Welcome to the 1-week book tour for The Haunting Near Battlefield Ridge!!
“I never believed in ghosts… until I met Oggie.”
About the Book:
Nikki Landry and her friends discover strange white smudges in photos Patti’s grandmother had snapped at an old gravesite. No one can explain what they are.
Did Nikki’s little brother mark them up with a piece of chalk? Did a low-lying fog move in just as she snapped the photos? Could it be just a smear on the camera lens?
Spikes insists it’s a ghost.
Then Mrs. LeBlanc remembers a legend her grandfather told her of a spirit that haunts the small family cemetery located near an old Civil War battle site.
Will Nikki and her legend busting gang discover it’s just an old tale, or does the ghost really exist? If so, why is he there? What does he want?
Join Nikki and her friends as they go searching for the answers…and the truth behind the Haunting near Battlefield Ridge.
Make sure to visit all of the tour hosts and leave comments about the book, read the guest posts, and enter the giveaway!!
Tour Host Schedule:
Book Details:
Publication Date: April 17, 2020
ASIN: B085MMZLFF
Read an Exclusive Excerpt:
“Do you see anything strange about the photos?” I scooted my chair toward her.
She adjusted her glasses, looking closer at the one in her hand, then flipped through the rest of ’em. “It looks like just a couple headstones, and some trees and flowers.”
Patti stood behind her peering over her shoulder.
“It’s a small graveyard on private land once belonging to my family,” she explained. “It’s been bought and sold several times since then, but they always leave the graves untouched.” She looked up at me. “What do you mean by strange?”
I got up and leaned over her arm, pointing at one of ’em. “Right there. What’s that?” I poked my finger at a white shadow that seemed to be in each photo.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, “probably fog. It always seems to be lingering out there.” She glanced up at me. “I told Pierre one day that it seemed to follow us around.” She laughed. “The strangest thing.”
I snatched one of the pictures up and held it closer to my face. I couldn’t make out anything but a blur. “Spikes thinks it’s a ghost.”
She gazed at me for a long minute, then looked back at one of the photos. Her face seemed to get a little paler than it usually was. “Well I’ll be.”
“What is it, Grandma?” Patti asked.
“I probably shouldn’t be telling y’all this. Pierre would make fun of me for repeating such things, but there’s a legend I heard when I was a young child. In fact my own father was the one first told me about it. I haven’t thought of it in years.”
“Tell us, Mrs. LeBlanc,” I said. “I love legends.”
“Well, you see, it all started back after the War Between the States, The Civil War, they named it. There was a battle took place over near Plantation Road. That’s what it was called back when Doctor Brashear owned the sugar mill out there. It was just a dirt road going through fields of purple sugar cane—the plumpest and sweetest kind of cane.” She stared at the wall across from her, as her thoughts seemed to wander. “It was the sweetest smell when that cane was a-burning in the fields. It’s mostly filled in with marsh and woods now.”
“But what’s the legend?” I asked, trying to get her back on the important stuff.
“Well, I guess I need to start from the beginning,” she said, “or I’ll get confused. My papaw was a sharecropper, you see, and worked the cane fields until around the year 1860, when Dr. Brashear died. It wasn’t long after that when the Yankees came in and took the town over. They put up a dirt fort to keep out the Confederate soldiers. Kind of like the levees we use now to keep the water under control.”
“Get back to the legend, Grandma,” Patti said.
“Oh yeah,” she continued, “the Confederates came in the summer of eighteen sixty-three. They took the fort and captured the Union soldiers, but not before there was a bloody battle. Some died there on that ridge and many more injured, and died later from their wounds. My papaw called it Battlefield Ridge, but I reckon that ain’t what the real name was.”
“Is that when the legend started?” I asked.
“I imagine so,” she said. “That’s about when it was first seen.”
“When what was seen?” Patti asked.
My eyes opened wider.
She held up her pale finger. “You see, after the war, Papaw bought a small piece of land not too far from there, and built the house where I was born.”
She stared at the wall, again being sucked back into her memories. “It was a small house but filled with lots of love.”
I jiggled my legs, as I got anxious for her to get back to the legend part.
She stretched her neck toward the back door to see if her husband might be able to hear her through the screened door, then she whispered, “Legend is there’s a ghost wanders around that area wearing a blue uniform. A Yankee soldier, no doubt.”
Purchase Your Copy:
Mirror World Publishing
eBook
Meet the Author:
Behind Every Legend Lies the Truth!
Rita Monette was born and raised in Southwest Louisiana. After retiring from her “real” job as an administrative assistant for the State of Michigan, Rita began doing what she always wanted to do…write and draw. Her stories are set in the beautiful, yet mysterious, bayous and swamps of her home state. The Haunting Near Battlefield Ridge is the fifth book in her Nikki Landry Swamp Legend series. Rita now lives with her husband, four lap dogs, and one lap cat, in the mountains of Tennessee.
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