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Dr. Randy Overbeck on Haunted Mysteries & Hidden History | What’s Kraken
11 Plays16 days ago
Dr. Jo sits down with award-winning author and lifelong educator Dr. Randy Overbeck to talk about his chilling and thought-provoking Haunted Shores Mystery Series. These aren’t your average ghost stories—each novel dives into real societal issues like racial injustice, human trafficking, migrant abuse, and Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW), all wrapped in meticulously researched, historically-set mysteries.
They dig into how a background in education shapes narrative depth, why setting a book in 1998 means saying goodbye to Google, and how a haunted athletic office kickstarts a story of justice from beyond the grave. Plus: why authenticity matters, how his characters evolve across books, and how his five-year-old character with ghost sight ups the emotional ante.
This one is for the mystery lovers, the educators, the history nerds, and the folks who believe fiction can shine a flashlight on the things we try to forget.
📘 Randy’s books & podcast: authorrandyoverbeck.com
📖 Get Red Shadows at Saugatuck on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3IJyQfR
📲 All our links + more: https://linktr.ee/Emptyhell
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Transcript
Introduction to Dr. Randy Overbeck
00:00:01
Speaker
Hey everyone, Joe here and today's guest is none other than Dr. Randy Overbeck. Randy, pleased to meet you. Delighted to be joining you, Joe.
Dr. Overbeck's Career in Education
00:00:10
Speaker
ah We've talked a bit before recording and we've got a bit in common, and including our education a bit.
00:00:17
Speaker
What is your educational background? I'm curious. I'm, I am a longstanding educator. i spent 40 years serving children as first a teacher. then a college professor, and then I ran school districts for 28 years. So the last part is I got a PhD in educational leadership.
00:00:36
Speaker
Oh, Ed led. Okay. I know this. This is something near and dear to my heart. My, my aunt's trajectory was an Edd PhD and she did a much of the same.
Challenges in Teaching Older Students
00:00:48
Speaker
Like you start off with teachers then you start giving, giving, giving, and pretty sure you're teaching at universities for the next generation.
00:00:54
Speaker
What, set of students did you like the most teaching? Was it the younger ones or the college students or university as it say in the? Believe it or not. Now i you know, I've taught everything from junior high, high school, college, and of course I taught adults in in my day my job every day.
00:01:12
Speaker
ah The older they got, the harder it was to teach them. So the ones that were most fun were the middle school and high school kids. I know that doesn't sound like that. Junior high kids?
00:01:23
Speaker
That's
00:01:27
Speaker
No, I can, I can kind of see that, especially with the older adults who don't necessarily a want to be in that situation of being taught, and know, most of the time when I'm, when I work with teachers and administrators, I was a change agent and nobody likes to change by and large. So oh no that was part it. No.
00:01:50
Speaker
Well, yeah. But the thing is, We all need change. Otherwise, we're the same thing and the thing might be broken. And it takes sometimes an external person to see, hey, this needs to happen. This is how you fix it. This isn't this.
Influence of Academic Background on Writing
00:02:04
Speaker
No one likes that, but that gets into our writing. I know from my experience as a writer that sometimes editors can go, no, we just can't do any of this.
00:02:16
Speaker
Do you have that ever happen to your writing where an editor came in and said, oh, no, no, no, no. um Well, I think the answer is yes and no. of my my The editors that have worked with me, which I have too, have found my work to be very authentic, but that doesn't mean that there when they look at it, there aren't things that they go, you know, this is a little too much or you're missing this part.
00:02:43
Speaker
And I'm very grateful for that for that input because I think it strengthens the manuscript and makes it more readable.
00:02:52
Speaker
Absolutely. And that's great. And I think by taking the feedback and maybe because of your education and maybe because of your job before, being able to take the feedback as well helps you strengthen it. Do you sometimes cross over your academic training, not so much your career, but you're actually training through the academics into your writing?
00:03:13
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I mean, one of the things that people notice all the time about my writing is how much, how much, how how authentic, how how, how, how much depth
Inspiration and Research for Haunted Shore Mysteries
00:03:24
Speaker
there is.
00:03:24
Speaker
And that's because I do a great deal of research. So in each of my books, there are aspects of which when I went in, I didn't know much about it. So my Haunted Shore Mystery Series are all location mysteries.
00:03:37
Speaker
So the first one takes place on the, on the Eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay, the second one in Cape Maine, New Jersey, the third one in a beautiful small town of Crystal river, Florida.
