Ghost Writer

As a professional ghost storyteller, Tami Rasel ’09 spends her nights enchanting audience members from all over the world with stories, folklore and the history of Gettysburg, Pa., in particular, those from the Civil War Era. 

“As a ghost storyteller, I have had many of my own experiences with the supernatural, and many tourists, locals and re-enactors want to share their experiences with me as well,” said Rasel, of Hanover, Pa. 

It wasn’t a surprise to anyone that knew Rasel, also an aspiring writer, that she was collecting these stories and experiences of others for a book she would appropriately title Spirits of Gettysburg: Tales of a Ghost Tour Guide.

“Writing a book has always been a long time goal of mine,” she said. “For anyone that desires to be a writer, having a book published and having others read and enjoy your work is the greatest reward.”

In 2006, before she published her book, she decided to enroll at York College as a nontraditional professional writing student so that she could learn how to write with clarity. “If someone besides yourself is going to read what you have written, they also have to be able to understand what you have written,” said Rasel. “And in the case of a fictional writer, you need readers to also enjoy what they are reading.”

While Rasel was always a great storyteller, she believes York gave her the knowledge “to do more than put words on paper.” She was trained to be a writer.

She was also trained to write book proposals that would grab the attention of a publisher. “It is a very competitive business, and publishers are expecting the author to work hard at advertising, merchandising and selling his or her own work and talents.”

During Rasel’s senior year, she received news that Spirits of Gettysburg: Tales of a Ghost Tour Guide would be published by 23 House Publishing Company and released in the summer.  She also won first place in the fiction category of the Bob Hoffman Writing Contest at York College and took third place on Scholar's Day for her presentation “Hindsight of Public Education - The One Room School House.” 

Rasel, who continues to own and operate her ghost tour company, Civil War Hauntings, has begun working on her next book about an amazing story she heard from a tourist about her great-great grandmother. “I don’t want to give the story away, but it involves a woman who was so desperate to find her husband during the Civil War that she went to the White House to get President Abraham Lincoln’s permission to see her husband,” she said.