While we were flying across the ocean to America, I told the girls to try and get some extra sleep since we may be up most of the night. After all, it seems that fake ghosts like to come out at night more often than during the day. I guess it’s easier to make their special effects look more realistic in the dark. And, people are generally more fearful at night. However, since we have our own ghosts, perhaps we can make these fake ghosts more fearful.

We have Kat, Sky and Angel with us from the Wildcats and Bad Girls, plus Jennifer wanted us to take Kitty and Kristina too. That would leave her and Carine at home, which is enough ghost protection, and Jennifer can now call Sky at any time, just like I can, so that makes me feel better. I decided to bring Rock, John, Mac, Cal and Yves along with us too. Actually, Yves came to me and asked if he could come, as this would be his first real case. I was happy that he wanted to join us and his wife was in favor of it too.

Nadia made Rock a few extra sandwiches for the trip and she told him to make sure he ate properly on this case, and to be extra careful. Then she added that Ana is worried about him. That’s probably true, but I think Nadia is worried about him too. There’s going to be a wedding soon, no doubt about that. I should mention that Macy and Jackie have come along too, Jennifer insisted. She said those 2 girls are young and fearless, plus, they’re small and fast, which could be helpful. Soon we were landing in a city not far from the town we want.

That town actually has an airport that we could have used, but it doesn’t get much jet traffic so we probably would have made the local news, something I don’t want. Better to land at the city where we won’t be noticed so easily and then drive to the town of Tumble Rock. Kind of an interesting name. Apparently, about 150 years ago, a large rock came tumbling down the hillside and right down the main street ending up in the middle of the town where it still sits.

I think it should have been called a boulder instead, it’s about 10 feet high and wide. Oh well. When we arrived in town it was already evening so we checked into our hotel, one of three in this town which has a population of 20,000. Guess I should say there are 3 larger hotels, and a half dozen smaller hotels. We are in the largest and nicest hotel, Sienna insisted. We are only using vans this time, and considering there are 44 of us altogether on this trip, that means 8 vans. Once settled into our rooms I called George and he came to see us at the hotel while we ate dinner in the restaurant.

He was quite amazed that we had so many private investigators to work on finding the missing women. I told George that we have discovered things can get dangerous very quickly on a case, so we like to be prepared. Just then a rather large man came into the restaurant, yelling, “What are those rats doing in here?” “That’s the hotel owner,” said George and he waved the man over. “Oh, Mr. Stafford,” he said quite apologetically, “I didn’t know these were friends of yours.” George then told him that he had made arrangements with the manager to allow the cats in the restaurant, unless someone complained.

“Oh, yes, good idea,” said Ralph, the owner, “I didn’t realize that cats could be trained like dogs, I mean, dogs are intelligent and cats are not.” Meow, meow.= “He call us stupid, want permission to bite his leg.” I whispered to her, “not now.” Muffin just sighed. “Ralph is actually very nice,” said George after Ralph went to his office, “but business hasn’t been good and he’s a bit stressed.” Right after dinner he took us over to the haunted house and George was right, that Little house is huge.

He told us it had 18 bedrooms, 12 other rooms, plus 14 bathrooms. Charlie Little and his wife had 13 children which everyone said was the reason for all his bad luck. His wife and 6 of his children died in that house. Hmm, a perfect background for a good ghost story. No wonder everyone considers the house to be haunted, and all the odd deaths help substantiate the haunted myth. George suggested we should wait until morning to look around but I told him the best time to look for ghosts, and prove whether they are real or fake, is to check around at night. Anyway, he left us and inside we went.

He had arranged with the police to give us a key to the house. George owns a rather large lumber business here and is quite influential in the town. He cried when talking about his daughter, it was obvious he was very worried about her. His wife died last year and Shawna is his only child in town. He has a son as well but he lives in Alaska and he never hears from him. We have powerful flashlights with us and we also have 10 cats with us.

They wanted to scatter and look around, but I told them they had to stay with their human groups. They all sighed when I said that, but I didn’t want to lose any cats on our first night in this old house. It was completely furnished and was like stepping back in time to the 1800’s. While walking around we started hearing children talking and complaining about going to bed so early, then footsteps going up the stairs. I listened carefully, so did Kat and Kristina, it really did sound like those footsteps were going up the stairs. Quite remarkable really.

Suddenly a huge dog came running into the living room, barking and growling at the cats that were with us. Rock stood between the dog and cats, not the best idea. The dog then ran right through Rock and the cats scattered, with the dog chasing Muffin. I shot some electricity at the dog, but it went right through it and Muffin made it under a chair just in time. However, this dog isn’t real, it just looks incredibly real. Then it turned, looked at me and jumped with it’s mouth wide open. “Sky,” I managed to say and she was there standing in front of me, ready to stop this dog…

To Be Continued. ©2026 Steve McLeod.