Just as Hope’s End was inspired by the real town of Calumet in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the Seymour House was inspired by a real house in Lansing. Well, two houses, I suppose.
About a week before our wedding, my husband and I left the suburbs and moved into downtown Lansing in order to be closer Eric’s job. Our new neighborhood was full of these amazing old Victorian houses built around the turn of the twentieth century. Sadly, most had been chopped into apartments. Our house—located on, you guessed it, Seymour Ave—was one of these houses. It dated back to the 1880s and quite honestly was pretty ugly from the outside with its brown shaker siding, original windows, and slanting porch. Our apartment was pretty cool on the inside though—ten-foot ceilings, original hardwood floors, fireplace (non-working), and a bay window.
You’d think with the age of my Seymour apartment, there would have been some ghostly activity. I mean, there were drafts, but that was a side effect of having 100-plus-year-old windows. And there was often banging and hissing inside the walls, which always made our friends jump when they came over, but that was just the radiators warming up in the winter. Truth be told, that house was void of any kind of vibe and feeling. I always thought it was a shame that I didn’t have any ghosts in my See More house.
Two blocks down from us was this gorgeous brick Victorian with a wrap-around porch and a big old turret. It was love at first sight. It was also a law firm. What houses weren’t turned into rentals or condos, usually housed businesses. A parking lot sat where a lawn should have been, and a huge edition had been tacked onto the rear, but I used to pretend that they didn’t exist. I would walk my dog past that house every single day just so I could look at it. I knew I’d probably never own something so large and regal, but I did know one day I would set a story there.
When Souza-loving, wanna-be stuntman Travis Zolecki popped into my head talking about how his parents bought a house with ghosts on purpose, I knew just where the book was going to be set: on Seymour Street and in my beloved brick Victorian.
I never entered the brick Victorian (though pictures from the law firm’s website told me that it had been remodeled and modernized), but a little bit of internet research turned up plans for the house. Turned out that it was a pretty popular design. For A Seymour Christmas, I changed up the inside of the house a bit to suit my needs, but other than getting rid of the parking lot and addition and making it a bit derelict, the exterior stayed the same.
The Seymour House may be real, but ghost story in A Seymour Christmas comes solely from my imagination. If you want some true Lansing ghost stories, check out Haunted Lansing by Jenn Carpenter. It’s a fun read. And if you’re interested in architecture like me, I recommend A Field Guide to American Houses by Virginia Savage McAlester. It’s a handy guide to have around.
Get a sneak peek at A Seymour Christmas: A Ghost Story here.