Located in upstate New York, the house known as Nil Chance has been empty and reputed to be haunted for the last seventy years. When the owners decide to sell and cannot find a buyer for a haunted house, they take steps to remove whatever entity is residing there. They hire Tom Mulvaney and a small team of amateur ghost hunters. Tom is a professional paranormal investigator who boasts that it has never taken more than two days for him to clear a property. He is somewhat annoyed to be saddled with the ghost hunters, who are composed of a Reverend, a Wiccan, a professor, and a psychic, and he hates Nil Chance at first sight.

Leo Delacroix is the psychic of the group. He has been seeing Nil Chance in his dreams for months and feels that the house is welcoming him with greedy open arms. Soon after arrival, he begins to hear a voice in his head whispering his name and promising him wonderful dark secrets.

As the group investigates, they find that what was purported to be a simple haunting is anything but simple. The entity that inhabits Nil Chance is bigger than any ghost and much more evil. And it wants Leo. As Tom and Leo uncover the secrets of the house and its previous tenants, it becomes apparent that they have less than twenty-four hours to rid the house of the evil before the entity rises up to kill Tom and to claim Leo forever.

Readers who love a good horror story are going to find Whiskey Tango Foxtrot by Selah March to be a custom fit. This is a spine-chilling novella that puts its characters through a wringer and doesn’t let up on them for the duration of the story. Tom Mulvaney is somewhat pompous and arrogant, but he has a hidden insecurity that the entity is able to ferret out and use against him. Leo, who Tom calls a “brooding psychic Wonder Boy”, is a very reserved man with a stutter. When the evil spirit takes over his body, he loses the stutter and becomes much more aggressive, and this transformation is fascinating to watch as is the effect that it has on Tom. As the story progresses, the tension mounts to almost the point of combustion. Ms. March has portrayed evil very well, and this reader stayed glued to the story in horrified fascination until the very end. Well done!

Reviewed by: Whitney