Hotel haunting inspires novel

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This article was published 06/01/2014 (4468 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When it comes to Winnipeg hotel hauntings, Room 202 at the Fort Garry Hotel is probably the most well-known, but Maureen Flynn’s debut novel, Buckle My Shoe, exposes another ghostly guesthouse.

The book — released in December by South Point Douglas-based Métis publisher Pemmican Publications — weaves between the stories of a present-day homicide detective turned hotel security guard and the real-life murder of 16-year-old Grace (Edith) Cook at the Marlborough Hotel in December 1943.

Flynn said the inspiration for the story came from a conference she attended at the Marlborough a few years ago.

“I learned about the ghost Edith there,” Flynn said. “I did some research on the Internet and found out a little bit about the true story of her murder. I was intrigued and I felt like I wanted to tell her story.

“At times when I was writing her part, I felt like I wasn’t writing it all. You can take that for whatever it is.”

Buckle My Shoe is Flynn’s first book, but the lifelong Selkirk resident is no stranger to writing, having been a freelance reporter and columnist for the Selkirk Enterprise and the Selkirk Journal, as well as having short stories published in Chicken Soup for the Soul.

A Manitoba Hydro employee, wife and mother of three, Flynn said finding time to write is her biggest challenge, but notes she’s a quick writer and is never short of ideas.

“They talk about ‘think outside the box,’ well, my husband says ‘I don’t even know that there is a box,’ Flynn said. “That’s (coming up with ideas) no problem, it’s just trying to keep up with my fingers to write them down or type them.”

In fact, Flynn’s ideas are piling up. She’s currently working on a followup to Buckle My Shoe, titled Shut the Door, and plans for it to be a five-book series.

If Flynn has a hit murder mystery series on her hands, she can thank a well-timed reference to the 1980 film The Shining.

“A friend of mine, we were having a little tour of the Marlborough and as soon as we were in the old part, I nudged him and said ‘Red rum, red rum’ and I could almost see the two girls in the blue dresses floating down the hallway,” Flynn said.

“When I started getting brave enough to ask some of the staff if there were any ghosts at the Marlborough, I learned about Edith and when I read up on her, I read that when she was murdered she was wearing a blue dress, so that kind of freaked me out a bit.”

Still, Flynn said she’s skeptical when it comes to the existence of ghosts.

“I’m not sure, but I find the possibility unnerving,” she said.