet factually-based novel in which two otherwise ordinary
people find a way to transcend time and death to try and save millions of others whose lives are
shattered because they, too, have been erroneously labeled mentally ill.

~~~~~~~~~~~
It was released on October 1st of this year and has been very well received.  Among those who’ve read
it, the response has been enthusiastically positive, with an audience equally divided between men and
women.



Question:  Wow!  How did you come up
with this idea of having 2 empaths living
300 years apart, both working in unison
to save the world?

Answer: Well, originally the story did not
involve two Empaths, it only involved one:
Katherine, who lives in the 21st century.  
But as I was writing it, I liked what I had,
but it wasn’t really knocking my socks off.  
And then one day I was standing in front
of this beautiful drawing I've had for about
25 years, a drawing of a very old man who
really did live in Vermont, who sat in the
shade of a covered bridge weaving baskets.  
The man’s name was Frank.  

Of course, he would have been called
Francis three hundred years ago, so that’s
where I got the name of the story’s second
principal character.

And staring at him, the whole story just sort
of popped into my head: the name of the new
England town where the story takes place
became Weaver's Bridge and Francis was
the ‘Father Of Empathy’, he literally ‘wrote
the book on it.’ And then I thought: But the book disappeared and faded into legend.  

On the heels of that thought came: well, if the book faded into legend, it must have been written a very
long time ago, and since modern American history is only about 390 years old, the decision of when it
happened was made for me.

I knew the story was going to take place in Connecticut and that narrowed it down even further, since
the earliest white settlements/chartered towns in Connecticut were in the 1630’s.  

And then I asked myself (AND answered myself, something I do pretty regularly, whether there’s
anyone around or not!) “why did the book fade into legend?”  The answer was, if you were white and
lived in Connecticut Colony in 1630-something, you were a Puritan.  

Puritan philosophy was based on a very literal (at least, the Puritan’s very literal)interpretation of the
Bible.  If something wasn’t specifically addressed in the Bible, it had no place in their lives.  And
Empathy, which has the appearance of mental illness to anyone who does not understand it or is
completely ignorant of its existence, certainly would not have been excepted under any circumstances.

So even though Francis ‘wrote the book on it’ —- the book called The Lodestarre, which is the name of
the series —- he would never have been able to publish it or in any other manner disseminate the
information because it would have been considered blasphemous at best, the work of the Devil at worst
and grounds for getting close up and personal with the inquisitor’s noose. So it was plausible that The
Lodestarre would have hidden away for centuries, in the hopes that some day someone, in a less
fearful, more tolerant society, might come along and unearth it.  

Which is what happens in “Finding Emmaus”, three centuries after Francis creates it.  

Question:  Can you tell us some more about Francis and Katherine, your two main characters?

Answer: Francis and Katherine are both Empaths who suffer abominably because, not only are they
the victims of those around them who do not understand the gift of Empathy, but they, themselves, do
not understand it.  Each suffers the torments of the world in which they live.  

In Francis’ time, the 17th century, the medical community honestly believed that lunacy (the mentally ill,
which is what Empaths would have been perceived as, were not referred to as ‘patients’ until many
years later) was contagious and that the ONLY cure for lunacy was physical torture.  Lunatics were
therefore segregated from society into places like Bethlam Royal Hospital (sometimes referred to as
Bedlam), and subjected to the most hideous treatment imaginable —- and then treatment which is not
imaginable.  This treatment is all well documented and described in gruesome and graphic detail in
numerous historical sources.  It is also fairly graphically described in my book.  

In the New World, in Connecticut Colony, there would not have been an asylum like Bethlam, not back
then, so lunatics would have been locked away in a room in the family home, probably chained there to
prevent escape, or would have been put to death for the good of society and the repose and salvation
of the lunatic’s tortured soul.

In Katherine’s time the tortures and trampling of basic human rights are just as prevalent, though more
sophisticated.  

For example, as recently as twenty-eight years ago, twenty-seven states in our country were actively
forcing surgical sterilization on patients labeled mentally ill, even though, in most cases, there was (and
still is) no standard or definitive way to diagnose or prove the mental illnesses which those people were
thought to be victims of.  But they most certainly did become victims!

