Two teenage girls disappear, one is found dead, the other remains missing. They are the latest in a string of young women to vanish from the Cold Hollow region of Vermont. The official story claims the dead girl drowned in a nearby lake, but a secret report reveals that she was found with an unusual wound and completely drained of blood. So begins Kelly Kane’s search for the truth behind several deaths and disappearances, a search that leads her into a hidden world of Occult rituals and small town corruption connected to a legendary monster known as the Hound of Cold Hollow. As a reporter, Kane pieced together a story connecting a prominent local family and several local officials to a broader conspiracy, but before she could complete her investigation, Kane too disappeared. With access to a lost trove of documents and recordings created by Kane, author Gwynn Giger attempts to decipher and construct a narrative account of the young reporter’s final months in Cold Hollow; estranged from family and loved ones, the Cold Hollow story is her only remaining connection to the world. But loneliness and isolation begin to take their toll and Kane soon finds herself embroiled in a love triangle with two other women who are dangerously close to the case. Facts and fantasies begin to blur as Kelly slowly becomes intertwined in the conspiracy she set out to expose.
In this haunting memoir, Kelly Kane must decide how far she is willing to go to get to the truth about the Cold Hollow monster – before it gets to her. Through Kane’s personal notes and records, author Gwynn Giger presents a portrait of an ambitious young woman caught in a dark and disturbing world of drugs, human trafficking, and murder, presented in the context of an ancient conflict between warring secret societies. Is this the story of a journalist with an over-active imagination, or the story of someone sinking into the depths of mental illness? Or is there a truth in Kelly’s experience too terrifying for the rational, modern mind to accept?
