SAMPLE

No, that’s not the same red light as before. This one is closer. It bobs from right to left. A body seems to emerge from the darkness, smoke and dust. The red flicks like flame, attached to a head. Something, like a steer, wanders onto the road, its skeletal head fixing on you, lurching forward. You blink and look again, but this too is real. A thin form rises at the side of the road, all of its attention fixed on you. Then, a light. A shaft from distant headlights. The hallucination fades, and you feel the warm blood trickle down the edge of your forehead. You’re badly hurt. You hear the chug of an old truck stop at the side of the road, hear the sound of a car door slam shut, and see the silhouette of a woman standing on the shoulder, looking over your wreck. Twelve miles to Crowheart.

• Stumble slowly forward toward the woman with your hands outstretched. Just this once, ask for help.
• Stumble toward where you saw that... thing. What was that? There must be something over there to explain what you saw.
• Return to you car and get the ring out of the cupholder. If it's still there.

What is Haunting of Longhorn Ranch?

Roll back the clock to London, in the 1800s, and you'll find most folks read their fiction not in novels, but in periodicals. Titillating tales of horror and intrigue were published episodically in magazines, alongside other stories. Take, for example, the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, or Wilkie Collins' sensation novel The Woman in White. While we might read some of these stories in novel form today, they were initially published only periodically.

Oddly, most of our media today follows this same pattern. Television shows are broken into episodes and seasons; Story-based podcasts are often ten episodes long. Sometimes, we do this to a fault: Anymore, movies deemed too long are broken into a part one, and part two. The only long-form, all-at-once media today in fact appears to be the novel, which is curious for a medium that used to be published in smaller doses.

The Haunting of Longhorn Ranch is an online novel published in multiple parts. It is told interactively, where the reader is required to make decisions that inform and direct the narrative. HoLR is not linear, but a branching web of story with many different threads.

This kind of story is not exactly new. It was made popular by the tabletop RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons, and has been systematized and programmed into some of the greatest role-playing video games of the 21st century, like Baldur's Gate 3 and Disco Elysium. While these are video games rather than novels, Haunting of Longhorn Ranch borrows many of the games' mechanics.

You may notice that HoLR has relatively few decisions compared to text. It is worth noting that HoLR is primarily a novel and secondarily interactive. However, if you are reading this about page a long time after September of 2024, you may not notice this. We may make the story web more complicated in later edits to open new paths, depending on early engagement with the story. Stay tuned.

How do I Read Haunting of Longhorn Ranch?

You do not need an account to read HoLR. The novel is free.

We do not use cookies. We do, however, use your browser's local storage to persist the choices you've made between sessions. If you alter or clear your local storage for our site, you will lose the decisions you've made in the past.

Someday, we may have a more robust form of authentication and progress tracking. For now, everything is as lightweight as possible. Stay tuned for updates!

Who Are You?

I am Jack Ryan, the author of Longhorn Ranch, and the founder of the Hidden Star. Haunting of Longhorn Ranch is my attempt at trying a non-conventional medium for fiction writing. You can send any further inquiries to jack.dixon.ryan@gmail.com. I would love to chat.

The branching narrative is Cool. Can I write my own with your library?

Not yet, but soon. Underlying this novel is a library that allows me to write in my desired word processor, follow standard conventions, and produce the branching narrative by parsing the written files correctly. It is a long way from done, but when it is finished, I will open source the library.

Author's Note about Inclusion

I am just one white guy from pseudo-rural America, and I don't work with a team of writers, so my perspective is very limited. However, I believe that fiction should explore a variety of perspectives to help readers empathize with a broad range of people. HoLR therefore features numerous characters from backgrounds that are not my own.

I have done my best to treat all of the characters in this novel with respect and to avoid caricature or stereotype; however, I don't assume I've done so without error. If in reading you come across a representation you disagree with, please reach out to jack.dixon.ryan@gmail.com with your concerns. I will seriously hear and consider these concerns and, if I conclude that they merit a revision, then I will issue a revision as quickly as possible.

Author's Note about Generative Image Use

This project used to draw on images from the AI application Midjourney. I have since come to a come-to-Jesus moment with AI and have stopped using it altogether. None of the writing or infrastructure of this project was produced with AI; the formerly-AI produced images have since been removed. I will replace them with handmade artwork soon. If you're an artist and you're interested in producing some images for this project, please reach out to me at jack.dixon.ryan@gmail.com, I would love to meet some artists.

Also, sorry for having used AI images in this project. It was a different time, two years ago, and I wasn't thinking. The purpose of art is in the expression of human thought; the replacement of art is the erasure of human thought. I was a fool. Long live human thought, and long live art.