When the Rev. Steve Burt was pastor at Edgecomb Congregational Church in the late 1990s, he penned a few Halloween tales that appeared in the Lincoln County Weekly.

“Captain James’s Bones,” about a graveyard prank by schoolkids that goes horribly wrong, was set in New Harbor. “Lighthouse Moths” focused on the shipwreck of a wooden coastal schooner and brought disembodied spirits to the Pemaquid Point Lighthouse. “The Strand” followed a young boy’s low-tide crossings of a “nubble” to his great-aunt’s mysterious island house. Locals—especially teens—loved the creepy, imaginative stories.

Recently those three tales were published in Rev. Burt’s 20-story collection, “New England Seaside, Roadside, Graveside, Darkside.” On Nov. 3, the book was named Best Young Adult Fiction at the 2023 Halloween Book Festival in Hollywood.

“I think those Lincoln County stories I wrote while living in South Bristol while pastoring the Congregational Church at Edgecomb — I walked my dog Opie on the Loop Road at Pemaquid every night — were the ones that most influenced the panel of judges. Of course, my Vermont and New Hampshire campfire stories were solid fare, too, but I think it was the Bristol peninsula ghost stories that wowed them.”

Rev. Burt now splits his writing year between Florida and Wells, Maine. He has a three-book teen series—“FreeKs”—that is set in the Bridgton/Sebago Lake area. His two latest adult novels, “The Bookseller’s Daughter” and “Protect the Queen,” set in York County, won the New York and Hollywood Book Festival awards.

Burt’s books are available at all Sherman’s Bookstores and online.