Pierre Renaldo
Ironshore
Pierre Renaldo
A supernatural thriller based on true life events
Author’s comments and synopsis
Throughout the history of man, countless societies have believed in supernatural events and practiced occult rituals in support of those beliefs. Modern cultures have been involved in tracking these manifestations, some witnessed by multitudes, others by a few or only one, making those particular events progressively less credible due to diminishing numbers supporting the authenticity of the phenomena.
Supernatural investigators have drawn many conclusions about these episodes of the bizarre and most often come to the determination that they are outright fraud, mass hysteria, hallucination, dementia on the part of one or more of the observers, hoaxes, pranks or practical jokes, and on very rare occasions, they have had no logical explanation, leaving the entire matter to smolder and die out in the archives of paranormal history.
Ironshore describes such events that have no logical explanation, said phenomena having been observed by many persons of good and sober reputation, whom I personally interviewed. Most interviewees had no knowledge of other witnesses who had agreed in startling detail on what they saw, describing the ghostly images in minuet accord with many previous onlookers. I discounted many local tales as myths, and the storytellers as superstitious perpetrators of local lore. The fact however remains that I had no explanations about what the believable witnesses insisted they saw, many on more than one occasion.
I can only conclude that there is something “to it” regardless of my personal disbelief.
I personally had lived in the very premises where the heinous deeds where done, in addition to where the ghostly phenomena had manifested itself to many believable witnesses. All of them had sworn that what they saw was human until they were later informed that what they thought was a living being was indeed the deceased/murdered prostitute, who is one of the lead characters in the novel.
An ancient sage of China advanced his theory about an afterlife by stating, “Death is merely a stop along the road of life, a passing into the great void, thence existence on a different plane.” Could it be that there is a phenomena that causes these differing planes of existence to collide or merge briefly at times, thereby producing the visions we call supernatural, when in effect they are an unusual physical occurrence, albeit of short duration, but nonetheless a product of the natural order of things?
William Shakespeare advanced an idea that “life is but a dream.” Buddha concurred with the Shakespearian theory by writing: “The meeting and parting of living things is as when clouds having come together drift apart again, or as when the leaves are parted from the trees. There is nothing we may call our own in a union that is but a dream.” They both seem to conclude that we live in at least a partial dream world, divided somewhat lopsidedly with those existence-planes of the quick and the dead.
So then, may we conclude that such things are partly real at least? Can it be that the plane in which spirits exist is sometimes drawn to join the world we consider that of the “living”, however briefly and that important communications are exchanged during those intervals? Frightening if true, but if the messages are important, we should be grateful rather than scared out of our wits.
I decided that this story should be told, and since a most heinous and grisly murder has gone unpunished, the perpetrator still at large, I decided to fictionalize the events in a novel, taking them far out of context and placing them in an era well advanced of the actual time line of the crime. The locale` of the story remains unchanged, a seaside resort on the Island of Roatan, largest of the Bay Islands, which lie in the western Caribbean Sea, and which island group forms the seaward boundary of the body of water known as the Bay of Honduras.
And thus our story begins:
Hysteria abounds among a group of people at a small seaside hotel, after several guests and employees see an apparition for the second time, repeating appearances on a rocky outcropping of the Ironshore Coast, adjacent to the hotel. Destiny has brought this group of hotel guests together, (as it did the real-life players in this tale), each having had difficult past circumstances as the reason for them being there, really victims of fate; they are unwittingly facing some ominous adversaries who are most unpleasant, one of them totally unknown to them, a potentially deadly living being, who may be the principal threat they all face.
At the outset of the drama, a local shaman comes to the hotel looking for his missing sister, last known to have lived at the hotel prior to its completion. She had been the lover of the original owner of the establishment; he was a probable lethal player in the mystery of the missing girl, said past events having created a conundrum that subsequently envelopes the guests and new owner. The scene turns sinister with ensuing visits of the shaman and an escort, a gigantic voodoo witch-woman who seemed to have unleashed the unsettling ghostly appearances that threaten to scare away the hotel guests. Was it all an omen of impending doom?
Betrayal, greed, jealousy, vengeance, uncut precious stones, illegal ancient artifacts trafficking, opium, a voodoo curse, the discovery of a wild girl being held captive in a native village and a likely mass murderer, all play a role in this tale of love, hate, and deadly deception, leading to an unforgettable spellbinding and shocking conclusion; a confrontation between two arch-rivals that takes place on a desolate, soon to be blood-splattered, white sand beach.
Then the final trump card is played by an unseen energy, leaving no doubt as to the existence of what we consider to be the supernatural; signs that send a chilling realization through one’s very being, supported by physical evidence that has no logical explanation. As Shakespeare stated it so perfectly, “There are more things in heaven and on earth than we mere mortals can imagine.” This tale of suspense presents a cast who are unforgettable characters, remembered long after the reading has ended.
Pierre Renaldo
Casa de la Sonrisa
Costa Cascada, Flowers Bay, Roatan
Islas de la Bahia, Republic de Honduras
Pierre Renaldo, a semi-retired general contractor, lives on the island of Roatan, the largest of the Bay Islands, thirty-five miles off the North Coast of Honduras. He has written many articles about hurricanes and hurricane resistant structures for several newspapers and magazines in Florida where he formerly resided.
He is author of Roatan Insights, a monthly news e-magazine of information about living/retiring in the Bay Islands, and building your dream home in a third world paradise. He is also editor of Coastwatcher: Caribbean West a weekly newsletter about life in the Bay Islands of Honduras and the North Coast.
Other works by this author:
Non-fiction:
Felix Prince of Cats and Mitch the Great Storm of the Century
How to Build Your Dream Home in a Third World Paradise
How to Survive In Third World Retirement: The Handbook
Fiction:
Red Dog Chronicles
