Author Interview-Janice Oberding
I’ve been interested
in the paranormal since I was a child. My grandmother shared many stories of
ghosts and ghostly experiences of hers with me. Alas, none were about Nevada.
As a Nevadan, I love our state’s rich history, lore and ghosts. In early 2001 I
started looking around for books on Nevada’s ghosts and hauntings and discovered
there were none. This was not acceptable to me. I wanted our state’s ghosts and
rich ghostly history to be shared. And so I wrote my first book, Haunted Nevada.
My next was the Ghosthunters’ Guide to Virginia City.
From there I continued to write, to travel, and meet people throughout the
state.
When I started writing about Nevada’s ghosts I was the only
one doing so. There weren’t but a handful of ghost investigators in the entire
state. Consequently there wasn’t always a lot of information. People were
sometimes hesitant to share such information, this always makes research
difficult. Then too, when I found so many different versions of the same
incident, I often had to choose which I thought was right or best. At that time
I also had to deal with acceptance of my subject matter. Several people in
Virginia City (which is Nevada’s most haunted town) refused to discuss ghosts
with me, and one person who oversaw the Pipers Opera House actually told me
that there were no such thing as ghosts and certainly none at the Opera House.
Today more locations are open to talking about their ghosts and activity.
Tell us more about
your classes at Truckee Meadows Community College.
My oldest class is Ghost Hunting 101. Each series the class
is held in a historic/haunted location. Half of the class deals with the
basics. The other half is a ghost hunt of the location. Over all it is a basic
class for beginners and those who might want a somewhat different perspective
of the field. The class includes history of ghost hunting, theories and a
healthy amount of skepticism. Otherwise, I do different classes that deal with
other aspects of the paranormal. These include, Quirky Nevada, Nevada’s Haunted
Hotspots and Early Day Spiritualism.
What’s next for you?
I am currently working on several books. These will be fiction and nonfiction that focus on true crime and history
as well as ghosts.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
My books are available at Amazon.com
The flashing neon lights of Reno harbor a ghastly past. With its wide-open gambling, divorce laws and around-the-clock casinos and bars, the Biggest Little City in the World was a rough and wild town with a turbulent history. Victims of Priscilla Ford's Thanksgiving Day massacre haunt a downtown street. After a disappearance and death shrouded in mystery, the spirit of Roy Frisch still lingers near the location of George Wingfields home. Lynched by a mob for a death that never happened, the angry ghost of Luis Ortiz still walks the bridge at night. The queen of haunted Nevada, Janice Oberding, unearths the ghoulish history that put the "sin" in Nevada's original Sin City.
Mariposa’s
note: I was fortunate to meet Janice at one of her readings on Halloween eve at
Grassroots Bookstore. I’m currently
reading “Haunted Reno” and I can tell you as an author she is as engaging in
print as in person.
