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John Robert Colombo is known as the "Master Gatherer" and "Canada's Mr. Mystery." He is an accomplished author who has written more than 190 titles published between 1960 and 2006. He is the recipient of numerous awards and has been called "a National Treasure." John was host of the TV mini-series Unexplained Canada, seen across Canada on CHUM's Space Channel, currently in reruns.
You have been called the Master Gatherer and the Great Collector, and you have collected some great ghost stories in your travels. What stories have you enjoyed collecting the most?
I enjoy meeting and corresponding with men and women, especially Canadians, who have had unusual experiences and who wish to share them with me and my readers. It would be invidious of me to "name names" here because I am enraptured with every account that I have published in my books, of which there are now some thirty-six collections, the recent half dozen having been commercially published and so are readily available in bookstores, in libraries, and on the Net.
My main interest has always been Canadian historical mysteries, inexplicable events and experiences that in their own day generated some controversy and analysis and continue to do so in ours. I discuss some of these mysteries in some of my collections, including "Ghost Stories of Canada." These are our "classic" stories, though few Canadians know about them.
Have you had any personal experiences with the ghostly or the supernatural?
I have never seen a ghost or spirit, but I have felt odd presences, those of both powers and places. I have found most people will admit to the same, so I have come to the conclusion that such experiences are not uncommon. It is likely most if not all of these episodes will eventually be explicable in terms of science rather than in terms of the superantural. The late robin Skelton used to maintain that there is nothing ghostly about ghosts. What intrigues me is the fascination people have with the sporadic and the inexplicable, memorable momentary experiences.
You have inspired many with your books but who inspires you?
I am currently drafting the preface to yet another collection of "memorates," the word I use for first-person accounts of weird experiences. In that preface I identify two literary mentors and two Canadian mentors. The two literary mentors are Andrew Lang, the Scottish collector of folklore and the compiler of the "Coloured" books: "The Blue Fairy Book," etc. And Elliott O'Donnell, the Irish collector of modern ghost stories, the fellow who popularized the genre. Between them they cover the supernatural and the paranormal. The two Canadian mentors are R.S. Lambert, broadcaster, author, and psychical researcher, and A.R.G. Owen with his wife Iris Owen, parapsychologists responsible for the landmark Philip experiments in psychokinesis in Toronto in the 1970s.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
I have no advice for aspiring writers because I have found that what they aspire to having are readers, who are few and far between, and editors and publishers, who are scarcer than hen's teeth. The only way to find such people is to imagine them and then write as if you had already found them. In other words, you create your audience and invent your venue.
Do you have any works in progress that we can look forward to?
At any one time I have half a dozen projects in the works. As mentioned earlier, I have on the go another collection of "memorates" to follow "Strange but True" (Dundurn Group) published earlier this year. I am always on the lookout for contributions to it. Readers interested in horror stories will enjoy reading "Stories of Fear and Fascination," my edition of the fiction of Maurice Level, the French writer of gruesome stories, recently published by Battered Silicon Dispatch Box. (Check the company's website for details.)
Ongoing projects for 2008 include the following: a volume of the year's poetry; a dictionary of quotations based on the writings of Northrop Frye; a gigantic project called "Famous Fantastic Quotations" which has been in the works since 1967. And of course a must have for all true ghost story enthusiasts - The Big Book of Canadian Ghost Stories.
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