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Rob Stennett is the author of two novels: The Almost True Story of Ryan Fisher and The End Is Now. He’s the creative director at New Life Church and an accomplished film and theater director. He lives in Colorado.

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Charlie Walker doesn't believe in God or the supernatural. But Charlie's views change when he takes the biggest risk of his life---he quits his job to write the novel he's always wanted to write.The problem is that Charlie is a method writer. Since he's writing horror, he needs to experience horror. Charlie begins to dabble with the supernatural and experiences the paranormal around his house. Messages appear on mirrors, furniture moves, and his kids start seeing things. Charlie is so lost in his book that he can't see how it's affecting his family. He thinks if he just stops, it will all wash away. It doesn't. Friends convince Charlie that his only choice is to find God to save his family and home. Charlie becomes the unlikely hero in a supernatural battle. As he fights for his home and family, he meets his guardian angel and the demon assigned to him. Is Charlie going crazy? Is there really a supernatural war taking place around Charlie's home, the neighborhood mailbox, and local swimming pool? Home Made Haunting is a comedy, thriller, and allegory---just the type of story expected from Rob Stennett.

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Homemade Haunting

ZONDERVAN

Chapter One

I would have never followed this path all the way down to its inevitable conclusion if it weren't for two questions.

The first: Does God exist?

And the second side of that question is: Does Satan exist? Not that I thought about Satan very much. And as for God, early on I decided that I did not believe in him in any way, shape, or form. I wasn't a cynic. I believed that people had the ability to do unthinkably kind, generous, and heroic acts. I just didn't believe God had anything to do with them. God can't protect a family as their minivan sails through a crowded intersection, he can't influence the outcome of a football game by commanding an angel to flap his wings to cause a field goal to slice wide right, and he certainly can't convince a man standing on a bridge ready to take the final plunge that life was worth living after all. God couldn't do any of these things. Not because God was a jerk—he simply wasn't around.

I didn't arrive at this conclusion by reading Richard Dawkins and deciding belief in God is the reason there is so much war and poverty in the world. I didn't come to this conclusion by getting frustrated with inconsistencies between the Old and New Testaments. In fact, I wasn't even reading much besides Charlotte's Web back then. And it's not like E. B. White influenced me—a spider didn't appear and weave "God Is Dead" into its web.

But this journey did start when something uninvited came into my room. I was seven years old and it was a sunny afternoon, the type of day where I should have been outside playing baseball until dusk when supper was ready. Instead I was in my room surrounded by Legos because I wasn't very good at baseball. "Wasn't very good" is being kind—I was a train wreck. The first time I ever got a hit I ran to third base. Everyone was screaming "No!" but I assumed they just couldn't believe I'd actually hit the ball. I played left field, and when the baseball came at me, I curled my arms around my face like someone had just lobbed a grenade. After a while I decided my afternoon was best spent skipping the humiliation, so I spent my time alone reenacting medieval battles with Legos. When I was in my room my parents almost never interrupted me, and if they did I knew there was a problem. And on this day there wasn't just one parent; both Mom and Dad were there. Dad stepped foot into the room first and said, "Charlie, we need to talk."

I broke into a cold sweat. Whenever my parents said "We need to talk" it was because I'd done something wrong. They never said "We need to talk" and then spend the next hour discussing what a great job I was doing at school or how proud they were of me. "We need to talk" meant they'd gotten an angry phone call from a teacher or a principal, or one of the neighbors was upset about something I'd done. "He was peeing on my prize rosebushes, Sally," a mom of one of the neighbor kids would say. And then she'd add, "What is wrong with your son?"

In these "We need to talk" conversations I always had a perfectly reasonable explanation. "We were playing hide-and-go-seek and I really needed to go. And I thought it was good for plants. Aren't there a lot of nutrients in pee?"

Dad would say, "No, son, there aren't any nutrients in pee. We didn't raise you to act like an animal. If you can't be civil then we won't let you play outside at all." After that I'd be grounded for two weeks.

But on that day it was different. I knew it was something serious, but their tone was gentle and soft. Something bad was about to happen. "I just got back from the doctor. He said I'm sick, honey," Mom told me. Then she started to cry. I felt like I wanted to cry too, but I didn't know exactly what was going on.

"Your mother has cancer. Do you know what cancer is?" my dad asked.

"Yes," I answered, even though this wasn't completely true. I knew there was such a thing as cancer; I knew cancer was a scary and serious word, but what it was exactly and how it worked was beyond me. My parents accepted my "yes" because they didn't want to get into the specifics. Besides, they were as mystified as I was.

"They're going to give her treatment," Dad said. "And the treatment is going to work, but the medicine will make her tired. So we need you to be really good right now. Help around the house. Don't get into any trouble. We've all got to pull together to fight this. Okay, son?" Dad said.

The treatment did not make her better. It made her skin brittle, it made her lose her hair, it made her sit on the couch around the clock and watch soap operas. And I would sit at the other end of the couch and discuss the plots of General Hospital with her. She was too weak to get up and change the channel (back then, we could only imagine what it would be like to be one of those families who could afford a TV with a remote; we couldn't afford much of anything with all of her hospital bills stacking up) so my primary job for this portion of her life was to switch the TV from General Hospital to Guiding Light to Days of Our Lives.

Toward the end Dad told me, "It's looking bleak, son. We're going to need a miracle for her to make it now." My dad was raised Catholic so we started going to mass to pray for her. I remember going up to the front of the church and lighting a votive candle for Mom. I remember sitting and staring at that candle and imagining God way up in heaven looking down at us on earth. I pictured God using his X-ray vision to look inside the church and see my candle burning so brightly and profoundly that he would use his powers to heal my mother. I fully expected I would come home from church to find my mother completely healed. She would pick me up and kiss me over and over again and say, "I'm healed!" through her tears.

But every time I got home she'd still be lying on the couch—brittle and as close to death as ever—watching soap operas. We recorded soap operas over every VHS tape we owned so Mom could watch them day and night. We recorded Guiding Light over The Twilight Zone, As the World Turns over Jaws, and General Hospital over season 2 of Silver Spoons. Our lives were being taken over by bad dialogue and unbelievable plot twists. But they were all Mom wanted to watch. Game shows were too loud; sitcoms too silly; my horror shows were too scary. Mom found her only solace in affairs and mistaken identities and confessions of secret desire.

Mom watched soap operas (it got to where she almost never left the couch) while Dad and I went to church to light candles and pray for her. And there was one night when I looked at all the lit candles and wondered how many of those were for other moms who were dying of cancer. Why didn't we hear good stories of things happening with these candles? Why was it the same people every Saturday night, the same hopeless stares, the same candles flickering pointlessly?

When we got home Mom wasn't there. We learned later she'd called a neighbor who took her to the hospital. By the time Dad and I arrived a doctor was waiting to meet us. He asked to talk to Dad in private, and through the glass in the other room I saw Dad cry for the first and only time in my life. He was still strong as my dad always was; he locked eyes with the doctor and nodded as the doctor was no doubt giving him the details of my...