Writing with Ghosts: These Walls Still Talk, Part One | The Grave Talks

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2:05What happens when an author decides to write his next novel inside one of the most haunted prisons in America? Brian Pione did exactly that. Over the course of eight weeks, he wrote these walls still talk, on site at the notorious Missouri State Penitentiary. Working at night and fully immersed in the prison's eerie abandoned atmosphere, Brian brought to life the story of Hannah, a woman who returns to MSP to confront the dark spirit that's haunted her for years, only to find the prison has other plans. Blending real life haunted locations with immersive paranormal fiction, Brian revealed what it's like to write a ghost story in a place already full of them. Step behind the cell doors and experience the creative process, reflect and fantoms converge. Today on the Grave Talks, riding with ghosts, a conversation with author Brian Pione.

3:07Brian thank you so much for taking the time to join me tonight. I appreciate it. I'm excited to talk about your book. It's called These Walls Still Talk. Now you've written quite a few books. This is book number 11 overall. I say overall because I do have a trilogy. So those trilogy, that trilogy obviously makes up three of the books, but overall, that's my 11th and my 12th novel is coming out September 13th. So yes, so I will have 12 books total in like two months. That's a lot. It is. And then like number 13 is I am going to the Kentucky's most haunted inn to write the next on location haunted house novel. That's a whole other story about how that wound up happening. I want to talk about that and when the book comes out too. I want to talk about your experience going there because okay, so this is what's so fascinating

4:11to me. This is when I read about the book and I don't even know how I think I like Facebook or some algorithm on a social media was like, you might like this book. And I'm like, well, that looks interesting because I'm always looking at paranormal stuff. And then what fascinated me because it's a fiction book, but you went to the Missouri State Penitentiary and you wrote this book there. It's a story of eight weeks. Eight weeks. Yeah, and 80% of the time I was in there and it was at night and I was alone in the dark. And really the way that Missouri State Penitentiary is set up was and there's a whole back story about how this even came to be. And I want to hear that. I want to hear that. Yeah, we'll definitely we'll get to that. But I was told that I'm the very first author who's ever been allowed to stay inside the Missouri State Penitentiary for any period of time to write.

5:13And I was then I was also told that I will be the last. Really? I was I was given like the golden ticket, the one key. I was told by the top the top boss there Sheila that I got the green light and that this one never happened again. Like I'm it. They're not going to make this a thing. They're not going to let other authors come in. And what happened was on Friday and Saturday nights the Missouri State Penitentiary is set up actually Friday day and Saturday day and night the way I said that was they have two historic tours during the day during daylight hours which have nothing to do with the paranormal. It is purely the history of the prison, you know, and stuff like that. And then at nighttime they have two ghost tours back to back and then they have a free Rome ghost hunt where and though the free Rome ghost hunt will go to either 2 a.m. 3 a.m. or 6 a.m. depending on the night in the price. So sometimes you know sometimes it only goes to two.

6:13It's a little bit less money if you want to go to three. It's a little bit more money if you want to go to six. It's more money, right? And that's free Rome. There's no tour guides involved. It's you go in and you have access to four four of the buildings which are the four buildings that make up the novel. I kept the novel very specific to only the buildings that people can ghost hunt in. But what it started, what happened was it's like, God there. Each tour guide allowed me to give like a 45 second to 90 second kind of introduction during their safety brief. So I could talk to the guests and I was able to do this on the historic tours and the ghost tours and then the ghost free Rome ghost hunt every single day. It was basically like, hey everybody, like after the safety brief, you know the stuff that you know don't close any doors, you know don't do this, don't do that. And then they would be like, oh and we want to introduce you to somebody real quick for a minute, you know, and I would stand up and I would say, you know, hey everybody, you know my name is Brian Peony. I'm an author of the Salem, Massachusetts.

