Voices Carry Here by Gail Galotta

Supernatural Stories of Ghosts, Mystery, and Suspense

Thrills and Chills are the Name of the Game in Author Gail Galotta’s Newest Short Story Collection

TRAVERSE CITY, MICHIGAN—Midwest author Gail Galotta has always loved entertaining an audience. A high school English teacher by trade, she’s a former columnist for the Iron Mountain Daily News and has published dozens of short stories and plays, as well as an essay collection entitled, Views From My Boathouse: Musings of a City-Raised, Small Town Journalist. She also authored a children’s book, On the Tips of Angels’ Wings: The Story of the World War II CG-4A Glider Manufactured by the Ford Motor Company in Kingsford, Michigan.

Voices Carry Here: Supernatural Stories of Ghosts, Mystery, and Suspense

As Galotta explained, her spark for storytelling was first ignited in childhood by such fantastic media as The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock’s Ghostly Gallery, and the spooky campfire tales told around her grandparents’ Upper Peninsula cottage.

“I was always drawn to themes of mystery and the supernatural,” she said, so it’s no surprise that her interest in all things eerie ultimately forms the core of her new short-story collection, Voices Carry Here: Supernatural Stories of Ghosts, Mystery, and Suspense. 

The Heebie Jeebies

Inspired, in part, by sprinkles of truth (though Galotta’s keeping those pieces a secret, for now), this thrill-steeped assemblage features tales skillfully and purposefully woven through various genres: from the romance of “Vintage Spin,” in which a woman seemingly emerges from decades past to find herself in imminent danger; the sentimentality of three old men’s musings studded by death premonitions in “Double Vision;” and the humor noir of a wife’s ghostly return to her hen-pecked husband in “The Marriage Contract.”

Along with the preternatural background and the equally-haunting backdrop of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Galotta's tales are also grounded by a cast of utterly authentic characters. It’s their complexities, flaws, and familiar reactions that take their often-spectral circumstances of modern monsters and buried secrets from improbable into the delightfully spine-tingling realm of real possibility.

“Just as I believe the best stories have elements of suspense, mine are always character driven,” Galotta said. “Their voices and actions seem real, and that’s how I try to portray them. If I don’t believe them, how can I expect my readers to accept my stories as credible?”

After all, in the case of conjuring suspense, feeling is believing, she noted. It’s the lasting emotional impression and incomparable entertainment of a story that sucks you in whole that Galotta hopes Voices Carry Here leaves with readers.

“My intent in this collection was to create plots and characters that would remain in [audiences’] memories long after they closed the book,” she added. “I wanted to take them on journeys [to which] they might either want - or fear - to return.”

Advance Praise

“In Voices Carry Here: Supernatural Stories of Ghosts, Mystery, and Suspense, Gail Galotta’s seemingly serene settings give way to mysteries and shadows beneath the surface, where the past truly does come back to haunt. From a POV beyond the grave alive with sharp banter and dark humor, to family secrets, foreboding specters, and long-overdue reckonings, each tale reminds us: ‘Every place has a history.’ And every ghost has a story… and a voice that carries.” —Wade Walker, author of action horror thrillers Bite of the Wolf, Operation Frankenstein, and the poetry collection Dead Love

Author, Gail Galotta

The Author

Gail Galotta was raised in Chicago with childhood summers in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. She’s always been drawn to the mystical pull of water, which often shapes the settings of her stories. An award-winning writer and former English teacher, she lives in Vulcan, Michigan, overlooking the same lake that inspired her earliest work. When asked what inspires her latest fiction, she offers only a cryptic smile.

The Book

Voices Carry Here: Supernatural Stories of Ghosts, Mystery, and Suspense

Gail Galotta

186 pages, 6” x 9”, B/W

Fiction/Short Stories, Mystery & Suspense, Paranormal & Supernatural

ISBN: 978-1-968761-17-2, $24.95 (Hardcover)

ISBN: 978-1-968761-16-5, $17.95 (Softcover)

Mission Point Press, May 4, 2026

Copies are available for preorder at Bookshop.com, Amazon, and other online retailers. On its May 4, 2026, publication date, it will be available for purchase wherever books are sold. For information or to arrange for signings and events, contact the author at gailgalotta@gmail.com or visit gailgalotta.com.