Haints on Black Mountain

Ann Hite takes her readers back to Black Mountain with this haunted short story collection. An array of new characters on the mountain experience ghostly encounters. The collection took inspiration from her beloved readers, who provided writing prompts. "Wrinkle in the Air" features Black Mountain's Polly Murphy, a young Cherokee woman, who sees her future in the well's water. Readers encounter relatives of Polly Murphy as the stories move through time. "The Root Cellar" introduces Polly's great grandson, who tends to be a little too frugal with his money until a tornado and Polly's spirit pays the mountain a visit. In "The Beginning, the Middle, and the End", readers meet Gifted Lark on an excessively frigid January day. This story moves back and forth between 1942 and 1986 telling Gifted and her grandmother Anna's story. This telling introduces spirits that intervene in the spookiest of ways. "The Ghost Dog" brings a young widow, who is a photographer, and her thirteen-year-old son to the foot of Black Mountain to live in a one-hundred-fifty-year-old house. Spirits from the past, inhabitants of the house, come into play. This tale is really two: one told in the present and one in 1940. How can two mothers' paths converge with decades separating them? "Take Me Home" features a young girl whisked away from Black Mountain to stay with her grandmother in a house with the infamous Georgia Central State Hospital almost in its backyard. One can only imagine what happens.