7:14I'm here on location writing a horror novel about a ghost hunt gone wrong, you know, on the property. And I would tell people this. So one, I didn't surprise anybody if they walk into, you know, housing unit three and there's just a dude sitting in a cell with a laptop. I don't want anybody to be like spooked or weirded out, but I also told them for the reason and I made it very clear at the end of my speeches. I said, if you see me, and I would do this more for the free room, I said, if you see me and you're headed to the dungeon or you're heading to 3D, grab me and I'll go down with you and I'll write with you because those are the two places on the property that I refuse to go by myself because of how terrifying they are. So I would kind of make that speech and people would chuckle and I almost nightly never failed. Somebody would see me writing and they would be like, hey, hey author dude, if they couldn't remember my name. Hey, we're going down to the dungeon. And we're going to go to the dungeon, you know, you want to calm and I would always say yes because I would never go down by myself. I always took advantage of being able to write in those two locations as long as somebody

8:17was with me. Now, I'm telling this story because what it was happening was about three weeks into my eight weeks. Sheel is office was getting phone calls from quote unquote authors who must have been on these tours, heard my little introduction and she was getting like, in a dated with phone calls about how do I do that? I want to write in there. Who do I have to talk to? So finally, she's, you know, finally she was like, no, like, no, nobody's else, this is it like we were shot in the stout. Like this became word got out and also too, I was very, very vocal about this on social media during the process. I posted a multitude of photos every night of where I was writing, you know, shots, what it was looking like from where I was writing out into the hallway. I was very, very, people were engaging and people were spreading it, people were sharing it. I had a couple TikTok videos hit a couple thousand views.

9:20I mean, it, it, it, it, it, it is, it can be. I had people in the paranormal community get involved and we're just got out and she let's start getting phone calls and she was like, ah, nope. No, no, no. So that's kind of how the hammer came down on that. She's like, this is not going to be a circus. This is a place of business. It's a very serious place that tour guides take it seriously. And she knew I wasn't doing anything, right? There was no fault of mine, but she, she had to, she then had to kind of put the word out that no, we vetted Brian before he came here and they did. They spent, they spent a couple of weeks vetting me before they allowed me to make sure I was who I was that I had the accolades I said I had, you know, my resume was real. And they, she told me later that they did. They did some pretty deep dive research into who I was to make sure I wasn't just some guy, you know, who wanted to come in and spend eight weeks inside. Right. And you know, you know, that was actually going to produce something quality and something

10:22that they could be proud of that they, because they sell it in the gift shop. Oh, yeah, they'd have to. Yeah. So they carry it in the gift shop and they, they just, you know, she would, and then the staff just wanted to make sure that that I was the right peck to do this, you know. And then that's why then she had to start shutting people down and she was like, no, okay, you were now the only person who will ever do this. Like, you can't having every op from Tim Buck to, you know, horror author trying to come in here to write, you know, they embraced you to the extent that you even had a book release event. Yeah. So the book release was June 21st. It just happened three weeks ago and it was at MSP and for anybody who's not tracking when we, when I, that's Missouri State Pena Tentry. It's so much easier to say MSP. Yes. It's, it's become part of my vernacular now. I just MSP is, you know, it's a, it's a word in my household at this point, an acronym. And yes, so a flew back, the professional ghost hunting company get haunted from Pennsylvania came out with all their ghost hunting gear and we did a 10 hour book release party ghost

11:27hunt. It was kind of a mixture of the two. So we incorporated the book release party with them with get haunted also doing there, you know, what they do best. It was great. We had about 60 people there and from all over the country, Jefferson City, Missouri, you know, is not a, is not a hub. It's not a well populated area. Yes. So the majority of those people were not local. So I had, you know, very fortunate that I had, you know, that many people who booked plane tickets, they had a book hotel rooms, they had to do rent a cars, they had to take time off from work, they had to buy a ticket to the party. So I'm, I'm very humbled that I had that many go, you know what, this is a big enough deal to come out and support you. So yeah, we had, we got about 60 people at MSP for my company. It was amazing. That's really cool. Now, let's back way up because how did this idea even come to you? Because when I was looking at the other books you've written, they're not all paranormal.

