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

At the three-minute mark, she arbitrarily decided she’d waited long enough. She stopped the recorder, put in her earbuds, and pressed play.


The sound of her own breathing was much louder now that it was piping into her ears. She started to turn down the volume, but then froze as she heard a faint sound underneath those heavy breaths. It was a light squeak—a footstep on a floorboard somewhere in the house.


She turned the volume up and listened harder, trying to determine where the sound was coming from. It was too far away to be the living room or the room next to it, and both the kitchen and the bathroom had linoleum floors. Though maybe there was wood underneath?


Chapter 4