Short Take: “Ghost Hunters,” Sam Witt

Pros: Fun horror-slash-“justice porn”
Cons: Predictable
Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Sam Witt’s Ghost Hunters is a brief novella that takes place in his “Pitchfork County” setting. Dick is at the end of his rope. He bankrupted himself (and with their personal information, the rest of his crew, too, though they don’t know that yet) trying to put together a TV show about ghost hunters, but each of his pilots gets rejected. This one is his last chance. A contact of his sent him to Pitchfork County, where the events of book one were quite explosive yet failed to wipe out all the evil in the county (as though that’s even possible). Dick further compounds his dickishness by taking two waitresses at gunpoint–Nancy and Liz–and forcing them to show him where the ‘bad place’ is. In the process, he ends up telling his crew what he’s done to their finances, leaving them ready to kill him themselves.

This is why this is a short little review: the rest of the novella is a short story in which Dick gets exactly what’s coming to him–but so do a bunch of people who maybe didn’t deserve it so much. There’s some predictability to it, because you know all these people are going to find something more than what they’re looking for and that they’ll regret it. But the fun is always in seeing how it happens and who gets it. So it’s short, it doesn’t break a lot of new ground, but it’s still a great read. Witt is fantastic at writing up bloody, extensive combat scenes, so there’s plenty of meat to this story.