00:03:48
Speaker
And this latest one is Saugatuck, Michigan, which is on the, on Lake, on the shore of Lake Michigan. None of those places had I ever, that I grow up in. So in each case I had to learn the culture, the language, the experiences of each one of those places.
00:04:04
Speaker
And the research that was that was a regular part of my job as an educator became very valuable ah in trying to fashion these books because I had to research everything from how to sail a boat, which I had never done, that's a big part of the first book, as to how to how to swim with manatees. I had to do research on human trafficking, all kinds of things.
00:04:26
Speaker
So yeah, there is a lot of carryover, not to mention my hero is a teacher. So that kind of puts it in the context of school. So... No, absolutely. And that's great. I love that point of view where research is important. And I think a lot of people shy away from that or they were the the mindset that they can just write whatever they want.
00:04:45
Speaker
But if you're from those locations, you're going to pick it out. Like, oh, no, i mean, I and those are different places like Michigan and Florida. Dynamically opposing. I mean, there's there' different cultures.
00:04:57
Speaker
There's different cultures entirely. And it was, and I've been very gratified because I've had a number of reviewers on Amazon will talk about how well I captured the ambience of the area.
00:05:10
Speaker
They said, you hit it. And my books are all historicals in the sense that they take place 25 years ago. So the very first book in the series
Historical Context and Themes in Novels
00:05:19
Speaker
takes place in 1998, the second book in 99, the third book in 2000, and the one.
00:05:22
Speaker
third book in two thousand and the last one When it's coming out now, this year, actually takes place in 2007. So they all have ah time period that's a little distant from where we are right now.
00:05:35
Speaker
That's fascinating from my work point of view as well with Generation X. I'm posting back there. And it is a different timeframe, cell phones, internet, this is all starting to creep into our lives. It hasn't quite been, and then, I mean, the cell phones used to be this big.
00:05:56
Speaker
They had 12 minutes on them. You can only call it your state. You're gonna call out, you know? And now everyone's got things in their pocket. So from your doing it from 25 years ago so, and the readers of today, how does that hit the audience?
00:06:14
Speaker
Well, and it it does, some reviewers and readers have responded the fact that they'll say something like, when you read this book, you have to do a reset because if you're looking for quick internet or cell phones, you won't find it. Now, that had nothing to do with my placement of it ah My placement of it was really a very simple, logical extension of the storyline. So in the first book,
00:06:42
Speaker
ah Blood on the Chesapeake, which takes place in 1998. I chose that year because the murder mystery, the cold case murder mystery, is actually a lynching that occurred in the school some 30-some years earlier.
00:06:59
Speaker
So my ah my conceptual design was if these were kids that did lynching, teenagers, in 68, The last 63, the last lynchings in the United States, correction, the last recorded lynchings in the United States occurred in 63, 64.
00:07:19
Speaker
So I kind of said, okay, if this happened in 63, 64, at what point would they be power brokers in the town? And that that' that's about 30 some years later when they're in their...
00:07:34
Speaker
nearing 50, 48, 50 years old. right So that's how I chose the year of 1998 because that made the story make sense. That's an amazing work for, that's actually amazing logic. It really is.
00:07:49
Speaker
Because you did the research and knew, and then knew enough to say like, okay, you can't make it in the seventies because they're only 10 years, you know, what I did last summer type thing. like It's going to be when they're older and actually have power.
00:08:03
Speaker
This is when things might stop haunting them and come back at them.
Plot and Themes of Haunted Shore Mysteries Series
00:08:08
Speaker
I like that idea. So the story is that my my protagonist is actually a Midwesterner like myself, although he's from Michigan, but ah but he gets dumped at the altar and is just looking to start his life over again at the age of 25.
00:08:24
Speaker
And he finds what he thinks is his perfect job ah teaching ah history. He's a history teacher and coaching football basketball. um ah on the eastern shore Chesapeake Bay, except when he gets there, he finds out this little tiny little athletic office that he gets is haunted by this teen who had been lynched some 30 some years earlier.
00:08:46
Speaker
That's a great story. It really is. It's ah it's a perfect hook. It's a perfect meld of contemporary and older legends, right? Now, for your title, where do you get your titles from? Because that's a brilliant title, by the way.
00:09:01
Speaker
Well, I started with Blood on the Chesapeake because it seemed like a kind of a natural extension of, you know, kind of what this was about, about blood. And then once I did that, I went, okay, well, what do I do? So the second one became Crimson at Cape May for similar reasons.
