Dust Disturbed: A Collection of Five Cozy Ghost Stories

By KC Brannon

Cole Lawson called it the inbetween and his grandmother had called it the veil. Whatever it was his ability to see through haunts him just as much as the ghosts that seem determined to find him wherever he goes. 

 

Inheriting his grandmother's house in northern Minnesota, Cole finds himself getting more than just a house. Along with the house comes a legacy of ghost hunting and membership in the Zenith City Paranormal Society, or the Society, for short.

 

Friendships are formed, love is found, and the dead are put to rest in this collection of stories revolving around objects and the relationships that they signify.

• Language: English
• Publisher: KC Brannon
• Release date: Apr 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201026318

Book preview

Introduction

It was probably halfway through 2020 that I couldn’t stop consuming ghost story media. I’d been laid off at that point, my job as an outdoor education after-school instructor disappearing with the closing schools and the closure of many summer camps. I’d dropped into a strange routine of trying to decide if I should wait it out and see if my job came back, try and get a pandemic job or try something else entirely. Somehow, in the middle of all of that uncertainty, I enjoyed the escapism of stories about ghost hunters as portrayed by traditional media and by YouTubers with a night vision camera.

This likely stemmed from my love of history. I studied historic preservation in graduate school and, through my research and through several jobs, I spent a lot of time in old buildings in varying stages of decay. And boy do people love to tell ghost stories about old places. Sometimes these stories had a kernel of truth or the hope that the famous person that had once set foot there still lingered. Other times they were ways of remembering a person whose name pops up on a trail sign or beside a door to an old museum. A lot of the time they are utter fabrications told just for fun.

Growing up, my dad used to love to drag me out to ghost towns all across the western United States. They were old abandoned mines or towns that had fallen on hard times. All that was left was the marks on the landscape. A concrete foundation, a tumbled in cabin wall with shards of glass still clinging stubbornly to the window frames, a button buried in the dirt. All of these little marks of people. And I would tell myself stories about them. And later, I began telling their stories to others, both historical and historical fiction.

This collection is the result of putting my love for paranormal investigators and their stories to paper for the first time. Cole Lawson took shape in my mind in those early days of the pandemic. I could picture him wandering the abandoned railroad tracks near my home in Duluth, Minnesota and picking his way out to forgotten foundations from bygone eras. His friends came into the stories one at a time forming the core of the Zenith City Paranormal Society who will hopefully have many more adventures to come.

I hope you enjoy the first adventures of this crew of ghost hunters.

Hunter

Todd Brecher’s apartment was small.

He told himself that he liked it that way.

The apartment was wedged into the corner of a building that once held a canvas factory. The people who’d come to work in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had made sail cloths for ships until they weren’t needed anymore. The owner of the factory had abandoned it by World War II.

The brick outer wall of the factory served as two sides of the studio. They were so cold in the winter time that he’d layer blankets over the walls. He loved the look of it though. The rough texture of bricks that had been made in another factory in Wisconsin, the maker's emblem not quite rubbed away in the last century of use. Sometimes, he swore he could catch a whiff of the grease from the old industrial machines that had churned out foot after foot of canvas cloth.

His small television was wedged in the corner by the brick, a gangly extension cord running along the north wall to the outlet in the drywall that made up the other two sides of the apartment. A worn loveseat that he’d found on Craigslist slumped in front of it, the cushion closest to the window worn more than the other.

The view out the window was Todd’s favorite. He could see the bright, deep blue of Lake Superior in the summer and the bright white of the ice that stretched across it in the winter. The boom of the Duluth Lift Bridge’s horn would tell him to stop what he was doing and run to the window to see what ship was about to pass in or out of the harbor. He kept a worn pocket notebook on the sill so he could make note of which one went by.

He’d been living here since he started at the University of Minnesota Duluth. His parents still lived in Hibbing. Todd was born and bred on the North Shore from Norwegian stock who tweaked their name to sound more American.

Todd stretched out on his bed, watching the sunlight creep through the prism he’d hung in the window frame. The rainbows played out over the kitchen cabinets on the wall near the front door. His apartment had the slightly sour smell of old food floating up from the kitchen trash. He should really take that out, he thought.

Last night was uneventful up at the little cabin in Knife River. His video camera, ghost box, and various other gadgets still lay on the floor by his diminutive kitchen table. He hadn’t gotten back until two in the morning and was grateful he didn’t have to clock in until noon. Maybe he shouldn’t have expected much. So many people were convinced that their old cabins were haunted by native spirits or old lumberjacks. It rarely turned out to be true.

At least he’d corrected some misconceptions about the history of the area.

His computer cast its own artificial light in competition with the sunlight from the wall beside the TV. It beckoned him to log on and check his emails. His web programming clients always had questions and requests for new features. Maybe they’d give him a break because it was Sunday. He scratched at his stomach through his plain black t-shirt.

The first notes of Saint-saen’s Danse Macabre trilled through his phone prompting him to hum the tune before looking at the number on the smartphone’s face. Mrs. Lawson (Poltergeist Lady) came up on the screen.

He immediately swiped to answer it. Hello.

Hello, Todd. How are you doing? Mrs. Lawson said. Her voice was warm and grandmotherly with the rounded vowels of another northern Minnesotan.

I’m doing okay. I went out on an investigation last night, but it was nothing. Up at one of those cabins between Knife River and Two Harbors.

Ah, well, perhaps I have something that can lift your spirits. I was hoping that my grandson was coming into town, but he wasn’t able to get the time off. I have two tickets to a junk show and was wondering if my surrogate grandson could come. He could picture her closed-mouth smile.

Am I driving?

Come now, child, you have a much better car.

Todd had to laugh at that. Mrs. Lawson had a huge home in an expensive neighborhood, but she’d owned the house outright for a half century before Duluth had become a trendy town for outdoor enthusiasts that couldn’t afford the prices out west. Yeah, I think your Subaru should be retired. It’s older than me!

She laughed, a boom through the speaker. I always forget you’re so much younger than Cole, she said, mentioning her grandson. Todd couldn’t help but be curious about him. Mrs. Lawson never stopped talking about him, but there were so few pictures at her house. While we drive we can talk about the next meeting of the Society.

ZCPS? he said, picturing her wrinkling her nose. There was constant debate amongst