Sixteen frightening, heartwarming, amusing and spellbinding ghost stories from America's Heartland, spanning pioneer days to the present.
Four Manhattan, Kansas, authors collaborated to write this collection of ghost stories. Barbara Baldwin, Jerri Garretson, Linda Madl and Sheri McGathy each contributed four stories, but are thinking they have more that could have been used. It seems ghosts are in a never-ending supply!
"...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?" -- from the Introduction by Troy Taylor, Founder of the American Ghost Society
Excerpt
"...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...
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 Baldwin
Professional Reviews
New Review from Australia on Amazon.com!
Inside one spooky cover and rather spirited font, `Trespassing Time: Ghost Stories from the Prairie' is an assortment of exceptional stories far different from typical Halloween spook and rattling chiller. These tales are rather well written and polished. They hold a quality that soars beyond bare poltergeist; derelict halls; beguiling whispers in the cemetery; arrows of lightning in steep darkness; wind that howls dolefully then silently chuckles or floating ethereal beings in dust coated villas.
Inside sharp writing are tales one could almost regard with fondness and others that swell bold enough to make one reconsider with growing intrigue the scratching on a misted window that revealed a stray kitten, matted and half-starved. Personal favorites include Geraldine A. Garretson's Dance With Me; Déjà vu by Barbara J. Baldwin; Maxie by Sheri L. McGathy and Linda Madl's One Night at Whistling Woman Creek. I am keen to read more anthologies from this prairie quartet. Notable mention extends to Forgotten But Not Gone and Fireball Faye.
--Eugen M. Bacon (Melbourne, Australia)
Haunted House on the Prairie: A Review of Trespassing Time
by June Pulliam
I keep being nicely surprised by the offerings of small presses, and Trespassing Time is one of those pleasant encounters. This collection of ghost stories by four Kansas authors is unusual for a number of reasons. First is its setting, the American Prairie, a part of the United States that is relatively ignored by popular culture (the Western genre being a notable exception). This geographical location is particularly ignored by the horror genre, as stories about ghosts and vampires are more frequently located in Puritan New England and the South, with the later also a breeding ground for misbegotten and incestuous white people who become serial killers with bad grammar and even worse teeth. The prairie, and the Midwest really, don't seem very ghostly on the surface, all revenants having been chased away by the non-belief of sensible and hardworking middle class Americans who speak standard English. Trespassing Time, however, brings this area of the country to life through representing it as haunted.
Many of the stories have a particularly regional flavor. "Lost in the Fog" captures the loneliness and danger of the 19th century frontier when a young wife is taken further west by her husband, who purchases cheaply a homestead thought by locals to be haunted. Not believing in what he thinks is nothing but local superstition, the husband makes the mistake of leaving his pregnant bride alone for a night to make a necessary journey for supplies into the nearest town. The story that gives the collection its title, "Trespassing Time," presents a sort of Brigadoon on the Prairie and asks something I have wondered about for quite a while: why is the United States more often haunted by ghosts of European- and African-Americans than it is by the ghosts of its original inhabitants? Here an elderly man wishes to glimpse once more an ancient Native civilization that is only open to our world one night each half century or so. And "Whisper on the Wind" and "Dreams of the Dead" find ghostliness in how aviation and hydro-electric power transformed the landscape.
The collection is also unusual in the range of ghost stories, from revenants who mean no harm to humans, to spirits bent on getting back what was theirs, to vengeful shades. Some, such as "Christmas at the Gates of Hell" and "Maxie," present ghosts as presences that comfort the living but aren't particularly frightening. While others such "Forgotten, But Not Gone" and "Halloween at the Gates of Hell" are more chilling tales of ghosts who are either angry because their final resting place has been violated or else urge humans to commit potentially self-destructive acts. The placement of stories within the collection is also effective as it begins with one of those tales of the ghost as a benign presence, introducing slightly more frightening revenants as the book progresses, which has the effect of putting the reader in the position to feel comfortable with the spirits bound within these pages, only to have that trust somewhat shaken towards the end. Thus the ghost is completely restored to its ambiguous position within the imagination as a simultaneously serendipitous and frightening signifier of that which was lost but not so easily forgotten.
Trespassing Time has the strengths of a good collection of fiction loosely organized around a theme in that the stories aren't all of one piece, but include a wide variety of pieces that fit into the rubric. Here you'll find stories set in various times and places and all with very different horrific effects. In short, there's something here for everybody (at least, everybody who likes ghost stories), so like a good buffet, if one piece isn't exactly to your liking, you can move on and fairly quickly find something to catch your interest. Horror fans and ghost story aficionados who aren't searching for out and out gore will enjoy this collection, as will anyone interested in fiction about this particular region.
http://www.lsu.edu/necrofile/trespassing18.htm
Word Museum Review
Everyone has fond memories of ghost stories, perhaps told around a campfire, or at a Halloween party. Children love to shiver with fright, knowing full well they’re safe and sound and the ghosts can't *really* get them. But they grow up and discard the ghost stories and spooky tales as childish things best forgotten.
Well, get ready to shiver again. TRESPASSING TIME: GHOST STORIES FROM THE PRAIRIE is a series of ghost stories set in the plains of the Midwest, and believe me, these stories are anything but childlike. Barbara Baldwin, Jerri Garretson, Linda Madl and Sheri McGathy, four very talented authors, will have you looking over your shoulder, jumping at noises, and wondering how an abandoned schoolhouse on the prairie or a charming cottage in a tiny town can be the cause of so much terror.
Barbara Baldwin’s tale, “Deja Vu,” is a plaintive tale of two small children in a coma after a bus accident...children who had always been best friends. Hand in hand, they wander through their small town alone, wondering why no one sees or hears them. Then, they hear voices calling them back...but what will happen when only one returns?
If you’re looking for scary, well-written ghost stories set in an unusual, fresh location, look no further. TRESPASSING TIME: GHOST STORIES FROM THE PRAIRIE will have you sleeping with the light on for weeks! Don't say I didn't warn you.
The Apple Tree Blossoms in The Fall, is the life journey of Carineh - a child, a teenager, a wife, a mother, but most of all a woman of purpose. From stories of her parents held-up by bandits; the white donkey gifted by Khomeini; her father's death f
Soldier's Gap is a non-traditional mystery with literary elements. The high school principal is brutally murdered, but Deputy Sheriff Dave Jenkins's search for meaning and love is a much more significant theme.
"Murder isn't usually this fun
This is the trade paperback edition of the mythopoeic paranormal novel recounting the attempts of one Danny Blue and his friends to come to terms with a series of unusual events in his life. A Kindle eBook edition is also available.