00:09:18
Speaker
The third one became Scarlet at Crystal River. and this newest one is called Red Shadows at Saugatuck. And one of the things that I attempt to do with my books is, now, first of all, I don't want to give the wrong impression.
00:09:31
Speaker
The books are fun reads. they They are great mysteries. They won mystery of the year awards. I mean, and nobody's picking these books up for any other reason than they're interested in in a mystery or a ghost story.
00:09:45
Speaker
But in each case, I'm trying to deal with serious issues the country is grappling with. So in the first book was all about racial injustice. And even and the lynching is just the tip of the iceberg. So Daryl,
00:10:00
Speaker
who is finding out later the kid is lynched, which of course this the town has a different story of what happened about suicide. and But he's encountering racial injustice issues in school 30 some years later and connecting the two.
00:10:18
Speaker
In the second book, the murder is tied to human trafficking. um And that's because I learned when I was doing my research in New Jersey, that that area is the largest human human trafficking ring in the United States.
00:10:33
Speaker
It's a hub. Human trafficking travels the way all other freight does. It travels on the interstate. And if you think about New Jersey, there's Garden State Parkway, New Jersey Parkway, Pennsylvania Turnpike, and I-95, which are some of the most traveled routes in the United States. Yeah.
00:10:49
Speaker
you know And then when I went to Florida and I decided I wanted to set one in Florida, I decided to focus on um ah abuse of migrants, the whole immigration issue in the South.
00:11:02
Speaker
And that was very powerful. And the newest book, I decided to tackle another issue. So the newest book, Red Shadow Sokotuk, the murder is connected to MMIW, which didn't exist in 2007. That stands for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.
00:11:19
Speaker
So the whole issue about if we new kidnapping, murder of of indigenous women, ah which really didn't get much play until about 2017 or My taking place in 2007.
00:11:36
Speaker
But this gave me a way to shine a light on that at that particular time.
00:11:42
Speaker
Well, that's fascinating because it it gives a bit of a history lesson. So they are really historical in the sense that 20 years ago, but it's also historical in the sense that the snapshot of the time, and you're right, like the indigenous women especially still don't get enough attention when they go missing or abused and definitely didn't get any attention at all about 20 years ago.
00:12:07
Speaker
Right. And kind of that's how what I did is I, I have, a portray in the story how the community is reacting to the fact that these girls are going missing.
00:12:17
Speaker
Right. you know what ah They say things like, oh, right well these girls disappear all the time. They run off. So that's part of the response that Daryl, that's my hero, and his family get when they're asking questions about this teenage girl that's gone missing. And most of his concerns emanate because he cares about, so, you know, the this is a teenager gone missing. The the guy who's lynched in London, Chesapeake was a 16-year-old black student. black student and In Florida, there are four- and five-year-old immigrant children that are murdered.
00:12:54
Speaker
So he's all about taking care of kids. And that kind of hits his heartstrings. So he starts looking at, well, like what happened to these people?
TV Adaptation Prospects and Research Challenges
00:13:04
Speaker
And the ghosts kind of help a little bit. Although I'm very careful with the ghosts. The ghosts don't solve any mysteries. i don't do any magic, anything like that.
00:13:11
Speaker
They just drop enough breadcrumbs for him to find who who who do who needs to be brought to justice. That's kind of.
00:13:21
Speaker
This would make a great TV show, by the way. It seems like a very visual set. I've been approached by three individual organizations. Nothing has panned out yet, but who knows? We'll see.
00:13:33
Speaker
Oh, yeah. As I used to say, Hollywood, you know, even if you get like, oh, I got like ah a production deal. Like, do you until it's actually made? You might have a sign, but that's about all. Yeah.
00:13:44
Speaker
So when you're writing these... There's a good story about that. So one of my writing conferences, i met um the author of the Stephanie Plum Mysteries. Do you know those? you know One for the money, two for the... Okay.
00:14:01
Speaker
Ivanovich, Janet Ivanovich. She said that she sold... the film rights to the first book, One for the Money, and it took them 20 years to develop the movie.
00:14:13
Speaker
The movie ended up being terrible, incidentally. but she So even though she sold it, I didn't know this, she didn't get any money. She sold for a million dollars way back when, you know which has been huge money back when One for the Money came out.
00:14:27
Speaker
But she didn't get any money until 20 years later when they actually decided to make Actually make it. Oh my gosh, like 20 years. I was feeling bad about 10. One advantage that my books have is that they're not contemporary.
