Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Strange Ghosts
    Strange Ghosts
    Strange Ghosts
    Ebook103 pages1 hour

    Strange Ghosts

    By Scott William Carter

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Equal parts riveting and stirring, Carter takes a staple of campfires and rainy nights – the ghost story – into surprising new territory in this collection. No gore or gratuitous splatter here – these tales are meant to raise the hairs on the back of the neck and leave the reader feeling quietly discomfited hours after reading.

    On a dark night in the Virginia woods, a boy encounters a former slave protecting the Confederate sword of Robert E. Lee in the spellbinding "The Sword of Surrender." In "All My Invisible Friends," a grieving child psychologist who's lost his way finds meaning again with an assist from an invisible friend. An old amusement park called "The Enchanted Grove" helps the parents of children who died tragically find closure – but maybe not for everyone. In "The Easel," a man on an evening walk buys an old drawing easel at a garage sale and soon discovers it has a secret power. And finally, a recently divorced reporter randomly picks a town to start over with his life and happens upon a "Stone Creek Station" in the woods where no train has a right to be.

    Moody. Atmospheric. Provocative. These five tales have all the makings of good ghost stories with a touch of strange thrown in for good measure.

    "Carter's writing is on target." - Publishers Weekly

    SCOTT WILLIAM CARTER's first novel, The Last Great Getaway of the Water Balloon Boys, was hailed by Publishers Weekly as a "touching and impressive debut" and won the prestigious 2011 Oregon Book Award for Young Adult Literature. His fantasy from Simon and Schuster, Wooden Bones, is due out in the summer of 2012. His short stories have appeared in Asimov's, Analog, Ellery Queen, Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales and other popular magazines and anthologies. Visit his website at swcarter.com.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFlying Raven Press
    Release dateJun 30, 2011
    ISBN9781465852922
    Strange Ghosts
    Author

    Scott William Carter

    Scott William Carter is the author of Wooden Bones and The Last Great Getaway of the Water Balloon Boys, which was hailed by Publishers Weekly as a “touching and impressive debut.” His short stories have appeared in dozens of popular magazines and anthologies, including Analog, Ellery Queen, Realms of Fantasy, and Weird Tales. He lives in Oregon with his wife and two children. Visit him at ScottWilliamCarter.com.

    Read more from Scott William Carter

    Related to Strange Ghosts

    Related ebooks

    Ghosts For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Equinox

      May 18, 2022

      In this strange world, where identities change with the rising and setting of the sun, supernatural forces are at work – and they’re causing trouble… St Leonars prison was an appropriately imposing building. It rose out of the surrounding shacks and

      5 min read

    • Article

      Monster

      Dec 1, 2022

      Monster
      7 min read

    • Article

      ‘It Was Fake!’ secrets Of The Brat Pack!

      May 23, 2021

      Alongside Rob Lowe, Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy, Emilio Estevez and Demi Moore, he was part of the cool crowd of 1980s Young Hollywood. But Andrew McCarthy has now revealed things weren’t what they appeared. With the release of his new memoir, Brat

      1 min read

    • Article

      How to Buy a Used Car During a Wildfire

      Jan 14, 2019

      I do not laugh but the children do. “I hate these fucking places,” I think again, turning the radio back on. The post How to Buy a Used Car During a Wildfire appeared first on The Millions.

      12 min read

    • Article

      All Hail Cat Jesus! The Fantastic Feline Artist Behind Benedict Cumberbatch’s Latest Biopic

      Nov 30, 2021

      Cat Jesus, as the work is known to staff, can be found on a painted mirror in the archives of the Bethlem hospital’s Museum of the Mind. It was created by the celebrated cartoonist of comical cats and Bethlem psychiatric hospital patient Louis Wain,

      5 min read

    • Article

      I’m Known As The Coffin Guy

      Aug 28, 2020

      IT WAS a repulsive act of cruelty and humiliation that shocked people around the world. “Do you want to die fast or slow?” the two burly farmers taunted as they forced Victor Mlotshwa into a coffin. They threatened to douse him in petrol and burn him

      4 min read

    • Article

      Bill And The Tooth Fairy

      Mar 10, 2021

      Bill believed in the Tooth Fairy. Big deal, you’re thinking. Lots of kids believe in the Tooth Fairy. Well, Bill wasn’t a kid. He was twenty-eight years old. You don’t believe it. My girlfriend Mary Beth didn’t believe it, either. We were having dinn

      15 min read

    • Article

      Yellowstone

      Dec 1, 2022

      Yellowstone
      14 min read

    • Article

      Slipping through MY FINGERS

      Nov 11, 2021

      Slipping through MY FINGERS
      5 min read

    • Article

      Summer Beach Reads

      Jan 10, 2021

      Summer Beach Reads
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Menu 15 Tbc

