Devil in the Delta Read Online Free

association with ghosts and hauntings from a very young age, and I have always been interested in great, scary stories—especially those that are about ghosts. And since I have been hearing ghost stories since I was quite young, it’s no wonder that I would turn to the paranormal for answers to life’s biggest questions.
    Whether it was my urban relatives in the north or my rural ancestors to the south, they all had one thing in common: they, too, all loved a good, scary story.
    Many a night in my youth was spent huddled by the fireplace whispering tales about things like family curses, a “friend” who once was haunted, or even creatures who stalked the night. These hushed yarns were always purported to be “true” and they always happened to somebody that was personally known to everyone.
    There were a lot of these stories, and many of them have stuck with me over the years. But two of these ghost stories have particularly had a large impact on me—and I credit them, as much as my own personal experiences, with pushing me into the field of paranormal research at an early age. Here they are as I know and remember them:
    Ghost Story #1
    This particular tale comes courtesy of my paternal grandmother. It was related to me when she lived in Webster Groves, a small St. Louis neighborhood. Though the most well-known haunted home in this area was (and is) the infamous Henry Gehm house on Plant Avenue, my Grandma often spoke of another family close by that had their own unique and disturbing haunting.
    According to the tale, there was a family living in this nearby house when it was broken into by a burglar. The man of the house, hearing the intruder entering the front door, grabbed a handgun and crept to the stairs from his second-floor bedroom. After peering into the darkness below and seeing nothing that would indicate an intruder was in the home, he started down the stairs. Of course, stairs creak and these were no exception, so the burglar heard the man coming for him.
    So the intruder waited for the owner to get halfway down the stairs, and then he leapt from behind the living room couch and promptly shot the man dead. Screams echoed throughout the house as the other inhabitants heard the gun go off, driving the killer out into the night. I don’t believe that my grandmother ever told me the outcome of the entire affair (Was the killer ever caught?), but I do recall the ghost story that followed the horrific event.
    Apparently, the current (and altogether new) residents of this particular home were experiencing a reccurring haunted event: each night, everyone in the home would hear the sounds of phantom gunshots, followed by the thuds of a body falling down the living room stairs, and ending with a series of piercing screams. Today, paranormal investigators term this type of ghostly event as a “residual” type of haunting—and most believe it doesn’t always involve an actual ghost.
    B ut back then, when I first heard the story, it was only one thing—scary! I mean, how could these people live in such a house? Weren’t they afraid? According to my grandmother, they simply learned to ignore the ghastly sounds and, eventually, to sleep right through the nightly event.
    All of this intrigued me. It sounded like something out of a late-night horror movie, yet I wanted to know more. I think this particular story has stuck with me over the years because it illustrates an important point when dealing with ghosts—there is more than one type of haunting. This was the first time I had heard of anything other than the stereotypical spirit, and it was intriguing to me that there could be multiple reasons to explain why a home is experiencing paranormal activity.
    This would specifically come into play during my investigation of the Martin family …
    Ghost Story #2
    As I previously detailed, my mother’s side of the family lived in rural southern Missouri. By this, I