TeamNerd Reviews: Guest Post: Supernatural Urban Legends by Sherry Soule

Supernatural Urban Legends

Author Sherry Soule chats about some fun Urban legends that inspired the settings in her Spellbound Series.

Hi everyone, I’m Sherry Soule—waving from the Bay Area, where it gets foggy even during the summer months. So, I’m cranking the air conditioner and chatting on Twitter about my love of YA books.

Thanks for letting me stop by today and chat about my YA series. It’s a thrill to get to be a guest and meet fellow booklovers. I have put together a few mysterious and intriguing urban legends about my series that surround the eerie township of Whispering Pines, California.

Urban Legend #1

Some researchers believe that certain demon races are actually the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim. (They are also considered to be Shadow People.) The origination of the Nephilim began with the legend of an archangel named Raziel. Urban legend states that Raziel escorted a sect of angels that were to instruct humans in morality.

Unfortunately, these angels began to educate man in sciences that God had deemed to be forbidden. These subjects included astrology, divination, and magic. The tutelage went on for centuries, until the angels began to pine for the human females.

After the fallen angels, or sometimes known as the Fallen, had sexual relations with the women, their unholy union resulted in the hybrid offspring called: Nephilim, which are the direct descendants of the antediluvian Fallen. Nephilim are also known as the Grigori or the Watchers.

It has been insinuated that one of the main reasons for the great flood, was not only to punish man, but to cleanse the earth of the Nephilim created from the union of fallen angels and human women. The flood banished most of the Fallen and their offspring into a Sheol.

So, do you believe in the Nephilim? What do you think will happen if they are ever freed?

Urban Legend #2

One haunted house claim that continues to be an urban legend is the infamous, Ravenhurst Manor in Whispering Pines. Books and stories have been written based on its hauntings and its reputation as one of California's most ghostly places.

Ravenhurst Manor’s first owner was a woman and dark sorceress named, Rowan Broussard. After her death, the estate was used as an all girl’s boarding school for many years. The sixty room Gothic mansion was listed for sale with the resident ghosts. Other odd things that occurred in in this house were: doors and windows that opened or closed on their own, cold drafts, whispering voices, and some visitors even claimed to see a dark shadowy figure roaming the halls.

However, Ravenhurst is most famously linked to the disappearance of six children during the years of 1964 through 1967. (After the school was closed, the estate became the property of the town before it was sold to an wealthy, oil magnate.) After the children’s' bodies were discovered buried within the walls of the house, obviously from less than peaceful circumstances, the town buried them in Silent Hollows Cemetery.

Did these Children buried on unconsecrated ground, lead to the strange tragedy that would make this mansion so famous?

Urban Legend #3

Ah, let’s move on to the zombie apocalypse!

Another interesting urban legend states that on September 28, 1941, during an eclipse, a zombie was spotted in Whispering Pines. To make matters worse, a fire at the local mill had swept through town. As day turned to night, more zombies appeared. Many townsfolk mistook the undead for dazed mill workers. After the residents received hugs from the zombies, they were bitten by these paranormals, and soon the epidemic spread across the town like wildfire.

To make matters worse, the roads and bridges connecting Whispering Pines to the rest of the Bay Area had burned in the fire. The townsfolk had no way to escape. Scores of people become lost when they chose to venture into the dark depth of Deadwood Grove rather than face the insatiable zombie menace.

Within days, the Paranormal Research Group (PRG) converged on Whispering Pines in a variety of aircraft. They established a base on the south side of the forest and went about the process of extermination. It took two weeks to secure the town. A total of 500 people were plague-ridden, an enormous number considering that there wasn’t a zombie vaccine available at this time.

Whatever the case, Whispering Pines’s zombie outbreak affected just under 600 people, making it one of the worst cases in U.S. history.

Are you prepared for a zombie apocalypse? What if zombies start showing up again?

Thank you so much for letting me chat up my YA series with all of you. It’s been an honor to share the eerie urban legends associated with the Spellbound Series. If you haven’t seized your copy of BEATIFULLY BROKEN yet, please do so. More thrilling and extraordinary adventures await you!

Author Bio: Sherry Soule is a writer blessed with a vivid imagination and lives in San Francisco, California. She writes supernatural tales of romance, magick, and demon slaying. Sherry has a morbid fascination with haunted houses. She adores cats. Loves to watch scary movies. And she's a total bookaholic. Aside from writing, she enjoys reading poetry, online shopping, digging through flea markets, and exploring old cemeteries and Victorian mansions.

Sherry Soule's debut YA novel, Beautifully Broken has been nominated by TRR reviewers for Best Paranormal Romance - Wizard and Witch/Sorcery (2011) at The Romance Reviews ("TRR").