12:28You've got some different genres. Yes. Yes. The joke is amongst my little author click, you know, my author friends that I run with. It started off as a joke and I've adopted it as my official now like tagline is I don't know how to stay in my lane. It started off as a joke because I do, I have, I write in so many genres, but Stephen King is my favorite author. If you look at Stephen King's work, sure, he's known for a pet cemetery, the shining, carry, Salem's law, the stand it, you know, he's known for what we would consider horror, right? But you also got to remember this is also the man who wrote Shawshank Redemption and stand by me and the Green Mile and right, he wrote Delores Playborne, he wrote The Running Man. He wrote, you know, so he started, you go like, wow, my God, he, he isn't just, you know, the master of horror, you know, the, you know, the master of horror, he's, you know, he think of Ronald Schwarzenegger and the Running Man, you don't think Stephen King, but guess

13:29what? That's him. So, you know, I think there's a lot, he has a lot of depth that he doesn't get credit for. True. True. And, you know, and I can name, I can keep going on, but, you know, you get the point. And that's what I wanted to be as an author. I wanted to be well rounded. I also say you're supposed to write what you like to read and I'd like to read every genre. I don't know how I could possibly be happy in life writing the same genre over and over and over, especially when I don't like to read the same genre over and over. My five favorite authors are Stephen King, Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Clyde Barker, you know, you know, you know, I mean, like Anne Rice, it's just, it's like, gamut, right? I mean, I can go from Hemingway to King to Sylvia Plath without blinking an eye. And so, when I write, I kind of have that same tone. This is actually my only paranormal novel. I have other horror novels, but this is the first paranormal and this is the first one

14:31where I tackled, you know, the classic haunted property story, the haunted house, haunted prison, whatever. I do have a, I did mention that I have a trilogy. My trilogy is called Moonlight City Drive. That teeters on horror. It's about a detective hot on the trail of a Jack the Ripper style killer, but there's a 300 year old witch from Salem, Massachusetts, who every time the killer kills somebody, she reannates the corpse because she's building an army of ghouls. And when the detective gets wind of this, he has to make a decision. Does he side with the witch to take down the killer or does he side with the killer to take down the witch? That's my trilogy. And there's a lot of horror elements, right? But again, it's not paranormal. And then my other horror novel is Welcome to Parkview. And that is more, that is more Twilight Zone. It's more creepy and ominous and cerebral. And I try to scare you by what I don't show you about the noise in the other room. You know, what's in the shadow? You know, fingernails under the door and you're afraid to open the door.

15:34So that's my Welcome to Parkview novel. It's way much more subtle. It's not in your face. So this was my first foreing into the paranormal. I do have a historical war romance novel. I have a cybernetic dystopian novel like a Johnny Nomonik meets Mad Max. You know, I have an urban crime thriller. So yeah, it's I have a time travel novel, right? It's across the board. The genres that I write in. But yes, this was my my first one where I was like haunted house. Like, no, I had to do this. Had you done some paranormal investigations or was there something that got you interested in? Because it's definitely a paranormal book. Yes. The answer is no. As we talked, you know, before we went kind of live here, I was born and raised in Salem, Massachusetts. I lived there from birth until I was 30. And I also spent eight years from the ages of eight to 16 living in a feral home in Salem, Massachusetts. So I think the whole paranormal macabre, a gothic kind of atmosphere was part of me as

16:41a kid, one growing up around so many dead bodies and also growing up in Salem. But I had never done a paranormal investigation. I had never gone on one. I had never been on a ghost hunt. My two favorite sub genres of horror movies are possession films and haunted house films. So you would think, you know, at this point in my life, I'm in a fantasy movie. In my, you know, 40s that I would have. And I never, I never, I never did. I was in Missouri. It's full work. I, it's a little bit about me real quick to see, you know, how I got there. I've been, I was a cop for 16 years, patrolman for 16 years. So on the street, you know, on patrol, the, the beat officer. And then I got promoted to detective. And it's a 16 week course to be certified as its detective. It's 18 weeks. It's 18 week course to be certified as a detective. It's 10 weeks and then a three week break to go home and then you come back and you do

17:45eight weeks and it's all in Missouri. That's where the training center is for the whole country. It's about 90 miles west of Jefferson City. One week seven of the first 10 weeks, me and I was there with a 42, 62 other police officers who were part of the training. I was there with, and they're from all over the country, right? So there was, there was people from Hawaii, from Alaska, from California, from, it's everywhere. I mean, Florida, Texas, we were all a conglomerate. You know, none of us knew each other on day one and, you know, you form, you know, little packs of friends. So we were running out of things to do because we were in the middle of nowhere, Missouri. And one of my, one of the other trainees or whatever you want to call us was looking online and he goes, Hey, the Missouri State Penitentiary has overnight ghost hunts. You know, you guys want to do that? That's a little bit something different, right? And I was like, Oh, hell, yes.

