This is Not a Ghost Story

Ellori Mae Smith

Decades of strange disappearances and ghostly sightings come to a head when Blair Wright, teenage daughter of a divorced lighthouse caretaker, loses her best friend in the tunnels of an abandoned WW1 outpost.

While visiting her father on Whidbey Island for spring break, Blair encounters a strange cougar with an even stranger companion - a spectral man with glowing blue eyes. Frustrated that the adults in her life won’t let her in on what’s going on, she enlists the help of her oldest friend, Ripley, and they search the grounds of Fort Casey where cougar was first heard. After entering the dark tunnels of one of the abandoned batteries, Ripley is frozen in fear at the sight of the spectral man and Blair is forced to leave without him. After days of search parties, Ripley is nowhere to be found.

Since the supernatural is outside of her expertise, Blair goes to Hazel, the town’s resident medium, to get some answers. When a ritual goes awry, the very same spirit that folks have been seeing around town becomes attached to Blair. Though reluctant, as this stalls the search for Ripley, Blair lets Hazel perform an unbinding ritual to free Elias from the material world. In doing so, Blair realizes that her family and Elias’s have been entwined in this island’s supernatural energy for generations.

Armed with the knowledge of not only the secrets of Fort Casey but of her family history as well, Blair ventures back into the tunnels to find Ripley before he’s gone forever.