“What happened to the family, Mrs. Trundle?”

“Nice young couple. Stayed to themselves, mostly. The man, he did odd jobs, sometimes helped Mr. Trundle on the boat. The woman, pretty little thing, worked at the library. That is before it closed. Had the cutest little girl. Polite, a bit sassy. She and my daughter, Marley were friends.”

The woman stared off in the distance. She shivered and pulled the shawl tighter around her sparse shoulders. The ocean’s roar filled the silence.

“Mrs. Trundle,” Sam urged.

“Oh, yah huh. It was on a November, Sunday evening, ‘bout dusk. A storm had rolled in. Thunder was rolling and lightning a crackin’ and snappin’. The kind of weather that fishermen don’t want to be caught out on the briny.” She heaved a deep sigh. “Because of the weather we didn’t think much of it when we heard the pops.”

She shivered again. This time, she left her chair and went to stare out at the sea. “Even as the wind moaned eerily around the house, I knew what I was hearing were screams.” She clapped her hands over her ears.

“On stormy nights, I can still hear that little girl’s high-pitched screams. Plumb gives me the shivers just to think ‘bout what happened over at that house.”

Sam accepted the offer to sit in a wicker chair, and thought she’d hit the jack pot. “Do you mind telling me about it?”

The woman turned and pierced Sam with a sharp glare; her voice even sharper. “Why do you want to know? They’re dead. Let ‘em stay dead.”

Loretta is a fourth generation Floridian and lives in Citrus County, FL. She is traditionally published and began her career writing short stories for True Confessions and True Romance magazines. When she isn’t writing, she researches her family history and has traced her ancestral roots all the way back to 14^th century Scotland.

A sucker for happy endings, she writes historical and contemporary romance, and mysteries. She also includes a paranormal thread in all of her novels.

Some interesting facts: Loretta once had to remove a bullet from the calf of a man’s leg while he held a gun to her head. She was in a courtroom during a rape trial and the victim’s father shot and killed the defendant when the jury found him not guilty. As a suicide prevention counselor she’s had to talk people threatening to commit suicide out of taking their own life. Her experiences are vast and she uses most of those to create characters and their conflicts in her novels.

When she became a teacher she was certain the classroom would be less eventful. Not so. Her first year of teaching was in “lock-up” at a juvenile detention center. She had to be buzzed into the classroom and also out. She had a guard with her at all times. And then there was the time that a student brought his pet boa constrictor to the classroom and it managed to slither out of the kid’s book bag. Well, that was fun—NOT!

Loretta’s grandmother was a seer. She has had her own up close and personal encounters with unearthly beings. She had a favorite spirit whom she named George. But that’s a story for another time.

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