The Whistler in the Woods

“Dani’s lived her whole life in Salmon River First Nation. All the rez kids know there’s one rule to follow: never go into the woods at night—or the Whistler will get you. When Dani brings home an old arrowhead she finds in the woods, she accidentally invites the legend into her life in a terrifyingly real way. Soon, a crying ghost starts haunting Dani’s bedroom, and only her best friend Sam believes her. Dani has never used a spirit board before, but she and Sam are determined to talk to the ghost girl. Is she in danger? What does she want from Dani? Or are the answers hidden deep in the woods, where the Whistler waits after dark?” From Jodie Callaghan’s newest book, Whistler in the Woods. 

Jodie (Barnaby) Callaghan has always been a lover of horror novels and the supernatural. With a love for reading and writing, Callaghan began writing short stories when she was just eight years old. Along the way, she had several supportive mentors who uplifted her by helping her find her voice, encouraging her to read, and sharing her stories with the class. Since then, she has been nonstop learning, from being a student to a journalist, a teacher, and now a program developer at  Elawsimgewei Gina’muo’guom. 

While living in Scotland, Callaghan was inspired by haunted tours around the city. She viewed sites where some of her favorite authors had been inspired, hoping for a story to emerge. When a tour guide warned the group not to bring home any items from the site, out of fear of bringing a ghost home with them, everything clicked. This warning sparked instant ideas for Callaghan that she couldn’t get out of her head for years. It soon inspired what would become Whistler in the Woods.  

When pitching the book, Callaghan thought of a Mi’kmaq-inspired Goosebumps, inspired by the books she read as a kid from R.L. Stine. Drawing from her lived experiences, Callaghan uses parts of Listuguj to set the scene of her book. “I think the characters, the two main girls, Dani and Sam, are really me and my friends when we were that age. Not exactly, but pieces of us. The grandmother character in the book is very heavily modeled after my grandmother, who had passed. I even gave her the same name as my grandmother as a tribute.” Explain Callaghan. “Of course, the community itself, Salmon River, that’s obviously what our river is known for. I felt when I was writing the book like I was picturing the characters here. I changed names of things and location names are changed. I moved some things around, but ultimately it is heavily inspired by our community. The people that I grew up with and the people that I know.” 

Callaghan is quickly becoming a prominent voice as an Indigenous author. Her previous children’s book, The Train, jump-started her love for writing books. Callaghan’s writing process takes on different forms, from thinking about the world within the book to the number of scares needed, to always taking notes of any ideas she has. “ I’m an outliner. And I think that I’ve had to teach myself how to write. To sit back and think about pace. It’s a horror novel, so you need to have scary scenes.  Where are they fitting in? We’ve had three chapters, no scares. We need to work a scare in.  And I think a lot of that came from teaching English for so many years.  And really dissecting literature and dissecting stories.” 

This won’t be the last we see from the town of Salmon River, as Callaghan confirmed a series is in the works. The Salmon River Shivers Series will continue to expand the town’s supernatural entities and lore. “I‘d like to explore the land in the books and deepen the lore of the area and find out why all this is happening. And why all of a sudden this is happening to the community.”  

You can now preorder a copy of Whistler in the Woods from Second Story Press, Amazon, with the book’s official release on March 9th, 2027.  

By Ivy Grenier