When a Story Refuses to Stay Quiet
Rumors of haunted houses have a way of lingering.
The Haunted House of Thomas Creek began with two very real places, each unforgettable in its own way.
The first was a striking old home Darla passed during a family trip to Long Beach, California. Surrounded by a towering block wall and hidden beneath thick vines, it stood apart from the beauty around it in a way that felt impossible to ignore. There was something undeniably unsettling about it. The kind of place that makes you wonder what happened there, and whether the walls still remember.
The second inspiration was much closer to home.
A long-abandoned house on Thomas Creek Drive in Oregon had built a reputation of its own over the years. Stories of strange lights moving from room to room. Reports of a woman in white. Local tales passed from neighbor to neighbor about a house no one could quite explain.
Whether fact, folklore, or something in between, the whispers became impossible to resist.
And from those stories, The Haunted House of Thomas Creek was born.
The Story that Refused
For decades, whispers of a ghost haunting Thomas Creek Mansion have lingered through the small farming town, becoming the kind of story everyone knows but no one dares investigate.
Until now.
Before the crumbling estate is reduced to rubble, Leanne Robson returns to her hometown determined to uncover what really happened inside those walls all those years ago. What began as rumor has always felt like something more. Something unfinished.
Byron Thomas, grandson of the home’s original owners and its reluctant current caretaker, wants the past left exactly where it belongs. The mansion holds painful history, and he has no interest in reopening old wounds or fueling speculation about restless spirits.
But when Leanne and Byron uncover a hidden room sealed for decades, the truth proves far more unsettling than either expected.
Because some secrets were never meant to stay buried.
And some mysteries refuse to die.
A haunting small-town mystery layered with family secrets, long-buried truths, and suspense forty-five years in the making.
Inspired by History, Written as Fiction
While the story draws inspiration from local folklore and historical research, The Haunted House of Thomas Creek is a work of fiction.
Frederick Thomas did settle in Oregon’s Jordan Valley in 1846, but Thomasville, the Thomas family mansion, and the characters and events in this story exist entirely within Darla’s imagination.
Special thanks to the late Carol Bates and her book Scio in the Forks of the Santiam, which provided historical background that helped shape the early spark of the story.
As with all good ghost stories, the truth is often far less important than the mystery.
Darla Luke 