If you love true ghost stories, then Timber Ghost Press’ Out of Time: True Paranormal Encounters is the anthology you want to unwrap every night along with your favorite full-sized Halloween treat! (And if you DO purchase this book, drop me a line through my Contact page or other means. I have a special goody for you!)

My piece, “Floor Song Tango,” opens the collection, and is about the house I grew up in. Outsiders didn’t know what was going on—mostly because our parents had completely brainwashed us into thinking our experiences were products of our imagination (for the record, I think it was brilliant that they did that. I, for one, never would’ve slept. I’m forever grateful). I’m sure they’d even convinced themselves. That said, when it came time to dump the place after Dad’s passing, things ramped up.

My sister Missie and I were giggle balls going through tubs of mildewed, broken crap left behind in the house in 2008–until we had a terrifying encounter just about an hour after this photo was taken.

After the house was unoccupied for a while, this type of mold started showing up in true abandoned-building style fashion. I would’ve thought it was cool if it weren’t going to cost us so much to clean up.

This was one of my childhood toys. I literally remember my eyes lighting up when I saw it (even though I was REALLY teeny. Probably a toddler). But aside from being broken, that day in 2008, it was also creepy. The music didn’t play right from decades of exposure in a damp environment.

While finally coming clean in “Floor Song Tango” relieved me of a heavy burden, that house still finds a way to haunt us even now. Check out this conversation with my sister just last month: an ad for the same woodstove that was in our house popped up in her FB ads.

A preview of my story appears below, but if you love true paranormal, this book needs to be with you for October especially. Check out this sweet ToC!

Kristi Petersen Schoonover ♣ “Floor Song Tango”

Errica Chavez ♣ “Caught in the Hall”

Judith Baron ♣ “The Garden Hotel in Normandy”

Nat Whiston ♣ “The Ghost that Waits”

 Caryn Larrinaga ♣ “Never Alone”

C.J. Hislop ♣ “The Black Figure”

Lisa H. Owens ♣ “The Hall with Seven Doors”

Lehua Parker ♣ “Nightwalker”

Chris Tyroak ♣ “An Absolute Dark”

Amanda Cecilia Lang ♣ “Grandmother’s House”

Caillou Pettis ♣ “Stranger in the Shed”

T.J. Tranchell ♣ “Street View”

William Presley ♣ “The Figure”

N.A. Battaglia ♣ “The Gateway House”

Bryan Stubbles ♣ “Night and Day”

Nathan Alling Long ♣ “The Darkness  Box”

Susan E. Rogers ♣ “Please Sit still: A Tale of Robert the Doll”

Kelli A. Wilkins ♣ “My Paranormal Adventure in Gettysburg”

John Stratton ♣ “The Concept of Dread”

C.M. Saunders ♣ “The Poltergeist and Me”

L.E. Daniels ♣ “Spooned by the Dead”

Catherine A. MacKenzie ♣ “Socks and a Ripped-Out Heart”

Rebecca A. Demarest ♣ “Better to Ask Permission”

A. Morton ♣ “Don’t Think About It”

Brianna Malotke ♣ “Always Watched”

Nathan D. Ludwig ♣ “I Didn’t Look”

Treat your inner ghost junkie on Kindle and paperback by clicking through to Amazon here.

Wanna whet your appetite? Here’s a preview of “Floor Song Tango”

A divorce, two college degrees, and thirteen years later, Dad got sick and landed in a rehab facility. The house sat empty. The kids were scattered all over the country, but I lived seven miles away. He asked me to check on the place daily.

I went once a week, if that. The forlorn silence was creepy, even though my heart still hummed Todd’s words every time I had to visit. I’d throw the accumulated mail in a basket on the counter, water the Devil’s Ivy that hung under the skylight in the stairwell, and dump the dehumidifier. I’d scan the rooms. Then I was back to my life.

When Dad had gotten too feeble to keep the woodstove going, he’d installed a furnace. On the day I had to go turn it on, it was dark before I got out of work. I snapped on lights as I went and thrust the scary metal rod with a red-rubber-tipped end to ON. The furnace roared to life, but I was nearly knocked out by the smell of oil and exhaust.

I swore I heard something breathe behind me.

I left everything on and lit out of there. When I’d come for a visit and had to leave in the dark, Dad would stand on the upper porch, in his frayed driver’s cap and stained L.L. Bean jacket, and watch over me until I pulled away. I missed him so badly at that moment my eyes physically hurt.

I reached the road and backed up a few feet before stepping on the gas. Suddenly, a dark shadow in the shape of a person streaked in front of my headlights, and the car shook with a heavy ka-chunk.

Holy shit! Did I just hit somebody?

I leapt from the car. “Hello?”

There was only the rustling of some leaves in the woods.

There weren’t any streetlights, but no one could’ve run that fast that I wouldn’t have seen him.

I felt like an anvil hit my chest. I jumped into the car, turned on the interior light, and took off. I’d been a speed demon in my teens, but I’d never taken the twists and curves of our hill that recklessly. I fumbled for my phone and called my boyfriend Nathan—an occult specialist and ghost hunter who had a popular internet paranormal podcast—and breathlessly explained.

He was his usual rock. “It works like pareidolia, but it’s a little different. The human eye has a blind spot. So, if something is in that blind spot and you detect something is there but you visually cannot see it, your brain will take whatever information is around it and create an image that it then tells you is there.”

It was of little comfort; I knew what I’d seen. I hadn’t caught something out of the corner of my eye. A shadow in the shape of a person had shot right in front of me and struck my car.

Nathan did all the checking after that.