And, of course, there are the myriad psychotropic drugs which, 70% of the time, fail to have their
desired effect, but nearly all the time, have horrible, lasting, sometimes permanent, sometimes fatal,
side effects.  

Katherine lives this hell until her mid-fifties when an especially enlightened psychiatrist friend of hers
suggests that she is an Empath rather than a victim of mental illness.  

Question:  If this book became a movie, who would play Francis and who would play Katherine?

Answer: I’m smiling as I write the answer to this question because as I wrote the book, there were, in
fact, three characters whom I put actor’s faces to in order to “see” them move through their days and
interact with other characters.  I’m a very visual person and that’s how I write: I “see” the scene in my
head and then I write it.

However, I never did picture anyone specific for either Francis or Katherine, only for Michael, Carly and
Humphrey.  And I will leave that for the readers to guess!

That said, I think I could see Sir Ian McKellen as Francis (in the year 2008, as a 98-year-old ghost)and
perhaps Marcia Gay Harden as Katherine.  

Question: What other books have you written?
Answer: “Finding Emmaus” is my first novel. I’m presently working on book two of the series.

Question:  Can you tell us something personal about yourself?  Your family life, schools you went to.
How you became a writer.

Answer: I was born in the Bronx (in New York City) and raised in Queens. If you ever saw the movie
“Funny Girl”, that’s the life I grew up in: everyone’s mother was everyone else’s mother.  There were no
dividing lines amongst the families.  Nancy’s mother or Laurie’s mother could discipline me for
misbehaving just as my mother could discipline Diane or Ellen.  Didn’t matter; we were all like one big
family on a city block with 32 houses on each side of street.  A tiny microcosm which, to my young eyes,
seemed to encompass the entire world.

It never would have occurred to me that I was not welcome at Nancy’s table for any meal any more than
it would have occurred to Nancy that she was not welcome at Diane’s.

My parents decided we needed to leave NY when the neighborhood began to change and became too
dangerous to live in.  So we moved to Connecticut and, aside from the culture shock, I lost that feeling
of knowing down the core of my being that I belonged, that I was unconditionally accepted.

I've lived in some lovely places since and have made some wonderful friends, I belong to a fabulous
church and I am regularly surrounded by amazing, talented, remarkable people.  But nothing, I think,
ever compares to the friendships you make as a young child.

I've been writing as long as I can remember.  When my parents would send me away to camp, instead
of sending home post cards, I’d write essays!  The longest letter I ever sent to a friend from camp was
23 pages.  But that was way before the days of copiers (I’m dating myself here!) so I don't have any of
them.  Too bad, too, because it would have been interesting to be able to look back on them and see
what I wrote about, what I counted as important, from a child’s point of view.

I know I always wanted to write a book but I never believed I actually could.  I’d sit with paper and pen
and think to myself, “What could I possibly write about that anyone would be the least bit interested
in?”  And then one day, while standing in front of that drawing I mentioned earlier, the entire story of
“Finding Emmaus” just came to me —- all of it —- in less than 15 minutes.  And then I sat down and,
five months and seven hundred and sixty-two pages later, I had a novel.

Question: What are your hobbies and recreational activities?

Answer: I love horses.  I can go to a town fair and watch the equestrian events for hours and not get
bored.  I've had a few horses, but not for a while now because my life does not lend itself to that kind of
commitment and responsibility.

I also love reading, but I sort of go on a ‘reading hiatus’ when I’m writing, except for the non-fiction
research required for The Lodestarre series.  Although I recently got my hands on a lovely biography
of Increase Mather, a man with whom I became fascinated while I was writing “Finding Emmaus”.  He
was very involved in the Salem witch trials and, as such, I was prepared to hate him.  Instead, even
though I no longer need to delve into his life, after reading some of his sermons and learning the
comparatively small amount I've learned so far, I just can’t stay away from him.  So I guess he’s become
another hobby of mine.

Question: If you had 6 dinner guests, 3 historical and 3 fictional, who would they be and why?
