John Backman was a content man with a lovely wife and
precious new baby living on Long Island, New York. He may
not have LOVED his day job but his lifelong hobby of
studying weird and unexplained phenomena gave him the extra
excitement he needed. If you had asked John, he would have
said that life was good. Then, a sudden, unforeseen tragedy
strikes and John's life is turned upside down.
Five years later, John is a rich man from having won
millions in the lottery and dotes on his amazing daughter,
Jessica. He fights panic attacks every day of his life. He
also has a very successful website called fearnone.com,
which is devoted to unexplained phenomena. This is now his
"job" since he has the financial freedom to do as he
pleases. His site gets thousands of hits daily and he
receives a considerable amount of emails from people about
their personal experiences.
One day, he gets an email from a man living in the tiny, off
the grid town of Shida, Alaska. This man has had one of the
most terrifying and unexplained experiences in his life and
he wants to know why. John's intrigued with this email so he
gets in touch with the man, Judas, with more questions.
It seems that there's a house in Shida, Alaska that, for all
its beauty and expense, is a "bad" house. The last family
that lived there simply vanished without a trace, leaving
all of their belongings, including their car, behind. No one
knows what happened to them.
This is more than enough to pique John's interest even more.
He wants to go there and investigate for himself, but he
won't be going alone. Jessica is thrilled to be having an
adventure of this sort as is John's sister-in-law, Eve, who
is at loose ends herself. It has been Eve who has taken care
of the family for the last five years and is an
indispensable part of them. She has a baby, Liam, who will
also be going along.
Once they arrive, the house is certainly as beautiful as
promised. In fact, they couldn't have asked for a more
perfect setting for their vacation. However, the townspeople
are all Native American and have a genuine dislike of white
people. So John and his little family rarely venture into
the town itself because of the way they're treated. Judas,
the man that contacted John, is also white and considered a
bit of an outcast although he's been living there most of
his life.
It doesn't take long for things to start happening in the
house and, at first, John's pretty excited. He's going to
actually be able to document unexplained phenomena. His
excitement starts to cool a bit, though, when Jessica
reports seeing a ghostly boy and people start to die.
FOREST OF SHADOWS is a first novel of horror short story
writer, Hunter Shea. This book grabs you from the first page
and holds you relentlessly until the final sentence. With
just the right amount of spookiness, it builds into a
crescendo of horror that you might never have seen coming.
It's the perfect Halloween book to enjoy any time of the year.
The dead still hate!
John Backman specializes in inexplicable phenomena. The
weirder the better. So when he gets a letter from a
terrified man describing an old log home with odd
whisperings, shadows that come alive, and rooms that
disappear, he can’t resist the call. But the violence only
escalates as soon as John arrives in the remote Alaskan
village of Shida. Something dreadful happened there.
Something monstrous. The shadows are closing in…and they’re
out for blood.