One evening while seated at my desk, I looked at a small hand-carved wooden totem I’d purchased in Canada. It had reconfigured itself. The hawk at the top had repositioned himself to the bottom, supporting the frog and the serpent.

I sat there trembling. I closed my eyes tightly and counted to ten. When I reopened them the figures had returned to their proper order, but I knew what I had seen.

Then I found something that wouldn’t change back. The railroad cars on my Lionel train, lovingly preserved since childhood and preciously guarded through my son’s youth, had not only changed positions, but also switched logos and decals. I closed my eyes again and counted to fifty this time, until my eyes watered. The new combinations still existed.

Standard poltergeist stuff? Maybe so, but at least I’d ruled out Alzheimer’s. It struck me that the preservation of my possessions was the least real thing in my life. I’d better have something more tangible than treasured “things.”

Maybe all I needed was more fresh air. A lot more. Plenty of that in my neighborhood near the Mile High City. And if I moseyed home one day and the light bulbs had changed from soft white to disco blue, it would be time for a brain scan before I lost the nerve to go home altogether.

In the days that followed, I spent considerable time on excursions to the foothills, shooting uninspired rolls of black and white film and thinking about my house. Some creepy shit had been going on that could challenge the sensibility of anyone. Yet I remained Ty Pierson of Golden, Colorado, college grad, recently retired, with a grown son, a dead wife and a reasonable amount of my mind intact. There had to be reasonable explanations somewhere.

Once reassured, I went home, mixed a drink and cautiously looked around for anything new and exciting in my decorative scheme. I didn’t look too hard, mind you. Didn’t go out of my way. Just a casual glance here or there while going through my nightly routine of dinner, reading or TV and going through photo prints.

The light bulbs never changed colors. But, to my amazement, under the red glow of the darkroom bulb, my photos changed. “Now how ‘bout this shit!” I said the way my friend, Butch would have said it.

Actually, the pictures began to improve. Framing mundane photography hadn’t surprised me, considering all that occupied my mind during those times. The compositions I’d arranged through the lens were slightly off from the prints coming off the developer, but they were better for it. My kooky mind was doing something positive. The contrasts were richer.

I saw rolling clouds that hadn’t been there while shooting. The textures, the subtlety of light and shadow were fantastic. I just wondered where it all had been when I had focused and shot. Some of these prints Ansel Adams might have approved of, by God.

“What the fuck is happening now? Am I just totally nuts?” I asked the walls. If I were a hard-drinking man, I’d start looking for bats on the walls instead of bats in the belfry. What finally sent me directly to the liquor cabinet for straight bourbon, no water (that’s what fish make love in), were two photographs I’d taken in the foothills.

They revealed a young woman smiling, ever so slightly, caught in profile, partially hidden behind a huge boulder. No one had been in these photographs when I shot them. If I were to choose some flight of fancy, I’d have expected to see a naked water sprite or Tinkerbell flitting from one print to another. The female image in my photos merely leaned against a boulder, her head slightly turned to one side, revealing a cheekbone, black close-cropped hair and long fingers resting on one visible thigh. There was no misty quality to her image. She wore a soft sweater and faded jeans. A pretty girl. Very pretty and young enough to be my daughter.

This convinced me. The time had come for a second opinion.

Murder, mayhem and the paranormal realm come together as pieces of the puzzle in this frightening, yet intimate, tale of supernatural love and passion.

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