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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781591938774 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Adventure Publications, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2018 |
| Series: | Ghostly Tales |
| Pages: | 96 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.25(d) |
About the Author
Ryan greatly enjoys sharing his knowledge of writing and book publishing at schools and special events. When he isn’t working on books, Ryan likes to build LEGO sets, play board games, and try new restaurants. He lives in eastern Minnesota with his wife and two sons.
Read an Excerpt
Night Frights
Karen Anderson had a choice to make. She’d earned enough high school credits to graduate a semester early. So now she could either stay home and bring in a little extra income, or she could move to Wausau to live with her father.
It wasn’t a difficult decision.
“You guys got divorced a long time ago,” Karen told her mother. “That was right for you, but this is a chance for me to get to know my dad. I don’t think I can pass it up.”
Craving an opportunity to bond with a man who was little more than a stranger, Karen moved to the central Wisconsin city in 1982, leaving her mom and her younger sister, Sheryl, behind.
Almost immediately, Karen had second thoughts. Upon entering her father’s house, she felt uneasy, uncomfortable. But she wasn’t certain whether the home itself or her father’s new wife, Stephanie, caused the eerie sensation.
This wasn’t the stereotypical stepmother-stepdaughter resentment, though. As Karen told her sister in a telephone conversation, “She’s into all sorts of weird stuff. I think she’s a witch, Sheryl.”
True enough, the woman openly dabbled in the occult and in dark magic. Conversely, Stephanie was obsessed with religion and with the Bible. She fanatically read the Good Book, maintaining stacks of scribbled notes and messages about it.
Stephanie’s cats also acted in a bizarre fashion. Whenever Karen stood to leave a room, the felines darted out before her, ran directly to the place she was headed and waited, staring at her with their piercing eyes. It was as if the cats somehow knew where Karen was going—as if they could read her mind.
The teenaged girl was overwhelmed with relief when, three weeks into her stay, Sheryl came to visit. The sisters chose to share a double bed in the extra bedroom.
“Is it just me, or do you get a bad vibe in here?” Sheryl asked, as she unpacked her suitcase.
Karen gestured toward the alcove beyond Sheryl’s side of the bed. “There’s a cold spot over there. It’s the only place inside the entire house where Stephanie’s dogs ever go to the bathroom.”
Sheryl frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means I like to stay on this side of the room.”
Later that night, at just before midnight, Karen was shaken awake by her younger sister.”
“What’s wrong?” Karen asked, her voice groggy.
“I can’t sleep,” whispered Sheryl. “I keep thinking there’s something behind me in that alcove.”
“It’s just your imagination. Try to get some rest.”
“If it’s just my imagination, can we switch sides?”
Karen thought for a moment and then decided, “No.” She rolled onto her side, away from her sister, signaling the end of the conversation.
A few hours later, Karen was awakened again. However, this time, it wasn’t her sister that stirred her. She bolted upright in bed, surprised to see Sheryl doing the same.”
“What happened?” asked Karen.
“I don’t know,” said Sheryl. “I just woke up.”
“Me too, but why? Did you hear anything?”
“No, it was more like a feeling. A really bad feeling.”
Karen understood exactly what her sister meant. The room seemed clouded by a thick sense of foreboding. Sleep did not come easily after that.
Unfortunately, the daylight hours brought little comfort for the teens. Sheryl confessed to her older sister that the adults—their father and their stepmother—did not seem to be on their side. Karen felt the same way.
Each girl was the other’s only ally in the house. They could not discuss their fears with their parents, and the nightly task of sleeping in that room was an even more frightful ordeal.
Three nights later, Karen was again awakened. And again, she sat upright in bed at the same instant Sheryl did. However, this time, the reason was apparent.
As Karen stared into the alcove, horrified, she heard an audible gasp from her sister, followed by a soft whimper. Karen wanted to scream, but she could not find her voice. Instead, she stared silently at the ghastly specter of a man hanging from the ceiling by his necktie!
Almost a week later, Karen received a phone call from Sheryl, who was safely back home with her mother.
“Karen, I need to tell you about the dream I had last night,” Sheryl whispered, almost afraid to speak the words aloud. “I was in that bedroom again, and I walked over to the alcove. I pulled up the carpeting on the floor, and I found a puddle of dried blood.”
Karen paused, and then she said, “It was just a dream,” although it was more for her own sake than for her sister’s.
“Are you going to check?” Sheryl asked. “Under the carpet, I mean.”
“No. I’m never going in that room again.”
Years later, Karen’s father and Stephanie divorced. The house still belongs to Stephanie’s family, but neither Karen nor Sheryl has visited it in more than twenty years.
Table of Contents
PrefaceHaunted Homes
- Summerwind Scares (West Bay Lake)
- Neighborhood Nightmare (La Crosse)
- Night Frights (Wausau)
- Something Scary on TV (Madison)
- The Woman in White (Stratford)
School Spirits
- The Sickly Specter (Delafield)
- A Spirit Scorned (Ashland)
- Gangster Ghost (Appleton)
- “Holy” Ghost (Kenosha)
- The Hanging Janitor (Argonne)
Murders and Mysteries
- Gein’s Ghosts (Plainfield)
- Hell’s Playground (Brodhead)
- The Ridgeway Phantom (Mineral Point)
- The Murdered Mistress (Spring Green)
- The Bray Road Beast (Elkhorn)
- The Highway 12 Hitchhiker (Baraboo)
Haunted Hotels
- Hotel Hell (Maribel)
- The Karsten Ghosts (Kewaunee, Westland)
- Return of the Hanged Man (Mineral Point)
- Dell House Disturbances (Wisconsin Dells)
- The Phantom Walker (Evansville)
Seven Cemeteries
- Bantley Graveyard (Canton)
- Dancing Shadows (Portage)
- Haunted Mausoleum (Green Lake)
- Cries in the Dark (Strum)
- Cemetery Stranger (Waukesha)
- Growls and Whispers (Portage)
- A Bloody Waste of Time (Juneau)
Selected Bibliography
About the Author