Trista has always loved abandoned houses and the paranormal. Now that she’s at college only fifteen minutes from the notoriously haunted Hollow Street house, she knows exactly where she’s spending Halloween. She packs a bag, puts on her favorite vintage dress, and sets off, hoping to spot the ghost of the young, dark-haired woman who’s said to haunt the house’s living room.<br><br>Fellow student Keira does not like abandoned houses, and she isn’t particularly interested in ghosts. Visiting the Hollow Street house was not how she’d planned to spend Halloween. But her little sister, who loves all things spooky, has begged Keira to check out the haunted house next to her university, and Keira has trouble saying no. She doesn’t expect to see anything supernatural, so it’s quite a shock to find herself face-to-face with a mysterious young woman in old-fashioned clothing who seems to have appeared from nowhere.<br><br>When the two ghost-hunters come face to face, each mistakes the other for the ghost she’s looking for. How tragic, they both think, that such a beautiful person should have died so young. Of course, things aren’t as bleak as they seem, and the two women might find themselves pleasantly surprised ... if they can make it to the morning. Because real entities haunt the Hollow Street house, and they’re anything but friendly.

Spirits in the Dark

And so, when Trista had started her freshman year at Penn State Haggerton, barely a fifteen-minute walk from the Hollow Street house, she’d known exactly what she was doing on Halloween.


She wasn’t sure what she wanted to see. She was definitely hoping to spot the girl, and maybe to record a few footsteps or EVP—electronic voice phenomenon. But ghost stories were best when they were vague and half-substantiated: convincing enough that you could just about believe them, but not so convincing that you couldn’t leave them behind you when the lights came on. She had read on local ghost-hunting sites that the second presence in the Hollow Street house had a demonic feeling to it. Several investigators had reported persistent nightmares after visiting the place. Trista didn’t want to take that kind of souvenir home, and she decided it was fine with her if she didn’t encounter the second presence at all.


And yet, she thought wryly, here I go into its house.


Chapter 2