Every family seems to have one.

It might be the story of an abandoned house no one wanted to enter after dark. The old neighbor who claimed to see something impossible. The stretch of road everyone drove a little faster. The unexplained sound that became a favorite tale at holiday gatherings.

Whether we believe these stories isn’t really the point.

We tell them because they preserve something deeper.

Ghost stories are often less about the supernatural than they are about memory. They help us hold on to people we’ve lost, places that have changed, and moments that refuse to fade with time. They give shape to grief, mystery, and the uncomfortable realization that not every question has an answer.

Perhaps that’s why every culture has them.

Long before stories appeared in books, they were passed from one generation to the next. A mining accident. A vanished traveler. A lonely house at the edge of town. A child who insisted they had seen something no one else could explain. Over time, facts and folklore blended together until what remained was something richer than history alone. The stories became part of the identity of the people who told them.

That tradition is alive and well in Virginia Watts’ Echoes from the Hocker House.

Set among the mountains and small communities of north-central Pennsylvania, this acclaimed collection presents fifteen unforgettable tales rooted in the rhythms of life in logging and coal country. Some are mysterious. Some are unsettling. Some are quietly heartbreaking. Together, they create a world where ordinary people encounter extraordinary moments, and where the landscape itself seems to remember everything that has happened upon it.

Watts never asks readers to suspend disbelief. Instead, she invites them to consider that the most enduring mysteries are often the ones rooted in human experience. Her stories linger not because they rely on shock or spectacle, but because they feel as though they could have been told by a grandparent, a neighbor, or an old friend who still isn’t certain what really happened.

It is little wonder that Echoes from the Hocker House has earned widespread recognition, including selection as a Kirkus Reviews Best Indie Book, a National Book Award nomination, and honors from the Eric Hoffer, Da Vinci Eye, and Feathered Quill Book Awards. More importantly, it has found readers who appreciate fiction that values atmosphere, character, and emotional truth as much as plot.

The best ghost stories are never really about ghosts.

They are about the echoes people leave behind, the places that shape us, and the stories we continue telling because some parts of life are too meaningful, too mysterious, or too human to ever be forgotten.

If you’re looking for fiction that is rich in atmosphere, beautifully written, and quietly unforgettable, Echoes from the Hocker House is well worth a place on your bookshelf.

Aerial View

Hannah Fisher closes the curtains in every room of the farmhouse night and day over windowsills she used to stuff with juice glasses that brimmed with seasonal wildflowers: delicate, snow-white Queen Anne’s Lace, purple chicory, periwinkle cornflowers. Gone are the times she performed miracles with the monthly household budget and squeezed out extra cash to prepare elaborate, formal dinners on the weekends, recipes she downloaded from her laptop. If there was any spare change after that, she would drive fifty minutes to the Wal-Mart in Scutters Mill and return with cases of French vanilla and lavender-scented candles bungeed into their pickup truck’s rusty, dusty bed.

Rex had played along with the dream that Hannah could imbue their rundown, nearly one-hundred-year-old homestead with some romantic ambiance. It was no secret neither of them was getting any younger. For Rex’s thirty-fifth birthday over a year ago now, Hannah prepared one of his favorite meals. She thought she had done everything right, but the entree turned out tougher than shoe leather. Rex had been so sweet about it, responding with a quote from his favorite Quentin Tarantino movie: “Goddamn, that’s a pretty fucking good chicken cordon bleu!”

Hannah misses when sexual banter kept company with the creaky, wooden floorboards under their bed. The silly phrases they used to say to each other: Rex, I shaved my legs this morning. You’ll never believe this, Hannah, but my jock itch cleared up overnight. Back then, when Hannah finished stacking the evening dishes inside the drying rack and headed toward the bedroom, Rex would follow right behind her.

It has become impossible for her to remember the last time any bit of her skin was near any bit of Rex, the last time they celebrated something or laughed together. Rex and Hannah used to make each other hoot and holler all the time. Humor eased the rigor of the daily chores of running a beef cattle farm. These days Hannah forgets what Rex’s mouth looks like as a smile. She wonders if she will ever laugh like she used to, like they used to. It’s kind of true, she thinks, that your belly jumps up and down and giggles right along with you when you are genuinely joyful and cracked up about something.

Hannah’s stomach exists in a constant state of sour swish now. Whenever she lets something slip down her esophagus, the contents sizzle deep inside her like the Pop Rocks candy she used to love as a kid: little cherry crystals that crackled and popped, magical fireworks exploding on her tongue. They still sell the stuff at Wal-Mart. As soon as things start looking up, she’ll treat herself to a packet.

This day Rex stomps into the kitchen like he’s already got his heavy-treaded barn boots strapped on. He halts in front of the kitchen sink. Hannah bites her bottom lip. The curtains above the two stainless steel basins are closed tight as a puppet theatre curtain before a performance begins.

“Jesus,” he spews.

He grabs and rips fabric from the window frame. The spring-mounted, metal curtain rod boomerangs over the top of Hannah’s head. She doesn’t flinch.

“Rex. For Christ’s sake. Your grandmother embroidered those curtains by hand. That’s her blood, sweat, and tears you just tore up to smithereens. You beheaded a little Amish boy and his pet lamb. I hope you’re happy.”

Rex twirls around, faces Hannah with a sneer followed by a blank look, as if he’s never seen his wife before, a wife before, or anyone sitting at this Formica table inside the kitchen where he was born and raised.

“Stop closing all the curtains in this house, Hannah. I got to be able to see out to the pastures. You know that. In fact, I am gonna rip down all the window hangings all over this house and burn ’em in the backyard right this minute. Solve this little problem once and for all. Fuck it!”

Hannah rests her forehead down on the cool table. The table smells like toast, raisin toast. It smells of happy kids, a pure, fresh-air life on a prosperous Hereford cattle farm.

Excerpt from “Aerial View” from Echoes from the Hocker House