What the young detectives need to do now is discover what is causing the dreadful screams coming from the mysterious house on Michigatta Ridge. Since the property and the mansion are being purchased by a family in nearby Shelton, permission to search the house shouldn't be too difficult to obtain, for the real estate agent is Mr. Allen, Alan Allen's father. Now the young detectives can finally gain access to the old mansion and solve all the mysteries, right?

Well, maybe not. While exploring about the old place, Laura and Julie Ann, two new characters, run into a few unexpected problems. First, Laura disappears through a secret panel near the old grandfather clock located at the foot of the stairs, falling to the cellar floor, rendering her unconscious. There's a cellar? Up to then, no one knew a cellar existed. However, this one is quite unique in that it holds secrets, one being a human skeleton which Laura, not knowing what she'd stumbled onto, disassembles while groping about in the dark understory into which she had fallen. Another odd find, hiding in the darkness of the previously unknown basement, is a Wells Fargo stagecoach. A bill of lading, sometimes called a waybill, found later shows the stagecoach once carried sixteen bags of gold, each weighing eight pounds.

The missing gold could be hidden somewhere in the house or cellar. At least the group, now known as JABAL Force, an acronym standing for Julie, Alan, Barbara, and Laura, thinks it should be so. Even stranger than a skeleton and a stagecoach being in the cellar is the apparition Barbara later discovers that becomes known as the Dancing Miner. Most of these mysteries become somewhat unraveled in the end, but the source of the terrifying screams continues to haunt the group.

--Richard Kauffman

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