Elaine Mercado

The story is that of the author and her family's experiences with a Victorian house they had purchased and restored. Considering her occupation as an emergency room R.N., she is used to dealing with death. Yet when she and her family continue to have dreams of suffocation, see balls of light streaking around the ceiling and dusky shadows flowing along the baseboards of their Victorian house that they had restored with so much love, neither her nurse’s training nor her experiences with show more death, could provide any answers. From the book:“Denial plows very deeply into our souls,” she states. “We would rather have a flimsy, semi-rational explanation, however irrational in reality, than have to deal with the unknown.” In spite of that, it is the "unknown" that stalks her and her family in this ghost story and I have no reason to believe that it is not true...or at least that it is absolutely true as far as she's concerned. The family is tossed into a nightmare that consist of skeletal brides huddling near the stairway, drinking glasses that hover by in the air by themselves, and finally and worst of all...sexual assault by "things" unseen. The author and her family struggles with these manifestations and desperately searches for a rational explanation. When all the lights inexplicably turn on and the doors all unlock by themselves, they try to rationalize it away with "perhaps the fuse box had shorted out"...or "maybe the doors were not really locked". She has two young daughters in the house who are alternately frightened and saddened, wanting to help whatever is haunting the house. I thought long before this, that they should be looking for help from someone that perhaps deals with these things and NOT offering to "help" whatever this is. It didn't seem to be very friendly or even wanting to be friends, to me. Soon the manifestations escalate. I thought is this even possible? How much worse can it get??? Finally, the author and her daughters leave the house from sunset to sunrise. I thought that they might as well sell it or burn the thing down. As the story go on, neighbors and a search of historical records bring clues to the haunting. Why they didn't do this the very first time they saw or experienced anything was beyond my understanding. They got psychic investigator Hans Holzer involved and hoped he could get to the bottom of it. If I or any other reader believes or disbelieves makes no difference...the author and her daughters believed it and either was or thought, they were experiencing it. Rather you believe it or not, it's still a story that will give you goosebumps if not nightmares. show less

This was a spooky read for the Halloween season. Well written and frightful account of one family's experience in a haunted house. Frustrating because of the denial, the marital stress, the conflicted emotions of the family and the incredible amount of time it took them to seek help. It's often amazing what people can convince themselves to live with. Scariest of all for me personally, was the incredible, uncanny similarity to experiences of my family members who shared their home with a show more presence that disrupted their lives, in two separate homes. As in the book, it took the intervention of a medium/exorcist to stop the activity. This is the first account I have read that so closely mirrored those scary family stories, and gives the reader a lot of mysteries to ponder and a lot of creepy feelings on the back of the neck. show less

Grave’s End by Elaine Mercado is her account of the years she and her family lived in a haunted house.
Sightings, visitations, strange sounds, noxious smells are just some of the things that this family experienced while the unknown stalked them. While some things such as all the lights coming on, the doors unlocking by themselves were easier to rationalize, other things frightened and saddened them. From visions of a skeletal bride to drinking glasses hovering in the air, feelings of show more suffocation and intimate touches were experienced by Elaine and her daughters over the years. My biggest question throughout the book was why the family stayed in this house.

Yes, this was their first, hard saved for house. A large Victorian that they renovated and restored, but even after Elaine and her husband divorced, she and her girls stayed in the house. If I was experiencing even some of the things that they described, I would have been out of that house. She wrote of how the girls didn’t want to move away from their school or their friends but surely she could have found somewhere close by for them to live.

I am a skeptic and this book didn’t help make a believer out of me, my thoughts were more about how much the author was financially benefiting from this story. Unfortunately, the writing was weak and uninspired which made the supposedly scary events come off more as a campfire tale than a true story. If you are looking for a good haunted house story, I would suggest you pass on Grave’s End. show less

Just about everyone loves a good ghost story, but what does one do when it seems as if the very fabric of reality twists and the vastness of the shadowy unknown peers out from behind the everyday rhythm of life? In Grave's End: A True Ghost Story, Ms. Mercado addresses this issue with wrenching candor. Although this may not be a book to read in an old, shadowy house at midnight, the story offers both fear and hope, and a sense of something eternal.

By the time Elaine Mercado and her first show more husband bought a charming - but somewhat dilapidated - Victorian-style house in Brooklyn, New York, in the winter of 1982, they had been house-hunting for a little over a year and were quite anxious to settle into a home of their own. Although the house was in need of some serious renovation, it was within their price range and they were more than content to do the work required to make the house their own. Little did they realize that they and their two young daughters would be embarking on a nightmare that would last for thirteen years.

Within a few days of moving in, Elaine and her eldest daughter - eleven-year-old Karin - began to experience the sensation of being watched. Next came the scratching noises and inexplicably weird smells, followed by whispering voices, maniacal laughter, fluffy, dust-ball sized apparitions flitting along baseboards, and mysterious orbs of light floating along the ceilings. Almost from the day the family moved in, each member was targeted by the haunting in some way; "suffocating dreams" were experienced by everyone except for the youngest daughter - five-year-old Christine. Eventually, these paranormal experiences escalated to actual acts of physical aggression directed at Elaine and both the girls.

This is the true story of how one family tried to cope with living in a haunted house. It also describes how, with the help of famed parapsychologist Dr. Hans Holzer and psychic medium Marisa Anderson, the family finally discovered the tragic and heart-breaking secrets buried in the house at Grave's End. As of the publication of this book, Elaine Mercado continues to live in the once-haunted house with her family.

I certainly enjoyed reading this book; as I always love reading true accounts of paranormal experiences. In my opinion, the story was very descriptive; written in a down-to-earth style that I appreciated. According to the author, while there is still residual paranormal activity, the primary source of the haunting has been cleansed from the house, and she and her family are able to live in their house in relative peace. Overall, I would give Grave's End: A True Ghost Story by Elaine Mercado, R. N. an A+! show less