      Nov 10, 2022

      The Menu 15 Tbc
      1 min read

    • Article

      Get Into Bag Of Bones

      Apr 7, 2022

      Established in December 2021, Bag of Bones Press aims to ‘champion and publish budding writers of horror and dark fiction who may not have had a traditional or formal education in the literary arts’. Submission calls are open to anyone and everyone T

      1 min read

    • Article

      Officers Shot In Missouri, 1 Fatally, Were Sent To The Wrong Address

      Mar 8, 2018

      Authorities are investigating why the officers were sent to a house in Clinton when they should have been sent to Windsor, which is about 15 miles away. Officer Christopher Morton was killed.

      2 min read

    • Article

      Stories To Make Them Shake

      Oct 7, 2021

      Scary Diary Press publishes titles of dark sci-fi/spec-fic/bizarro and horror fiction focused ‘on world issues that need a-fixing’. Currently they want short story submissions, 2,000-5,000 words, for an anthology (working title Bloody Rock) which ‘co

      1 min read

    • Article

      Inkwell

      Jul 19, 2022

      Inkwell
      2 min read

    • Article

      In Defense Of The Harvest

      Nov 10, 2021

      I know what you will all be thinking. It is true that I was asked to write this story by members of the current government. A government pertaining of a few politicians, lawmakers, and others who are currently subject to public scrutiny as possibly b

      10 min read

    • Article

      Tory Intrusion ‘Chilling’ Independence Of National Bodies, Critics Claim

      Nov 7, 2021

      Trustee by trustee, chair by chair, the government is changing the political tone at the top of Britain’s national bodies, from museums to regulators. In the last year, Conservative donors and Tory former politicians have been picked to lead organisa

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Joys of Being Retired

      Jul 23, 2020

      Several months ago, I wrote that one of my simple pleasures in retirement is having the freedom to run errands at noon on a Tuesday, with little traffic, lots of parking and ’60s music playing on the car radio. That prompted an e-mail from reader Bob

      2 min read

    • Article

      Reactions

      Oct 13, 2021

      Reactions
      2 min read

    • Article

      Grand Recognition

      Dec 7, 2021

      Grand Recognition
      4 min read

    • Article

      Sierra

      Jun 22, 2021

      Sierra
      1 min read

    • Article

      Islanders

      Oct 13, 2022

      Islanders
      8 min read

    • Article

      Collecting Beauty

      Oct 14, 2022

      Collecting Beauty
      3 min read

    • Article

      Dracula’s Child

      Oct 7, 2020

      RELEASED OUT NOW! 569 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook Author JS Barnes Publisher Titan Books A sequel to Dracula is a great idea on paper, but it’s been written on too many pages here. Dracula’s Child has drained Bram Stoker’s poetry, and replaced

      1 min read

    • Article

      ‘Brothers And Sisters Getting Their Groove On’: Melvin Van Peebles’ House-party Musical

      Jan 31, 2022

      When Melvin Van Peebles died last autumn, he was rightly remembered as a firebrand film-maker and the godfather of blaxploitation and independent cinema. His stage career as a theatre director, playwright, composer and lyricist is less well documente

      4 min read

    • Article

      Indiana High Court Reprimands AG For Remarks About 10-year-old Rape Victim's Doctor

      Nov 3, 2023

      Both the attorney general and the doctor have now been separately reprimanded over the case, which ignited a media firestorm after abortion rights were overturned at the federal level.

      3 min read

    • Article

      MUM IS MISSING Liane Moriarty

      Sep 8, 2021

      MUM IS MISSING Liane Moriarty
      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Strange Ghosts

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Strange Ghosts - Scott William Carter

      Strange Ghosts

      Scott William Carter

      STRANGE GHOSTS by Scott William Carter

      Smashwords Edition. Electronic edition published by Flying Raven Press, June 2011.

      All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction, in whole or in part in any form. This short story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

      For more about Flying Raven Press, please visit our web site at http://www.flyingravenpress.com.

      Also by Scott William Carter

      Novels:

      The Last Great Getaway of the Water Balloon Boys

      President Jock, Vice President Geek

      Drawing a Dark Way

      Wooden Bones (forthcoming)

      Short Story Collections:

      The Dinosaur Diaries

      A Web of Black Widows

      Tales of Twisted Time

      The Unity Worlds at War

      Strange Ghosts

      Table of Contents

      The Sword of Surrender

      All My Invisible Friends

      The Enchanted Grove

      The Easel

      Stone Creek Station

      The Sword of Surrender

      The full moon glowed a fuzzy yellow, as if I was gazing at it from underwater. Once inside the woods, I only caught sight of it through the gaps in the sycamore trees, but I was still glad for its light. Crickets chirped their steady chorus. Twigs and leaves crackled underneath my tennis shoes – shoes that were too tight because I'd outgrown them but Mama couldn't afford to buy me new ones.

