The Lantern Man of Hollow Creek

In Hollow Creek, Colorado, legends aren’t just stories—they’re living things.For generations, the town has whispered about the Lantern Man: a mysterious figure carrying a green light through the forest, luring the unwary to their doom. Parents warn their children. Teenagers dare each other. Everyone knows the rules: never follow the light, never speak his name, never enter the woods after dark.But when a viral internet challenge brings the old ritual back to life, the legend becomes something far more dangerous. Jake Brennan performs the summoning with his friends, and he vanishes into the forest without a trace. Then another teenager disappears. And another.Emma Hartley returns to her hometown just as fear grips Hollow Creek. Working with skeptical journalist Richard Simmons, she uncovers a disturbing truth: the Lantern Man was never a ghost. It was invented in 1923 by a grieving father writing fiction—a story that took on a life of its own. Over decades of retelling, believing, and fearing, the town has accidentally created an egregore: a monster born from collective consciousness, feeding on attention and belief.Now, with hundreds of witnesses and viral footage spreading the legend worldwide, the entity is stronger than ever. Traditional solutions won’t work—you can’t kill something that exists because people believe it exists. Emma must convince an entire community to do the impossible: not to deny the monster, but to transform it through conscious collective belief.As the boundaries between psychology and reality blur, Hollow Creek faces an unprecedented question: If we created this monster with our minds, can we unmake it the same way? Or will our own belief be our destruction?A chilling exploration of folklore, collective consciousness, and the terrifying power of belief itself.