I spend a lot of nights talking about ghosts.
As a ghost tour guide here in the Smoky Mountains, I get to meet people from all over the country who come looking for stories about things that can't always be explained. Some are believers. Some are skeptics. Some aren't sure what they believe. That's part of what makes telling these stories so much fun.
But my interest in the paranormal didn't begin when I became a guide.
I'm also an experienced paranormal investigator, an author, and the Smoky Mountain Storyteller. I've spent years exploring haunted locations, investigating unexplained activity, researching stories, and—eventually—turning some of those ideas and experiences into fiction.
I'm incredibly grateful to Brad for giving me a little corner of this website where I can share some of those stories with you.
And I thought we'd start with a ghost story.
Sort of.
My novel ‘The Ghost Between Us’ takes place here in the Smoky Mountains. There are spirits in the book. There are unexplained noises, cold chills, things that move when they shouldn’t, attempts to communicate with the dead, and eventually some things that are considerably less friendly.
But that's not really where the story began.
It began with a different kind of ghost.
When I wrote the dedication for ‘The Ghost Between Us’, I wrote about something I think almost everyone experiences eventually: the ghosts of our past.
Maybe it's someone we lost.
Maybe it's a relationship that ended.
Maybe it's a place we haven't seen in twenty years.
Sometimes all it takes is a song on the radio, an old photograph, a familiar smell, or a drive past someplace we haven't thought about in years. Suddenly, someone who hasn't been part of our life for a very long time is standing right there in our memory.
For a moment, they're almost close enough to touch.
That's a haunting, too.
And that's where Toby Miller's story begins.
Toby and his wife, Anna, dreamed about someday moving to the mountains of Tennessee. They imagined the house they would have there and the life they would build together.
They even had a name for it.
The Forever House.
Their forever didn't happen the way they planned.
After losing Anna, Toby eventually comes to Tennessee carrying a promise he made to her. He finds his Forever House and begins trying to build a new life while still holding tightly to the old one.
Then he begins to realize he may not be alone in that house.
At first, it's subtle.
A feeling.
A chill.
That uncomfortable sensation that someone else is in the room.
And that's when one kind of ghost story slowly becomes another.
Over the coming weeks, I'll share selected scenes from ‘The Ghost Between Us’ here—not necessarily in order and definitely not enough to spoil the story. I'll choose moments that let you step inside Toby's world for a few minutes.
But ‘Stories from the Guide’ won't only be about my books.
We'll talk about ghosts, legends, haunted history, paranormal investigation, the Smoky Mountains, strange things that can't easily be explained, and probably a few things I've learned from spending my evenings walking around telling ghost stories.
Some will be fiction.
Some won't.
And every once in a while, you may have to decide which is which.
After all, everybody loves a good ghost story.
Especially when you're not entirely sure it's only a story.
— Pete Nunweiler
Ghost Tour Guide, Paranormal Investigator & Smoky Mountain Storyteller