This past November, I received a very interesting e-mail from a kid named Jesse Winslow, who lives in Petersville, Maryland, a small town near Burkittsville. Jessie went hunting for a mountain lion with his cousin Keith, and had an eerie feeling that he was being watched and stalked.

Anything to do with Black Hills Forest always catches my eyes. But Jesse's e-mail also set off a warning bell in my brain. For one thing, there haven't been any cougars in the woods around here for twenty years or more. But something else occurred to me too. I vaguely recalled an article that appeared in the Burkittsville paper last fall, not long before Jesse's "weird" trip into the woods. The article detailed a strange story of Janelle and Robert Thornton who went picnicking with their daughter, Jamie, in the Black Hill Forest. Apparently Jamie had seen a large, mysterious cat in the woods with eyes like a human's. Shortly after reading this article, I definitely wanted to find out more, especially after receiving Jesse's e-mail about the mountain lion and a possible connection to the Blair Witch. What followed is the twisted and seemingly inexplicable case that I call THE NIGHT SHIFTERS.

Find out more about the book, which will be available May 8.