I met Harold Cameron in Montana when I interviewed him for a news story about his new book, “Night Stalks the Mansion.” We subsequently wrote a book together, although it remains unpublished.
By Kevin S. Giles
Grim fire news of “Paradise lost” in California brought back memories of visits to the city when I was writing about a man’s psychic experiences.
Paradise was home to Harold Cameron, author of a curious ghostly memoir, Night Stalks the Mansion. The nonfiction book was a gripping tale of his family’s experience in a haunted house in Pennsylvania and his subsequent discovery of evidence of murder and suicide. As commonly reported in similar cases, earthbound spirits in Harold’s house perpetually re-enacted tragic decisions, their footsteps echoing night after night.
“It can happen to anyone,” Harold told me. “We are approaching a time when all mankind will have an awareness of an extra-terrestrial experience.”
His recollections of those aggrieved spirits on Plum Tree Lane made good reading, as did other tales he told, such as seeing images of his first wife and his eldest son after they had died. I admit I was one of the skeptical ones because I hadn’t experienced such a thing. Being in touch with a loved one after death is deeply personal for grieving people but more common than we think.
Before my father died from heart disease, he told me about awakening in the bedroom to see his mother sitting on the brown wooden chair that was kept in a corner by the closet. Grandma, who had died a year earlier, motioned to him with her curled index finger, as in “come with me.” In those final months, Dad also saw his father in a dream. I remember clearly how he described it. My grandfather, who had died when Dad was a teenager, wore his gear from the town’s volunteer fire department. My grandfather smiled in the dream as if to reassure and welcome Dad. “It seemed so real, like he was right there with me,” my father told me.
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In my years as a news reporter, many people revealed they had seen, or talked with, deceased loved ones. I recall writing about a grief support group for women. Ten of the participants said they had seen their husbands. Only one hadn’t and she hoped she would. Often people hesitate to relate their supernatural experiences for fear of ridicule.
I met Harold in Helena, Montana, when he was promoting Night Stalks the Mansion. We became acquainted when I wrote a news story. In the ensuing years we collaborated on a second book that detailed his many psychic experiences. He claimed an ability to “see the other side,” as he put it. Now that he’s there, crossed over from our human world to one we’ve never seen, I wonder how it turned out for him. I wonder what he knows about the catastrophe that struck Paradise.
Our book, although written, remains unpublished. I’ve read enough on the topic to understand that some people have the psychic ability and many more of us don’t. Harold offered his life’s story as a bridge between two worlds.
It was during a flurry of book writing, after Harold and I had exchanged several chapters by mail, that Becky and I drove from Montana to Paradise with our young daughters. (Making that expedition in summer’s heat in a two-door Subaru coupe is another story, better left untold.)
Paradise, in the Sierra Nevada range, was a place of dry and clean air. Harold and Shirley hosted us in their double-wide mobile home in a gated retirement community. Their routine included a morning walk, always under a friendly sun, past rows of well-kept homes. Beyond them stood forested mountains. “This is truly Paradise,” Harold told us.
Now, after seeing news video of the city’s destruction, I try to imagine their bucolic neighborhood as nothing but ash and twisted hot metal. The home Harold and Shirley once owned is no doubt now another family’s tragedy.
The malevolent and proportionally misnamed “Camp Fire” that leveled Paradise reminds us of how natural disaster forces human surrender. In the first rush of adrenaline we think of saving crazy things like beach balls and bath soap and wide screen TVs. When the pressure builds we think of preserving what matters most, such as family photos and our beloved pets. When disaster comes too fast, as it did in Paradise, we flee to save only ourselves and anybody else within our reach. It appears the final moments amount to negotiation with nature’s wrath, shown tragically in cell phone videos taken as desperate Paradise residents tried to outrun roaring walls of flame.
There’s an irony I can’t quite grasp that a sudden and fierce rush of flame and death destroyed Paradise. The notorious Camp Fire would have swept over the cemetery where Harold is buried, burning everything on top, insulting even the dead.
The destruction got me thinking again of Harold and the intertwined meanings of life and death. It’s crossed my mind that he came into my life for a reason, as many people do, but was it fate or coincidence? He urged me to never assume I would live forever. I was a young man then and less inclined to heed lessons of mortality.
And so I say this: If you can hear me, Harold, please know that having added many more years to my life, I now take nothing for granted. I remember your words, your favorite phrase, so simply put:
“Life is a fragile flower.”
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Western Montana native Kevin S. Giles wrote the popular prison nonfiction work Jerry’s Riot, the coming-of-age novel Summer of the Black Chevy, and a biography of Montana congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, One Woman Against War, which is an expanded version of his earlier work, “Flight of the Dove.” His new novel, Headline: FIRE! is the third in the Red Maguire series. Masks, Mayhem and Murder is the second. The first is “Mystery of the Purple Roses.” More information is available at https://kevinsgiles.com.