The Last Goodbye of Harris Turner
Young reporter Cassidy James drew her small-town paper's annual October assignment: writing the routine "spooktacular" feature on local haunted houses. She didn't expect to run into actual ghosts -- much less an old friend of one of the town's most famous spirits. But after her story runs, the elderly Harris Turner begs her to arrange a reunion with his long-dead boyhood pal, Kingston Grand.
This paranormal encounter must happen, Turner says, on Halloween night, which promises a full (and blue) moon. Prime time, he insists, for the souls of the restless departed to appear to the living. Particularly those who died on a previous blue moon, like his buddy Kingston, only twenty-two at his death more than sixty years ago. But what's keeping Kingston earthbound in that stately old house? And why is Harris Turner so intent on communicating with his dead friend after all these years? And why Cassidy?
Cassidy has no idea where this story will lead. But there's no way she's going to miss this once-in-a-lifetime "spook scoop."
The End of Summer
For reporter Cassidy James, it’s just another sunny afternoon at her small town's pool, a chance to linger
in the last golden days of summer. But behind the pool's chain link fence, the rusted remains of a Ferris wheel loom over the trees.
These swampy woods hold the ruins of a long-abandoned amusement park, the focus of rumors, legends and children’s rhymes – and unexplained
deaths and disappearances. Locals call it “the Dark.”
An old man named Jed is always waiting by the fence.
His young wife disappeared in the Dark years ago, he tells Cassidy, and her soul still wanders the woods. Jed asks a favor: Will Cassidy
go into the Dark for him and take a message to his lost wife?
Why Cassidy? Because after her notorious encounter with Harris Turner she’s the town’s unofficial (and unwilling) “ghost whisperer”? Because no one else will listen to a crazy old man’s spooky stories? Or because Cassidy is a reporter with a certain gift – and a burning desire to follow a story to its very end? Even if it takes her into -- the Dark.
THE CASSIDY JAMES GHOST STORIES are a new series, a new character, and a new kind of story for me. I've always loved ghost stories, but I'm a novelist and playwright, and I seldom write short fiction. But Cassidy arrived one day in my imagination, and she has stories to tell. She's a young reporter, working her first gig at a small-town newspaper, and she discovers she has a gift for a particular kind of story. These short stories are only available in Kindle ebook editions at the moment, but there will be more to come. I hope you'll follow Cassidy (and me) on her slightly spooky future adventures.
