When the lantern swings, Jackie Hudak is coming back! Ed Freemen, retired cop turned senior park ranger, came to Lake Hope looking for a fresh start after shooting a teenage robbery suspect armed only with a BB gun. But his dream of writing citations and leading nature walks is shattered when the mangled remains of a young woman are found on the Moonville Rail Trail. It looks like she was run over by a train, but the tracks were removed forty years ago. Freemen and his team discover the legend of a railroad worker run over by a train a hundred years before. The ghost returns every ten years to wreak vengeance on the guests of Lake Hope State Park. As more bodies are discovered, he is tormented by the voice of the dead teen. Despite his deteriorating mental state, Freemen must overcome the ghost of his past and stop the lantern-wielding menace before he reaches his diabolical quota for this decade.
A native of Akron, Ohio, Allen Grimes is a retired Special Agent and Supervisor with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a former Akron Police Officer with over twenty-six years in law enforcement. He graduated from the University of Akron with a Bachelor of Arts in mass media communication. Along with this novel, When the Lantern Swings, Grimes is the author of several short stories in the sci-fi/horror genre in magazines such as Potpourri, Nightmares, and Lords of Eternal Darkness. Grimes lives and works in Yuma, Arizona.