By Tucker Axum
I didn’t believe in ghosts until one tried to kill me.
For twenty-five years, I’d dealt with dangerous people. I understood violence. I understood fear. And I knew what to do when someone wanted to hurt me. But you can’t handcuff something you can’t see.
Those are the opening lines of A Haunting in Oshkosh, my latest ghost story. I’m a career federal investigator and the book was inspired by frightening experiences my wife, Heidi, and I had while attending EAA AirVenture.
Rather than fly to Oshkosh, we drove nearly 900 miles from the Washington, D.C. area, so our aging chocolate Labrador, Piper, could join us. We rented an old house near Lake Winnebago with a nice yard for her. It seemed like the perfect place to spend the week.
Almost immediately, something about the house made Heidi uncomfortable. When I discovered a little girl’s bedroom upstairs, Heidi stayed at the foot of the stairs with Piper beside her. Neither followed me. Heidi said there was something about the upstairs that gave her the creeps.
By day, we were immersed in everything that makes AirVenture extraordinary: the roar of warbirds, aircraft from every era, reunions with old friends, and the camaraderie of thousands of people brought together by a shared passion for aviation. I even taught a workshop encouraging fellow aviators to turn their own
experiences into stories.
But when the excitement of each day ended, we returned to a house where something far less welcoming was waiting for us.
One evening, Piper suddenly lifted her head and began tracking something across the living room. Her eyes followed it straight toward me, yet Heidi and I couldn’t see what had caught her attention.
At first, I tried to explain things away. Old houses make noises. People get tired. Dogs sometimes notice things we don’t. Then Heidi felt a hand press against her back while she was alone in the kitchen.
As the incidents escalated, I finally texted the homeowner with a question I never imagined asking:
“Have you ever felt like your house is haunted?”
Her response caught me off guard. Her family had wondered the same thing, and her daughter had also refused to enter the upstairs bedroom—the very room Heidi and Piper had avoided from the very beginning.
What happened next was even more frightening.
We began seriously considering abandoning the house and forfeiting the money we’d already paid rather than spending another night there.
Those experiences became the foundation for A Haunting in Oshkosh, where I wove fictional clues into real events to explore what—or who—might have been haunting that house.
Even now, simply recounting our time in that house gives me goosebumps.
Would I return to Oshkosh?
Absolutely. But you couldn’t pay me to spend another night in that house.
Love aviation and a good ghost story?
A Haunting in Oshkosh is available in paperback, Kindle, and as a one-hour audiobook narrated by Matthew Ewald, complete with atmospheric sound effects.
Get your copy: Paperback | Kindle | Audiobook
Tucker Axum is a career federal law enforcement professional, pilot and New York Times bestselling co author of “Cajun Justice” with James Patterson. A longtime friend of Flight Outfitters, he’s taken the company’s gear on personal adventures and professional assignments around the world—even to Antarctica. Learn more at www.tuckeraxum.com.