00:14:42
Speaker
So right whenever somebody decides to do that, the fact that they're portraying something that happened in 1998 or 2000, or in this case, in the new book, 2007, if they do that five years from now, it'll be just as powerful as it would be in 25.
00:14:57
Speaker
twenty five No, and and that's the actually part of the the comeback right now. There's things like Fear Street where they're bringing back the older decades, the previous decades, I should say.
00:15:10
Speaker
But I should choosing to write that created a challenge, and it was a research challenge because... you know, like, well, what exactly did they have in terms of cell phones or internet in 2000?
00:15:24
Speaker
Because in 1998, 1999, the only people who had cell phones basically were either rich people or drug pushers. Those are the only ones that had cell phones, you know.
00:15:35
Speaker
So Daryl doesn't end up getting a cell phone, I think, until two until the 2000, I think, or maybe not, maybe has it in 2007. Anyway, that's just one small example of Like what could he do and in 1998 to look something up the way we do today? Google didn't exist, see?
00:15:54
Speaker
Right, Alta Vista at best. ah That was Ask Jeeves. That was 90, 99, 98, I think. I think Ask Jeeves was 99, I think.
00:16:06
Speaker
Ask Jeeves, yeah. Man, all these things don't exist anymore. So yeah when you're doing these and you have, I do believe, for July 23rd, new one coming out.
00:16:18
Speaker
Yeah, the location is Saugatuck, Michigan is on the western short restroom side of the lower peninsula are on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. And it's a really beautiful, ah welcoming town, part of the art coast on that side of Michigan.
00:16:35
Speaker
A lot of people from Chicago vacation there. But if you're not from that area, you probably don't know about this place. So ah No, I got confused with Saginaw. When I first saw it, I'm like, Saginaw? That's not how you spell it. Yeah.
00:16:49
Speaker
This is a much smaller town. We're talking... Smaller than Saginaw? This is probably, without tourists, so we're talking in ah between 1,000 and 2,000 probably. I mean, it's not not a large town.
00:17:02
Speaker
That's part of what makes it kind of an interesting place. And and it is within... now 30 minutes maybe of the of the Gun Lake tribe of the branch of the Ojibwe Indians that are close by and I wanted that to be part of the to be able to have that connection as part of the story So it- That sounds a great story. So it involves a little bit about story on the water of Lake Michigan. It involves story in the town.
00:17:32
Speaker
The cutest, the best part of the story, I'll be real honest is, so there is a, what I used to call romantic arc, I now call a family arc. So in the first book, Daryl and his soon to be partner, Aaron meet. Second book, they fall in love. The third book, they're actually on their honeymoon in Florida.
00:17:49
Speaker
In this fourth book, which takes place seven years after they're married, they have a five-year-old son. And the five-year-old son, Leo, has inherited his father's ability to see ghosts.
00:18:01
Speaker
So it allowed me to do a lot of very interesting thing about family and about concern for little ones and what happens. and And of course, this is a very precocious five-year-old who's very curious and he can't always tell the difference between the ghost and the people next to the ghost. So that it gave me lots of interesting ways for him to explore that ability of um how do you navigate that world and what Daryl and Aaron had to do to teach him about things are not always the way they appear. And sometimes you're going to get, you're going to get yourself in trouble if you go too far and stuff.
00:18:40
Speaker
It was a very, It was a fun book to write. And so far the early reviews have been nothing short of fantastic. So I'm
Book Launch and Contact Information
00:18:48
Speaker
thrilled about it. sounds like an amazing book. And I love series like this because it allows the readers, I grew up on Agatha Christie, but so we always liked the series. And especially if it's a mystery that has a good hook and your books really have all that.
00:19:02
Speaker
And i really can't wait to read this one. And it comes out on July twenty third yes? July 23rd, 2025 will mark the launch of the fourth fourth book in the series. I'm really excited. In fact, with the publisher's agreement, we decided to launch it in Saugatun.
00:19:21
Speaker
So I will be there in the town to launch it on the 23rd this month. I actually have four appearances in the town, signing books and appearing at their art fair and stuff. So I'm really excited about it.
00:19:34
Speaker
That's very cool. So when you're doing these, how can people get ahold of you on social media, websites and stuff like that? So they know where to go. The easiest way is to hit the, hit my website, which is just author, www author Randy Overbeck.
00:19:49
Speaker
Can't be any, dot com So it can't be any any harder than that. I'm on most of the major platforms. I'm on overback brand at Overbeck for OnX. I'm on author Randy Overbeck on Facebook.
