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Sixteen frightening, heartwarming, amusing and spellbinding stories from America’s Heartland, spanning pioneer days to the present.

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Excerpts from Trespassing Time:

    ...is there really anything as eerie as the vast open fields and dark stands of woods that stretch across America’s Heartland? What awaits us in this strange and unfamiliar region and what tragic ghosts still walk in the lonely places where no one can hear you when you scream?
    The prairie of America can be a mysterious place and, to those who come from the more populated regions, a strangely unsettling one. Even to those of us who grew up on the prairie, it’s hard to know what sometimes lurks around the next corner of the road, or around the next bend in the path.
    - From the Introduction by Troy Taylor
      Founder of the American Ghost Society

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    The moan rattled the windowpanes this time, the pitch rising again from a melodic hum to a whistle. Then it wavered into a painful scream-like quality. The wail stretched out longer than any human voice could possibly sustain.
    Martie began to whimper. She couldn’t help herself.
    Abrupt silence.
    Wind hit the walls of the house like a blast from a passing freight train. Cold invisible fingers raced under the door and swooped down the stovepipe, pulling at her skirts and dousing the table lamp. Only the flickering stove fire lit the room.
    - From “One Night at Whistling Woman Creek,“ by Linda Madl

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    The weather was strange as fall crept in. More and more the nights brought fog crawling up from the river. Maria tried not to look at it, but in the end, she would be drawn to the window. She began to see wispy figures in the mist. They always rose from the grove of trees where the Starnes were buried. Their vaporous shapes streamed slowly toward the house.
    And then they would seep into the walls.
    - From “Lost in the Fog,” by Jerri Garretson

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    “Mine…” the wind wailed as its breath blew the barn doors wide and knocked the lantern from the nail. Flames leapt high; the laughter turned to screams.
    Chloe gasped and turned away, only to find she still faced the TV. She spun about again, yet the TV continued to stand before her. Chloe’s knees went weak. As she watched, a new scene flashed across the screen. Six tiny coffins lay on a straw-strewn floor, the lids pried open, the nails still protruding from the bowed wooden planks.
    - From “Forgotten, But Not Gone,” by Sheri L. McGathy

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    ...people were there, in the cemetery, but they weren’t real people. Where eyes should have been, only hollow sockets remained. Their thin, shapeless bodies swayed back and forth like river grass in a gentle current. Stems—translucent and gray—floated around them, waving like arms. Beckoning me.
    My heart pounded hard and my ears rang. I had no choice except to move towards them, letting them wrap me in their embrace. Long, reedy stems wound around me, tangling my legs and hugging my arms to my sides.
    We had dreams, too. Why? The words gurgled eerily as though spoken from a great distance, or underwater. I struggled, my lungs burning, gasping for breath and choking.
    - From “Dreams of the Dead,” by Barbara J. Baldwin
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