Ghost Stories by Franklin W. Dixon Read Free Book Online

Frank said. “First the people vanished. A prospector, half-mad from hunger andthirst, staggered into Tucson and reported that he had passed through Flaming Rock and found all the people gone.”
    â€œIt wasn’t that they had packed up and moved out in an orderly manner.” Joe took up the story. “They left everything behind. Furniture and clothing remained in the houses. Food on stoves was still warm when the prospector arrived. Everything was as it should have been, except there was no sign of life.”
    â€œNo one paid attention to the prospector’s story,” Frank said. “They figured he had been driven crazy by the sun and the loneliness. But didn’t a reporter eventually go to Flaming Rock?”
    â€œThat’s right. A newspaper editor sent his son and a group of men to look for the people. They also had terrible luck with the town. They started out rather late in the season and got trapped by early-winter snows. So they had to go home. When they tried again in the spring, they not only failed to find the people of Flaming Rock, they couldn’t even find the town!”
    â€œAn entire community had vanished from the face of the earth,” Frank said.
    â€œNow people began to take the story seriously,” Joe went on. “Various theories developed. Indian haters claimed that Flaming Rock had been destroyed by the Indians, and that everyone had been massacred or carried off into captivity. Trouble with that theory was that the Indians in that area had never been involved in much warfare with their white neighbors. Such a ferocious attack followed bythe complete destruction of the town was not characteristic of the natives at all.”
    â€œI seem to recall that other rumors were circulated,” Frank said. “Some people said the plague had struck Flaming Rock and the few survivors had buried the dead, then burned and leveled the town in order to keep the epidemic from spreading.”
    â€œYes, except such an occurrence would have been reported somewhere,” Joe said. “Nothing like that happened. “It was also suggested that the people of Flaming Rock were moved away by the government because of some secret project. But no secret project ever came to light.”
    â€œThe world was left with the mystery of Flaming Rock until the town popped up again in the early years of this century,” Frank said. “At that point, two people, unknown to each other, reported stumbling upon it. They told almost identical stories. They had seen the town at night. First they had noticed a light, fairly high in the air, swinging. When they followed it, they found it was in the tower of the Flaming Rock Hotel!”
    â€œJust thinking about that spooky story gives me the chills,” Joe said.
    Frank nodded. “Remember, when those two guys went into the houses, they discovered everything to be exactly the way the old crazy prospector had described it. Food on the stoves, still warm. Homes that looked like people had left but a few minutes before. But no living creature in sight, not even a dog or a desert scorpion. It was a dead village.”
    â€œAnd then these witnesses disappeared less thana month later under mysterious circumstances,” Joe added. “No one ever has reported seeing Flaming Rock since then.”
    Frank had slowed the car down. Suddenly both boys looked at each other.
    â€œAre you thinking what I’m thinking?” Frank asked his younger brother.
    Joe nodded his blond head and grinned. “You bet! We’re not far from the place. Let’s check it out!”
    The boys turned off the highway onto a feeder road, and after about thirty miles they took a dirt road that climbed straight up into the mountains.
    It was a bouncy ride. “This is nothing but a pair of mismatched ruts in the earth,” Joe complained. “I bet the last vehicle to travel this way was a Conestoga covered wagon drawn by the