Answer: Well, obviously, one would be Increase Mather. Despite his active role in the witch trials, I don’t
believe he agreed with condemning those people to death.  He actually apologized, but eventually he
recanted.  I think he was torn. I’m certain he was concerned for his safety and that of his family.  It’s
clear from writings that he was devoted to family. I’d love to ask him in person what it was like to be him,
Harvard graduate and professor, well-loved and well-respected minister, extraordinary orator and,
though not the hangman, definitely complicit in the deaths of those he privately deemed innocent. An
enigma if ever there was one.

The other two historical figures would be John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster and his mistress —-
and eventual wife —- Katherine Swynford, née (de) Roet. I fell in love with the two of them, and with
English history, when I read Anya Seton’s historical novel named “Katherine”, a wonderful tale about
their life-long love and the turbulent times in which they lived.  Katherine was actually sister-in-law to
Geoffrey Chaucer, the author of Canterbury Tales. I would love to know, first-hand, what their lives
were like in the 1300’s.

Far as fictional characters go, I think I’d enjoy chatting and sharing a glass of wine with Nick and Nora
Charles, fictional sleuths played by William Powell and Myrna Loy in the famed “Thin Man” films.  I can’t
imagine anyone more entertaining than the two of them, except perhaps Dr. David Huxley, the long-
suffering paleontologist from “Bringing Up Baby”.

Question:  What TV shows, movies do you like?
Answer: My favorite TV show, hands down, is Law and Order, followed closely by it’s cousin, Special
Victims Unit.  My favorite films are (in no particular order) Goodfellas; Beetle Juice; Corpse Bride; Harry
Potter and The Order of The Phoenix; The Girl In The Cafe; Baby Boom; How the Grinch Stole
Christmas!; Labyrinth; LadyHawke; Coal Miner's Daughter

Question: What are some of your favorite books?
Answer: Well, as I said earlier, Katherine by Anya Seton is my all-time favorite historical novel.  I’ve read
everything Terry Brooks has written and I adore Stephen King.  There is one book I've loved longer
than any other in my life, and that is “Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose” by Dr. Seuss.  

Question: What is your website address and how can someone contact you?
Answer: The web address for “Finding Emmaus” is
https://www.lodestarre.com/index.html and if anyone
wants to contact me, probably the easiest way is through Facebook. My ID is the same as my name:
Pamela Glasner.

Question: Thank you for the interview, any words of wisdom for your fans?
Answer: If I've learned anything at all through this experience of ‘suddenly’ writing a novel and
becoming a published author at the age of 55, it’s that nothing is more important than trusting that
voice inside. Some people call it intuition; I call it my gut. That doesn’t mean I never struggle with three-
o'clock-in-the-morning courage, but you can’t let the fear win.

You know, in the Olympics, the uneven parallel events, when the athlete comes off the bars?  She hits
the mat, bends her knees just a bit and then … you can just see it in her eyes when she knows with
everything in her that she absolutely ‘stuck’ that landing.

There’s a lot of advice out there and not all of it is good.  And I’m not saying, “Ignore everybody else”,
or “Stick your head in the sand” or “Get cocky” or “Don’t get an education” or “Don’t try and learn from
other people, especially people you respect.”  What I am saying is that, above all, there comes a time
when you just need to trust what’s going on inside you, the part of you that is truly YOU.  

True creativity comes from your heart and your soul and your gut and some inexplicable, insatiable
need to express it. And it can be anything.  It doesn’t have to be writing.  It doesn’t even have to be an
art form.

Inventing the light bulb and the process of pasteurization came from the same place in Edison and
Pasteur as my writing comes from in me.  Otherwise, who would spend so much time and energy doing
something over and over, in face of criticism or undisguised contempt or continuous failure, in the face
of never knowing if you’ll ever succeed or be appreciated, much less get one red cent for your
trouble?  

At some point you just have to shut out all the rest and look inside —- and if what you’re feeling
resembles that look in the athlete’s eyes when she sticks that landing — that’s when you know that you’
re doing what you’re supposed to be doing.
Interview with Medium Melodie here
HPI Haunted locations here