18:47I was like, Oh my God. I got so excited. I was giddy. I was like, Oh my God. Like an actual like ghost hunt. But with the stuff I see in the movies, like, like gear and equipment and I was, I just couldn't believe that that was a thing and that we could go to this, right? And so I was like a little kid because I didn't even know that this existed and we went, we went to the Missouri State Penitentiary and we got on one of those. We went, we did one of the overnight so we stayed till we did the 3 a.m. one, right? So we were there from when it starts and, you know, to the 3 a.m. cutoff time. And I didn't want to leave. Everybody in my group was ready to leave. They were tired. They were like, Oh, we got to drive back to the barracks as we stayed in these barracks. You know, and I was like, No, no. How do we stay longer? Like, I don't want this to end. I don't want to give the equipment back, you know, the staff are wrestling the K2 leaders out of my hand and I'm like, No, my, my, my, you know, I was like, I was like a yod and Empire Strikes Back, you know, I was so jazz that that happened that I looked to see

19:51if they were doing it again the next weekend. I'm so ignorant that I had no idea that this was something they did every weekend, right? Yes. Like I was such an, I could have been doing this the last 7 weeks in a row if I had known. Come to find out the following weekend, Nesper was there with the Warren Occult Museum artifacts. Oh, wow. And get haunted was there. So Nesper and get haunted were doing a dual overnight hunt with the Warren Museum's artifacts. I had never heard of get haunted before. It's the first time I'd ever seen anything about their company didn't even know who they were. I knew Nesper one because I'm from New England, but I'm also a horror junkie. So, you know, the conjuring and just Ed and Lorraine is just people. I just, you know who they are, right? It's like being a, you know, music fan and, you know, not knowing who John Lennon is, right? It's just, right, iconic names in the field. So it was like, holy crap. Like Nesper is going to be there.

20:52I don't think the crap these get haunted people are. I could care less about that. But, you know, oh my God, this is going to be artifacts. And there's a ghost hunt. And I was like, yes. So I went back to MSP the very next Saturday to this event, not knowing what I was walking into, not knowing that get haunted were in charge. And they were going to, they put us into, they broke us up into small groups. And they did hour-long rotations. For the first four hours, it was hour-long rotations at each of the four buildings. So you're allowed to be in the women's unit, general pop, which is A-Hall or housing unit four, and then death row, which is building three in the gas chamber. Those are the four buildings that are open to the public. I had no idea that this was going to happen, right? I was so ignorant that night. But I wound up loving it. Because get haunted have their people at each of the locations with all of their, like, higher tech gear than you would normally find. Oh, yeah. Things, you had to use it. And then they let you use it as the guest. So now I'm using, like, tracer lights.

21:53And we're using rem pods. And now I'm using EVP things. And I'm just using all the scare. And I was like a kid in a candy store. I just couldn't believe what was happening. We did the S.E.S. method in the gas chamber. If you read the book. And they do that in the book. And that's right. So we'll get to, like, how real the book is, to real life, even though it's fiction. Around, like, the third rotation, the third station, I guess, I started going, my God, there's a novel here. Like my author brain kicked in. You know, I like the excited four-year-old on Christmas morning finally had settled and had allowed, like, my author brain to take over. And I was like, I don't know what the story is. But I feel like this is a novel. And I started going through my head. And I was like the majority of horror movies or horror novels that involve a poltergeist or a haunting.

