Fiction Friday: A Spectre is Haunting Greentree (2024)

With “A Spectre is Haunting Greentree”, Carson Winter has crafted a brilliant allegorical tale calling to the paranoid recesses of our minds.

Darkness lurks beneath the surface in the seemingly perfect town of Greentree, Oregon. This picturesque village has thrived for decades, with all its residents enjoying wealth and prosperity. But as the saying goes, when something seems too good to be true, there’s usually a catch.

The center of activity in Greentree is the Stardust, an anachronistic video store where many of the town’s clean-cut residents head straight to the adult section. Surrounding the town are cornfields filled with scarecrows holding scythes, a motif that appears everywhere, from the video store to the town library’s bookmarks.

Carina is trying to escape her ex-husband, Steve. Now in the grips of PTSD, she readily accepts her longtime friend Emily’s invitation to move out west.

Eager to leave Steve behind in the dust, Carina moves from Maryland to the small town of Greentree, Oregon. She’s invited to stay at a B&B that Emily and her husband Wilbur plan to open soon. However, she doesn’t realize that Steve is close behind.

Carina gets a job at the Stardust. She settles into a new routine and wants to submit to the tranquility of Greentree. However, she notices something is amiss in the outwardly dull little town of Greentree.

With A Spectre is Haunting Greentree, author Carson Winter crafted a thrilling, gripping, original novella.

After reading the final sentence, the story lingered in my mind. He captured my attention from the first to the last paragraph. I hated to put it down when I had to. When I started reading, I pegged it as a much different story than I got. I certainly was not disappointed.

The setting recalls classic horror stories like The Stepford Wives. As I read further, Winter’s novella made me think of Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery and Rosemary’s Baby.

The reader could only wonder: What’s underneath this place’s “perfect” veneer? What’s with the video store? It’s an anachronism in the 21st century, even in a small town. As Carina thinks, doesn’t anyone here have Netflix? Winter slowly unveils what’s behind Greentree’s prosperity and effectively foreshadows what’s to come without giving away too much.

A SPECTRE IS HAUNTING GREENTREE is brief but powerful, challenging the perception of the American Dream and its true cost. 

Winter weaves together elements of folk horror, cult horror, the occult, conspiracy theories, and secret societies.

He packages his story with evocative imagery: rural setting, dark cornfields, scarecrows holding scythes—not only in the cornfields but as a motif throughout the town. In so doing, he has crafted a tale that is nothing short of mind-blowing.

Topical themes run deep in this allegorical novella, illuminating humanity’s dark side. This novella will cause the reader to question who the monsters really are.

Winter’s thought-provoking story ventures into the shadowy recesses of a society where folklore and reality intertwine to hide a shocking truth.

A Spectre is Haunting Greentree is currently available from Tenebrous Press.