00:20:03
Speaker
on Instagram, any of those, though but the, and all of those are clickable, of course, from, from the website and also information on the book and by links on the book or on the website as well. So the ones it's one stop.
00:20:16
Speaker
Author Randy overbeck.com is where you should go. have all the links. I love it. That's the author Randy overbeck.com. That's it. I love it. So Dr. Randy, I have a question. Was that?
00:20:29
Speaker
was it I said, I want to plug one more thing. on I can.
Podcasting and Reflection on Writing Journey
00:20:33
Speaker
I also have what a podcast yes that ah is only tangentially related to these particular books.
00:20:40
Speaker
It's called great stories about great storytellers. Love it. And in 10 to 12 minutes, I take a famous author, director, or poet, and I tell both what people know about them. Like,
00:20:55
Speaker
how many books they've sold and how many awards they win and what's their And then the hook at the end of the podcast is what they don't know about the, very cool what they don't know about this author. And I do famous authors like John Grisham and James Patterson and Lee Child and, um,
00:21:12
Speaker
um Nora Roberts and Agatha Christie. I do both classic authors and current bestsellers. um And it's so it's ah it's a podcast that's growing in popularity every month. so I'm really thrilled. I love it because multimedia or multimodal, I love that. So the podcast really something I would be into because i love writers of all kinds and I love history. So you can combine them both.
00:21:41
Speaker
I'm there.
00:21:44
Speaker
I love it. that's is It takes a lot. of Again, it's a big research thing. So I do a lot of research into the background of all the people. And you'll learn what you never knew about Alfred Hitchcock or Steven Spielberg and Gene Roddenberry, and as well as the authors that we're familiar with, Ray Bradbury. And so I try to do women's lit. I try to do mysteries. I try to do thrillers. I try to do science fiction. So it's a nice range of things.
00:22:12
Speaker
of of authors' fantasies. Very cool. and they're all 10 minutes, yeah? Thinking back, what advice would you give younger you? And I mean younger, younger, like teenage or early childhood.
00:22:26
Speaker
Well, that's a really good question. um You know, i I've been able, because I had so much experience in schools, I'm able to draw from that experience so that when I create the stories that I that i write,
00:22:42
Speaker
there's some realism and some background to that. but But I started doing this when I was a young, very young man. I started keeping a journal, but life intervened and I had three kids. And if I could go back, I would have i would i wish I had kept up that practice for 40 years because my memory is only so good and had I had something to jog that it probably would have been much more helpful. i want it When I was a teenager, I had wanted to be a writer.
00:23:13
Speaker
I thought I was going to write the next great American novel. um I was all excited about that, wrote in high school. But somewhere between high school and going to college, the the call to serve kids as a teacher came and beckoned, and and I answered, I've never been sorry about that. I really, I've treasured the years that I spent. And I think ah many children's lives are better because I was there to...
00:23:37
Speaker
help support them, educate them. But I never lost my desire to write. So when I got the chance to do a second act, I decided I was going to go back to that. Do I wish I had started writing more? Yeah, but you know you can only have you only have so much time and Family came first, and then my work came second, and there just wasn't much time left after that. so But I'm glad to be where I am right now. I'm not i'm not at all unhappy. I just signed a contract with an agency for another book that's coming out ah probably in two years. So, you know, I'm
00:24:10
Speaker
Things could not be better in my writing. Well, that's great. and And that's the point. Sometimes we put things on pause and we come back when they're ready for us and we're ready for them.
Future Projects and Achievements
00:24:19
Speaker
And honestly, you have a award-winning Haunted Shores mystery series with a new book coming out on July twenty third That ain't bad You know, and I've been, you know, two of the books made bestseller lists. The second, the first book was the number one bestseller on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The second book was the in, let's see if I can give this right.
00:24:41
Speaker
In September 21 the book. was the second highest selling ghost story book in the United States, head of Stephen King, head of Dean Kuntz, head of, I didn't keep that for very long, but still.
00:24:55
Speaker
Milestone. To accomplish that, I feel very proud of You should. You should. That's an amazing thing and it's an amazing journey. And I'm so glad we got to talk. And honestly, I can't wait for the 23rd to pick up my copy.
00:25:09
Speaker
I want to see what happens. I do. I want to see what happens. so And Dr. Randy, I want to say thanks again for coming. behalf of myself and Dr. Randy Overbeck, I bid you good day.
00:25:21
Speaker
Bye, everyone.