22:55I, most of them involve the owners of the property or the owners of the house or the residents of the house experiencing the haunting and then being scared and then reaching out to ghost hunters. And the ghost hunters come in and then almost become the heroes, right? They come in and they solve it. Or they, you know, like the insidious, you think of the insidious series, you know, a lane come, at least comes in, you know, gets him back from, you know, the, you know, the other side or, and they always seem to win. Like the ghost hunters come in as the heroes and solve the haunting, right? That's very kind of the formula. I was like, what if it's the other way around? And it's the ghost hunters who are there doing an event in the ghost decide they don't want them there. Who saves them or does anybody? And that was the first thought, that was my first thought for the book. Like you've read the book so you know that that's exactly the full, like road I went down,

24:01but that was, that was the trigger thought where I went, I think I have something unique here because I don't know many stories where the ghost hunters walk in to the thick, right? Right. It's always they're trying to help or save the people who own the property. So it's like, how do I put this on its head? You know, you know, how do I put a spin on the, on a, you know, kind of a generic ghost hunting genre that we have? And that was the only thing I could think about was like in this work. So I was like, what if, you know, and then I was like, well, I'm going to come up with a fictitious company like Get On It. Well, get on it. Israel. I was going to come up with a fictitious company that did what Get On It did that night. And then I was going to have it at a fictitious prison, right? My brain was thinking about writing. So everything was going to be fiction. I was going to create a new company. I was going to create a prison. I was going to create this. I was going to create that.

25:01I had at the time, and I still do. It's funny that I'm going to say this, but I had already turned in my next novel idea to my editor, and it was already approved. And she had already given me a deadline to turn in the manuscript. I had the idea of a neo-noir, so like a dark city meets the crow, meets silence of the lambs, kind of type novel, or it's about a telephone operator. But when it was old school operators, they pulled the plug into a whole, right? But there's a serial killer that when he calls, he says just a name, and then he disconnects the line, and that person winds up dead. But he will only talk to this one specific operator. And so now the police are involved in why her. She has no idea who he is, why she's been picked to always get the name. So that was my idea. That was the book that I'm going to write on. Which is a great idea, by the way. Well, so that is actually the book that I'm going to start writing when I come back from

26:04the Kentucky Haunted House to write that. So like I know jumping away ahead, but that book isn't off. That book is actually going to have a late 2026 release, so that's still coming. I just got put on pause because of me going because of MSP. So I talked to my editor, and I was like, I think we got to pause this. I said, I got an idea, and I think it happens, has to happen now. I said, I am in love with this idea. I'm very energized with it. The juices are flowing, and I pitched a tour, and she's like, yes, I like it. It's different. And I said, OK, so I reached out to Jenny, who is the kind of a head tour guide at MSP. I found her on Facebook. That's how I found her. I'd remembered her from the ghost hunt. Found her on Facebook, and I sent her like an unsolicited message. And I was like, hey, I was on your ghost hunt. You probably don't remember me, but I'm an author, and I was there with a bunch of guys. You know, we're all police officers.

27:04I want to write a novel, and I gave her the idea. And I said, do you think it would be OK if I just use MSP as the setting? Let's just put the book there, right? It's easy. The buildings are there. I've already spent two nights there. I can describe it really well, instead of trying to create. Let's just, let's give it a place everybody knows, right? She's like, no, I love this. Yes, this is, oh my god, this is great. It would be awesome. You know, I think we'd be honored to have MSP in a book like this. So she's like, you still in Missouri. I said, I am from the other week, then I go home for three weeks. But then I come back for eight weeks to finish to do the second half of my detective training. She was like, oh, great, cool. She's like, good, well, when you come back, you know, just once you come on by, you know, a few times if you want to like, you know, walk around the property, I'll give you a private tour, or you know, just you and me, you know, if you want to take pictures. If it was all, that was the offer. Come and take pictures for reference. See, I can give you some more history. I can maybe give you some brochures. Like, I'll help you with research.

28:07That was kind of the, what Jenny was offering. I don't know how it happened. I still don't remember. And I never get asked this. I unfortunately, you know, I refuse to like make something up. So I'm going to have to be honest. I don't remember how it happened. But at some point, one of us said, or it came up in joking, wouldn't it be funny if you just, while you were in your training, just stayed here and wrote while you were here for those eight weeks training. And somehow that joke turned into, well, I don't know, would that be possible? Turned into, let me contact the person in charge of the prison who works for the state. Turned into, so her name is Sheila and she wants to talk to you. Turned into, yes, you've been approved. Like over a course of like two, two and a half weeks, you know, three weeks. I went from having this idea to now being allowed to stay there for the eight weeks that I was, I was training.

