Ever wonder what it would be like growing up in a haunted house? In this autobiographical horror, Michael Oka delivers a chilling, coming-of-age narrative about his family's horror as they discover the sinister stirrings within the new home they'd moved into on West Grand.
Oka unravels a tale both familiar and strange as he delves into the story of his relatable childhood (his first crush, the school bullies, and the pain of his parent's divorce) while detailing the paranormal experiences he was having at home.
This story is as haunting as it is riveting—a must-read.
Ever wonder what it would be like growing up in a haunted house? In this autobiographical horror, Michael Oka delivers a chilling, coming-of-age narrative about his family's horror as they discover the sinister stirrings within the new home they'd moved into on West Grand.
Oka unravels a tale both familiar and strange as he delves into the story of his relatable childhood (his first crush, the school bullies, and the pain of his parent's divorce) while detailing the paranormal experiences he was having at home.
This story is as haunting as it is riveting—a must-read.
My father woke me in the early hour just before sunrise on that October morning in 1988, that golden hour whose glow and glory comes only twice a day. I was still in my pajamas when we stepped out, leaving my mom and sister to sleep quietly in bed as Dad locked the door behind us.
The morning air was visibly misty, a thick sheet of fog rolling over the empty boulevard in front of our house there on Grand. There were no sounds; even the birds were silent, still sleeping on their perches or nests. You must understand the importance of this moment for me.
Mom and Dad were in the "let's try again’ phase after leaving my sister and me as distraught children for nearly two years.
Our desktop computer was, in fact, a heavyset desktop computer with that memorable monochromatic headache-inducing screen that showed a basic font in spinach green. Back then, to get to whatever program we wanted to use, each entry had to begin with "CD" for Change Directory. These were the days when the wrong input resulted in a "bad command or file name" response. If you were using a Macintosh, it would reply, "syntax error."
There were no blogs or online portals to share on social media. Social media was handled in the classroom, passing notes back and forth behind the teacher's back when they weren't looking. Dating apps were a simple piece of paper your crush handed you (or that you handed to your crush) that read:
Do you like me Y ⬜ N ⬜?
There was no swiping right or left.
Our world still slept in darkness, and our only information contained whatever was shown on the evening news. Whatever evils existed in the world—there were many—seldom made it to any viral capacity in our self-contained world and isolated lives.
There was a sense of wonder that morning: the mist, the fog, and, for me, the strange smell of a new world. I rarely had a scarce relationship with my dad for two years. At this moment, we boarded his van, which smelled like orange groves mingling with the scent of Brut (Dad's go-to aftershave).
The gray minivan was more of a hybrid cargo van with an illegally installed non-DOT seat bolted into the cargo area. The only window in the back was a rear windshield that stretched the width of the back hatch.
I didn't ask where we were going in what was a comfortably quiet ride along the grand circle. Later in life, I would learn that the road we drove along was once a drag racing track in 1914but that day, I enjoyed the newness as we cruised along West Grand, turning right on Sixth Street, right again on Rimpau, and finally at the Magnolia cross street, grinning at the surprise of McDonald's for a breakfast stop.
I'll never forget waiting in line in the drive-through (which I hated being spelled as "drive-thru") or ordering two whole sausage biscuits to myself. Dad ordered three pancake breakfasts: one for him, one for my mom, and one for my little sister.
This is my earliest memory of Corona as a younger child. It is the fondest memory of my father and probably the last truly good memory I'll have while my parents are still married.
After that, everything would be a slow burn toward a living horror story of the waking physical world, the nightmare-scape of a troubled child, and the brief terror of living in a house that hated our family.
Being fascinated by all things paranormal, sitting down with The West Grand Haunting, I prepared myself to read a creepy story that most likely had a tragic origin but a clear explanation for the events that transpired. The more I read, the more I found myself surprised by the viewpoint Oka chose in telling his story.
This book isn’t about a ghost story so much as it is about the telling of the impact paranormal experiences can have on a person. Whatever happened to make a corpse woman with empty eye sockets is inconsequential in comparison to what happened to Oka’s family. The lasting impact that experiencing things like that as a young child has on you throughout your life is what stays with the reader. This book is autobiographical but Oka stating emphatically that this is a true story and his very own experiences isn’t what convinces the reader that this happened. Instead, it’s more of what doesn’t happen.
The paranormal experiences are unsettling in the fact that they make you question – they make you question whether it all happened or if Oka imagined it. But surprisingly, the unraveling of his familial unit at the same time he experienced these events isn’t something that Oka shies away from. Instead, he places it all front and center so that the reader is clear on what was happening in his life at the time, what he was emotionally going through. And yet, all of that still does not account for what happened. You believe Oka because these experiences stayed with him. They made him continue to question, continue to try to find information, continue to make sense of something that is nonsensical.
Receiving resolution at the end of this story comes by knowing that Oka has finally made peace with his history. He has examined, analyzed, come face-to-face with his shortcomings, mistakes, and triumphs. He wrote this book not as a chilling reminder that there are things in this world we cannot explain but, instead for closure. Closure on a dark time in his life where he came out on the other side. It served its purpose.
As a person who was also once a child living in a house filled with paranormal experiences, there’s relief in knowing you are not alone. The questions linger as the memory surrounding that time fades and the sharp clarity of the actual experience remains.