      My heart soon pounded a fierce drum in my ears. The shadows deepened, the branches of the trees above me tightening like clasping fingers. And then, all at once, the crickets went silent. It grew cold, too, a sudden drop that summoned the goose bumps on my arms.

      I looked around and none of the trees looked like trees — just twisted shapes in the near-darkness. This was crazy, I told myself, and decided to go back.

      But when I turned around, there she was.

      * * * * *

      This was back in Opal, a little town just outside of Richmond where I lived from the day I was born until the day I left home. There were a lot of poor towns in Virginia back then but Opal was one of the poorest. All the factories had been moved to Mexico and China. Most of these poor folk were black, like us, and when you saw them sitting on the porches of their little bungalows, they all had the look of wayward passengers who'd gotten off at the wrong train station and hadn't quite figured it out yet.

      It was a different time, for sure. This was just after the towers in New York fell and just before the great floods in Los Angeles. This was when a lot of folks still had land line phones and vacuum tube televisions. This was when some people thought racism was dying, even though a young black boy like myself was never permitted to forget the color of his skin.

      It was hot and humid that day, the air sticking to me like another layer of clothes. I'd spent the day with Johnny LeRoy, my best friend, and between the hunting for frogs and pouring over the latest Spider-Man, I'd lost track of time. When I saw the fuzzy pinkness in the sky through Johnny's paned glass window, I knew I had to hustle home or there would be a whipping.

      No way I'd make it the long way, so I debated about doing what Mama said I should never do — take the shortcut through Lee's Woods. It was a mile-long stretch of black walnut, pin oaks, and Virginia pine, the ground choked with underbrush. It was rumored that General Robert E. Lee had spent the night there on his way home from the surrender at Appomattox, which was where it got its name. But it was famous for another reason: It was widely believed to be haunted by a ghost known as the Lady of the Woods.

      I was never much of a superstitious sort, but even Professor Hinckley, the philosophy professor from the University of Virginia who summered in Opal, wouldn't set foot in those woods. They said he'd done it once as a boy, and when people asked him what happened, his face would turn red like an apple and he'd sputter a little before changing the subject to Plato. All the stories were like that, with just bits emerging — eyes of worms, a wedding dress stained with blood, a mournful voice that made you feel cold. Some folks said she was a scorned bride who'd fled into the woods in her sorrow, then got lost and died.

      Maybe because I was young, or maybe because I was more worried about getting grounded when the county fair was the following weekend, I told myself the rumors were nonsense.

      * * * * *

      I let out a scream that would have made my friends tease me endlessly if they'd heard it.

      She was a small woman, much shorter than me, but her grotesque appearance made her seem much larger — her wedding dress more gray than white, frayed so that what was left was hardly more than a moldy fish net, loose branches and leaves tied up in the lace around her arms and her neck. Her skin wasn't so much black as a deep purple, like a shriveled raisin, her nose and mouth and eyes all disappearing in the loose folds of mottled flesh.

      You da one? she said.

      She spoke with a rasping rattle, as if moths were fluttering in her throat. The smell hit me next, a sickly sweet stench, like the scent of the rotting apples that littered the orchard not far from our house. I thought she had long hair, but it wasn't hair. Withered and blackened vines cascaded down her back, reaching nearly to the ground. Her fingers were skeletal, the skin binding the bones together no thicker than flaking paint. She was barefoot, too, but they weren't feet down there so much as moss-covered, bulbous stumps.

      I wanted to run, but my legs wouldn't move.

      Eh? she said. Deaf, are ya?

      N-no, I managed. I'm . . . I'm . . .

      With surprising swiftness, she grabbed my wrist with her bony fingers and yanked up my palm. Her touch was like ice. She leaned down and held my palm right up to her face. Then she looked up at me, so close now that our noses were nearly touching, so close I could see through the darkness and into her eyes. I expected to see worms, but instead there was . . . only deeper darkness.

      I been waitin' for ya, she said. I knew you'd come, Bobby Coleman.

      Hearing her speak my name sent a shiver up my spine. I think—I think you've got the wrong—

      They killed me, she said. Them white men. They dressed me up in this dress of one of their wives and got drunk and had their way with me, laughing all of them, laughing and having a grand ol' time. Her voice turned bitter and sorrowful. They had their way, and then they buried me out here. She turned away suddenly, peering into the trees as if she expected those men to reappear.

      I didn't know what to say. She regarded me again, and when she spoke, her voice had a new urgency.

      I been waiting only for you!

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1