29:07So I, like Monday through Friday, yeah, my training was Monday through Friday, eight AM to two PM every day. It was only six hours each day. And then I would go to MSP at night and I would stay there all weekend. It's right. That's how that happened. And I had a meeting with Sheila before night number one where she gave me a very specific list of do's and don'ts, cans and cans. Basically, she looked at me and said, you know, I'm sticking my neck out here, letting you do this. This is your list of rules. You know, mess up once and you're gone. Like I, you know, skin off my back and, you know, the rules weren't, they weren't many, but they were definitely ones I, you know, made sure I followed and I did and, you know, because they were really letting me have free reign. People spend good money to just spend four hours alone in there, like good money. And I was there for eight weeks, you know, allowed to go wherever I wanted. Every time I wanted with my laptop and sit anywhere and write in those four buildings,

30:09I had free reign of those four buildings. So did you stay there all night like or did you get down training because you had, you were really busy because you had training and then you go there, no, right? I got a hotel room about, I don't know, it's a hotel room. I think it's like four miles from MSP. And I would leave MSP at like four AM, three AM and I'd hit the hotel to get a few hours of sleep in just a shower and then go and start. You had to have been exhausted at the end of that eight weeks. I, I think my excitement and my adrenaline kept me going. I do know that when it was over, I was exhausted. Oh, you had to have been. But I think being there was so amazing for me and the staff became family. I mean, they started off as just tolerating me and then they became friends and then they, now I really feel like family. In fact, they had their Christmas party and I guess I was top of a conversation at one

31:13point and one of the tour guides says it doesn't feel right having this Christmas party without Brian. I don't want to say that. I don't want to say that. But like they, they know this I was missing. Like they were like, I feel they said they felt like I should be there because I'm, I'm part of MSP now, right? And, you know, they, and at night, they, I started to help them with things that only the staff are allowed to do. Like they would be like here, Brian, they toss me the keys to the gas chamber and go, hey, go, go, go drive down the lock the gas chamber for the tour or we would have to clear buildings at night to make sure that nobody was hiding in any of the cells or anything like that. And they started to let me just go do that by myself. But they'd be like, hey, Brian, can you go clear, you know, housing unit one for us? You know, so they would start to like, give me tasks. Oh, I started passing out K-2 meters to the ghost, to the ghost to the guest at one point, you know? And like collecting IDs, I would, I was checking people in at the door because I just knew what, what was supposed to happen.

32:13So when I decided to make it take place at really an MSP, I then reached out to Rob, who's the owner of Get Honored. And I proposed him the idea of writing them into the book instead of coming up with a fictitious ghost hunting crew. I was worried about some sort of copyright, is actually why I reached out to him. I was like, hey, you know, I'm an author, I know if you remember me, and he did remember me from that, from the night that they hosted. I was just concerned about copyright issues. I don't want to get sued, you know, using a real company, like a trademark company's name in my book. And Rob not only gave me permission, but Rob, like almost fell out of his chair, just that someone wanted to put his company as like main characters in, you know, a horror novel. And me and Rob have become very, very close over this past 18 months or now, or 12 months total.

33:13Because I started writing in July of, so we're at the month, we're at the one year mark right now of when I started writing. Rob and the whole crew of Gethonded, they've become like an extended family for me. I've gone to events. They had a supernatural swore in New Jersey on a battleship, and I was the guest of honor at their big swore. They're just amazing people. I'm so glad. It's like serendipitous that I went that second night. Because I don't, I think if I didn't, if I hadn't gone that second night, I would never come up with the idea for a novel. I never would have found out who Gethonded was. I never would have stayed at MSP for eight weeks. None of this would have happened if I hadn't gone that second night. That first night, if I hadn't been so enamored with that first night, and I hadn't made the decision to go again the following weekend, I wouldn't be talking to you right now, you know, I wouldn't be involved in any of this. Just to add on to that, how it's changed my life, it's changed my writing career.

