This is an article I wrote for Mystery Scene Magazine shortly following
the release of Hindsight in 1990. It gives some insight on how I came up
with the idea for the book, as well as how I used my family history---both
good and bad---during the course of the storyline.
INSIGHT ON HINDSIGHT
By Ronald Kelly
Psychic phenomena and mass murder are two subjects that most every
writer of horror and suspense explores at least once during their
career. Each is a subject of extremes. The power of second sight is
considered a mental extreme, while wholesale slaughter is considered a
physical one, to say the least. Usually inspiration comes from general
knowledge of such subjects; sometimes you only have to look as far as
the daily newspaper. But, during the course of our writing, how many of
us actually find the opportunity to draw from personal experience or
family history?
Such is the case with my first novel, Hindsight, published by
Zebra Books this past January. The story is about the family of a
Tennessee tobacco farmer during the Great Depression who has survived
the aftershocks of sudden poverty, only to face a greater challenge of
the human spirit; dealing with the disappearance of a teenaged son. It
is also about a nine-year-old child named Cindy Ann, who has developed
the gift of second sight during a long illness. Her newfound gift soon
turns into a curse when an act of "hindsight" reveals the bodies of
her older brother and his friends, horribly mutilated and buried within
the hull of an abandoned tobacco barn. Eventually, her frightening
visions reveal the identities of the murderous culprits, putting Cindy
and her family in danger of becoming their next victims.
The premise behind Hindsight was inspired by a similar story told
to me by my late mother. It was a story told with an air of hushed
discretion; one that rattled faintly of skeletons in the family closet.
As the story went, a grisly mass murder took place in a small farming
community during the late '30s or early '40s. The bodies of a group of
young men were discovered in the barn of a local farmer. One of those
victims was a distant cousin on my mother's side of the family, while
the owner of the barn was a great-uncle. No motive was ever determined
and the true participants in the massacre were never caught. The
unfortunate farmer, who remained at the crime scene to keep the hogs
from devouring the dismembered remains, was convicted of the murders and
sent to prison, simply because he was too frightened to reveal the
identities of the true killers.
This story, in itself, is darkly interesting. But there was another
factor that injected an element of the bizarre into the tale. My mother
was a child at the time and remembered the morning that the cousin left
with his friends. She also had a disturbing premonition that day; a
premonition that the boys were headed for disaster and that she would
never see her cousin alive again. And, as it turned out, she never did.
My mother was a remarkable woman in many different ways. She was a
devoted homemaker and a sensitive artist who rendered incredibly
lifelike landscapes in acrylic and oil. But perhaps her most
remarkable---and frightening---talent was her psychic ability. The
majority of today's population still put the power of precognition in
the same category as ghosts, vampires, and werewolves. Even most writers
of the macabre don't take the subject seriously. I, on the other hand,
believe in such powers, for I have seen the evidence from a personal
standpoint.
Her psychic abilities were limited mainly to precognition. Mostly it
came in the form of feelings of dread and the knowledge that certain
events were destined to take place. During her lifetime, she predicted
both the insignificant and the devastating; everything from flat tires
to the deaths of loved ones. She very rarely experienced the type of
disturbing visions that Cindy does in Hindsight, but there were episodes
that drove her to the edge of hysteria. On one such occasion, she
accidentally dropped a can of biscuits on the head of the family dog
and, at the same instant, witnessed an image of my uncle being crushed
by an overturned truck. She endured two weeks of torturous expectation
before her premonition finally came true and she received news of my
uncle's death in an automobile wreck.
Living with the lady's strange talent was sometimes as much of a trial
for her family as it was for her. When she got one of her panicked
feelings, it was wise to heed her warnings or else face the possibility
of misfortune. Sometimes her premonitions actually changed the course of
events. I know of at least three instances in which she was instrumental
in saving lives. In that sense, her ability was a gift rather than a
curse.
My mother died recently after a long and courageous fight with cancer,
and she never had the opportunity to read my first novel. She was one of
my best friends and a great supporter of my writing career. She was, and
shall always be, an undying source of inspiration. I am a religious man
in my own way; I believe in life after death. And, although she never
got the chance to read Hindsight, I truly believe that she knows what it
is all about. And that it is dedicated to her... and the little girl who
knew things.
This article appeared in MYSTERY SCENE #25 in March of 1990.
