Darla has two short stories currently at Amazon.com. The Haunted House of Thomas Creek was inspired by two separate houses, a thousand miles apart. One was during a trip to Long Beach, California, to visit family. It’s a beautiful city with fabulous houses… but there was that one. Surrounded by a block wall too tall to see over, with vines covering every inch of the facade. Creepy…spooky. And worthy of a story. It had a heavy aura as you walked by, as if the house had suffered a tragedy in its past.

The second was the house on Thomas Creek Drive.  Reported to be haunted. Radio personalities stayed as long as they could on All Hallows Eve twice. Spooky happenings were reported by everyone who lived nearby. Visions of a woman in white, lights moving from room to room, when the house had been abandoned for decades. Real or fictional, the tales told gave seeds of a story that Darla spun into a short, fun read.

Rumors of a ghost in the Thomas Creek mansion have circulated in the small farming community for decades and nobody has dared to prove the rumor right or wrong. Until now. Before the house is just a pile of pick-up-sticks, Leanne Robson returns to her small home town to prove that something happened in that house all those years ago.

Current owner and grandson of the original family, Byron Thomas is determined to stop Leanne from stirring up painful speculation to prove the ghost of his ancestor exists. But finding a secret room…and an even bigger secret locked in the room for decades, they get more than they bargained for when they uncover a mystery 45 years in the making.

The facts: Frederick Thomas settled in the Jordan Valley area of Oregon in 1846, not the early 1900’s. Thomasville, the Thomas family mansion and any relatives living or dead, friends and events in The Haunted House of Thomas Creek exist only in Darla’s imagination. Many thanks to the late Carol Bates and her book “Scio in the Forks of the Santiam” for the Thomas family history, most of which Darla didn’t use for the sake of fiction.