34:18That supernatural swore that I was the guest of honor at on the battleship in New Jersey. Wade Kirby, if you don't know who he is, he's the guy who's in charge of the real Annabelle doll. He's part of Nesper, and Annabelle is his, he's the curator of Annabelle. He's the real Annabelle doll's father, whatever. Annabelle, right? And he was at the swore and Wade is amazing. He's just an amazing guy. He was there and he goes, have you ever, have you thought about writing, making this a series? And I said, absolutely not. So this will not be a series. He goes, why? I said, well, I, no spoilers. It couldn't possibly be a series. If you've read the book, you kind of know why it couldn't be a series. But I don't want to say anything to him, because you know, he wanted to read the book. I said, but what it, what it, what it could be, it couldn't, they couldn't be a part two and part three, like my moonlight city drive is a trilogy, right? It couldn't be like that.

35:18I said, but what it could be, is it, it could be like, babysitters club or Nancy Drew or Harvey Boyz or or goosebumps, where get haunted is always part of it, but it's a new location in a new set of characters. But get haunted is the, you know, like bear the hearty boys, right? The Robin Sarah of the owners of get haunted. So if Robin Sarah are in every book, and each book is a get haunted tale, I can change locations and I can change characters. I can change storyline. And I was like, well, why are you asking that? He goes, I want you to meet somebody brought me over to the table and introduced me to Ernie and Denise Pack. They owned the Ditto House in West Point, Kentucky, which is considered the Kentucky's most haunted house structure. It was a bed and breakfast at one point. It was an in. If you Google Kentucky's most haunted dot, dot, dot, you're going to probably get the Ditto House. Wade said, when you meet them, I think their location would be perfect if you were going

36:23to do a book too. Through lots of communication with Ernie and Denise, lots of bouncing ideas back and forth. How do we do this? They invited me to the Ditto House for five days, a couple months ago to come and just sleep there, get a feel for the house, see if I had any juices flowing. And now I am going to the Ditto House or I'm leaving in two weekends and I'm going to be there all the way through August writing book two in the Ditto House. Again, another horror novel on location in the Ditto House will be the setting. So this took a whole, on a whole life of its own. So forget about these while still talking the MSP book. Now I've got book two and now I'm actually, I now have other people from all over the country who own haunted properties contacting me, asking if I'd be willing to come stick at their place to write more get haunted tale books at their location.

37:26That's awesome. It's crazy. That is really awesome. I never, if you remember, I went on my very first goes hunt. 13 months ago. So if 14 months ago you told Brian that this would be what I was doing, I would be like, what the crap happens in my life. Like what happens in my life to make all of this, to put me where I am, right? And I just keep using the word serendipitous because it is. I very much. It was like lightning in the bottle. The planets aligned for me to be there, to go there, forget haunted to be there, for Nesper to be there that night. Just for MSP to be so receptive for Sheila to allow me to stay there for eight weeks because I think the book is fantastic enough to stand on its own as a horror novel. But the fact that my diary of everything that happened to me while I was there for those eight weeks is at the back of the book. That's really interesting.

38:27It's even more special. It's more of an alert for people to want to buy and read the book because when I tell people, yeah, you get the book, which is a horror fiction novel. It's all made up. But then you turn the page after the end, quote unquote, and then you have 20, 30 more pages and it's just my diary of everything that happened to me in real life while I was writing. I just think that ads so much more. To be able to stay there and write, I wouldn't have had that diary if I wrote this from my writing office back home. If this was just another haunted horror novel, but the fact that I was there and then my diary made the book. Now I got to keep a diary at the Ditto House because I can't have book two not have a diary in it. I love that. I love the concept of having it in there because it was surprising. It's like, I read it on Kindle and it's like, I'm like at 85% or something like that.

39:34I'm like, what's in the rest of the book? Right out. And that wraps up part one of our conversation with author Brian Piony about his latest book, These Walls Still Talk. You can buy his books wherever books are sold and you can get more information at his website, BrianPiony.com. If you'd like access to all of our episodes including the Archive and Advanced Episodes Everything Commercial Free, then you can become a Gravekeeper. Sign up on Apple Podcast where you can try it for three days free or you could sign up at patreon.com slash the Grave Talks. I'm Carol Hughes and for all of us here at the Grave Talks, thank you so much for listening.

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