Today, publishing insider Jane Friedman is running a piece I wrote about turning anecdotes into stories.  It’s a how-to post for writers—and a behind-the-scenes look for readers interested in the writing craft.

When I went into my journals to look out an anecdote for Jane, I found a wealth of incidents to choose from. The one I used involved the time I leaned down to smile into a baby carriage and got a shock.

Here are a few more—including a couple of ghost stories. Enjoy!

1.

My friend Patsy was out doing errands, walking toward the liquor store near her downtown apartment. 

As she approached the store, Patsy saw a woman coming toward her, crossing the street. The woman was probably in her early 30s, slender and completely naked. She and Patsy arrived at the liquor store at the same time and went through the door together, arms brushing briefly.

Patsy told this story at a recent lunch. There were three of us in the booth at the diner, all long-time friends. 

Inside the store, Patsy said the naked woman went straight to a particular shelf. She’d obviously been there before and knew exactly what she wanted. The woman took a can of non-alcoholic beverage to the cash desk, where a store supervisor came over to talk to her.

Patsy was terribly upset. Here was a vulnerable woman, naked in the liquor store. She was still upset as we talked, wondering if she should have gone to her apartment to get the woman some clothes. 

Don’t beat up on yourself, our friend Sarah said. Everything would have been over by the time you got back.

The store supervisor was straightforward with the naked woman, Patsy told us. Not kind, but not nasty either. Neutral. She was detaining the woman, although not by force.

Patsy bought a bottle of wine, and as she was leaving, eight cops on bicycles converged on the store and headed inside. That was all she saw, but it was enough that she couldn’t sleep that night, wondering if the naked woman had been raped; if she was having some sort of medical emergency. A seizure? She didn’t look as if she was on drugs.

You couldn’t have done anything, Sarah and I said.

The next morning, Patsy went back to the liquor store and talked to the staff. They said the police had found the woman’s clothes nearby. They took her somewhere, probably to hospital, maybe to Queen Street mental health.

“Anyway,” Patsy said. “That happened.”

2.

I was talking to another friend about a novella I’ll be writing soon, a ghost story. Maria is a writer as well. I told her that I’m going to visit a haunted house this fall with a medium who does tours.

He often takes people to the George Brown House on Beverley Street in west-end Toronto. Brown was a prominent Liberal politician in 19^th century Canada and publisher of the Globe newspaper, precursor of the Globe and Mail. Born in Scotland, raised partly in the U.S., Brown built the large and elegant house in the early 1870s and lived there with his wife and four children. 

George Brown was shot by a disgruntled printer in his office at the Globe in 1880. The wound turned septic and he died on Beverley Street a few weeks later. His ghost is said to haunt the house, along with the apparition of a young girl whom people call Alexandra, possibly a child who died there while the house was used by the Canadian National Institute for the Blind.

I didn’t need to tell Maria any of this. She surprised me by saying she’d worked in George Brown House for a while before we’d known each other. Offices on the upper floors are rented out to non-profits. Maria had worked for one of them, and also rented a small office where she could write on her own time. 

During the day, people who worked there generally used back staircases, the ones formerly used by servants. When they worked into the evening, they used the main staircase, a grand and curving affair.

One night, after Maria worked late, she headed down the main staircase and felt a hand on her shoulder. She was startled. No one was there. Maria got out of the house pretty quickly.

The next day, someone told her the house was haunted. People often saw and felt weird things, but she didn’t need to worry. The ghosts never hurt anyone, although they could kill out the wifi if they wanted.

Sometimes when she left work late, Maria felt as if she was walking through a frigid area, always on the stairs. She also got used to feeling the hand on her shoulder as she walked down. 

When it was clear this was going to keep happening, she developed a standard response, speaking silently to the ghost. 

“I’m alive. You’re dead. We have nothing to do with each other. Please go away.”

The hand would be withdrawn.

3.

Another ghost story. This one was told by a student in one of my creative writing classes who had missed a couple of weeks. She’d been in hospital, she told us. Being Canadian, she apologized.

Her classmates and I told her not to apologize, feeling worried about her. She was fine, she told us. Recovered. But something weird had happened in the hospital one night.

The man in the room across the corridor had died. His body was covered by a sheet and left on the bed until a porter could take him to the morgue.

Yet the room wasn’t quiet. The TV kept turning on. No one was there, but there would be a click and the sound came back on. Each time it happened, the nurse would come into the room and turn it off. Yet it wouldn’t be long before the TV switched on again.

Finally, the nurse grew exasperated. 

“Mr. X, you’re dead,” she told him. “Please stop playing with the TV.”

She left, and the TV didn’t come on again.

4.

I’ve never seen a ghost or sensed anything paranormal. When I was a writer in residence in Tasmania, I stayed in a stone cottage in Hobart that was built by convicts during the 19^th century. 

It was widely believed to be haunted, and the guest book was full of comments from other writers who had stayed there before me. Many wrote about seeing or hearing unexplained things, but I never saw a ghost or heard anything unusual.

This means I don’t expect to see ghosts in George Brown house, although I’d be happy to be surprised. Mainly I want to see other people see ghosts. When unexpected things happen, people behave unexpectedly.

5.

One caveat. I might have seen a zombie.

I was walking along a main street near my house, approaching an alleyway.

Suddenly a car whipped off the street into the alley at speed, narrowly missing an elderly woman dressed in black who was almost across. She gave a small cry of fear and grabbed my arm.

I yelled after the guy, “Pedestrians have the right of way.”

He reversed his car back up the alley and leaned out his window. “What did you say?”

“I said that legally pedestrians have the right of way.”

“What did you say?”

“You nearly hit somebody.”

“Says this 75-year-old bitch on the way to pick up her fucking pension cheque,” he said. “This ugly fat fucking bitch who can’t keep her mouth shut. This 80-year-old fat fucking bitch shooting off her fat old mouth.”

I stopped putting highlights in my hair a few years ago after my stylist said I was lucky, it was going grey nicely. There’s a lot more grey now, but my stylist still thinks it looks good.

The man obviously disagreed. He was pretty strange looking himself, a very pale white guy who looked as if he’d never seen the sun. His head was bald and egg-shaped, and he had dark circles around his eyes, raccoon circles. He appeared to be somewhere in his late 40s or early 50s. I have seldom seen anyone look so filthy angry.

I glared at him, and the elderly woman murmured something in Greek to me as she let go of my arm. 

The man swore some more then turned to face ahead, ready to gun his car.

A young woman was walking her dog up the alley, the dog lolloping ahead on the lead, ready to squeeze past his car. He didn’t seem to see the dog and the young woman any more than he’d seen the elderly one.

“Now you’re going to hit the dog?!” I called.

“You’re a fat fucking dog,” he yelled. “A fat fucking 85-year-old bitch!”

He roared off, missing both the dog and the young woman by inches. 

Zombie? Golem? Uncle Fester from the old Addams Family TV show? Or addict needing a fix? 

I wasn’t taking notes, but I wrote it all down when I got home, everything fresh in my memory. I tend to do that, and as I mention in the Jane Friedman piece, I often use this sort of anecdote in my writing. Sometime. Somewhere.

Oh. I just did. 

Jump to Jane’s newsletter here to find my tips about turning anecdotes into stories. Take a look! The baby carriage thing is pretty weird.