Prison Ghost

Chronicles of the Ghost Hunter

by J.M. Richards

The thunder rolled along the eastern front of the Sierra Mountains as the G.A.S.H team pulled up to the recently closed Nevada State Prison in Carson City Nevada. Opened in the mid 1860's it had housed some of Nevada’s most notorious criminals in its illustrious career, and up until the day of its closure had also been the home of one hundred percent of the state’s executions since 1903 when the state took over executions from the county seats.

The empty grey rock and mortar bastions carved from the quarry where the Nevada state capitol now sits loomed down eerily from their guard post forever vigilant against the grey sky. Jeff Jordan Lead investigator and one of the founders of Ghost and Spirit Hunters (G.A.S.H) looked up at the dark grey walls topped with coiled barbed wire dripping with rain from the storm that had just passed through. "What life must have been like here for both inmates and staff," he thought with an involuntary shake. A movement in the corner of his eye brought back from his reverie, he turned to see Louis Sturgis heading towards him and the team.

Louis Stergis had been Assistant Warden in Charge of Operations when the prison had closed down six months earlier, and had been overseeing the clean up since that time. The cleanup operation had been going on twenty-four hours a day, so when Louis started getting reports of strange happenings they were from the graveyard shift. Naturally, he dismissed them as nerves and jitters since the prison was very imposing after all. Then within a few days he started getting reports from the day shift, again he wrote them off as paranoia. That all changed a few days later when he was walking past cell 8A in the death row housing unit.

104 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 6, 2012

About the author

J. M. Richards currently lives in the Pacific Northwest, though she’s been known to call nine different states home over the years, and consequently can no longer remember her own zip code. Once upon a time, she spent seven years living happily in Pittsburgh and still has a soft spot for the black and gold city of steel. She also graduated from College of the Ozarks in Missouri with a degree in Philosophy and Religion, which seemed like a good idea at the time.

By day she is a (sometimes) mild-mannered site director of a before and after school program at an elementary school; she specializes in reading aloud, giving the stink eye, and teaching her kiddos about all things geeky (including superheroes, of course!). When she’s off duty, however, she resumes her secret identity as J. M. Richards; her superpowers include writing, reading, taking pictures of books, sipping tea, watching stuff, and faking a British accent.

She has also published another novel, Found Phoebe, which she plans to release a second edition of in the near future, along with two sequels to Davin and Anna’s adventures, and plans for a trilogy about a female superhero (related to Davin) are in the works.