ABOUT Scott Wells:
STORIES INSPIRED BY THE THINGS YOU NEVER FORGET.
Scott Wells is a bestselling thriller and horror author and award-winning screenwriter known for transforming extraordinary real-life experiences into gripping fiction.
His stories live in the space between what we know and what we fear might be true. Drawing from unusual encounters, personal experiences, complicated relationships, and a lifelong connection to the outdoors, Scott creates suspense-driven stories that explore survival, deception, human connection, and the unsettling truths that can hide beneath the surface of ordinary life.
From real experience to the page
Long before Phantom Ranch became a novel, it began as a screenplay inspired in part by an unforgettable real-life encounter. The screenplay went on to become a semifinalist at the Atlanta Screenplay Awards, laying the foundation for the psychological thriller Scott would later bring to the page.
Set against the unforgiving beauty of the Grand Canyon, Phantom Ranch explores far more than physical survival. At its center are fractured family relationships, buried resentment, trust, perception, and the terrifying consequences of allowing the wrong person into your life.
Scott's bestselling supernatural thriller, Marked by the Ouija, also grew from personal experience. Inspired by events Scott experienced as a teenager, the novel blends supernatural horror with friendship, adolescence, fear, and the consequences of opening a door you may not be able to close. The book was recognized as a Killer Nashville Claymore Award Finalist.
Though the works of Phantom Ranch and Marked By The Ouija are different, they share the DNA that runs through Scott’s storytelling:
SOMETHING HAPPENS. IT CHANGES YOU. AND AFTERWARD, THE WORLD NEVER LOOKS QUITE THE SAME.
THE STORIES BENEATH THE SURFACE
At the heart of Scott's work is a fascination with perception: the difference between who people appear to be and who they really are, between what we believe happened and what actually happened, and between the stories we tell ourselves and the truths hiding underneath them.
His characters are often ordinary people pushed into extraordinary circumstances, forced to confront not only the danger around them, but something within themselves.
It is there that Scott's stories find their pulse:
where fear, transformation, and truth collide.
THE OUTDOORS
The natural world is more than a setting in Scott's work. Raised in Idaho, Scott developed an early connection to the outdoors and a sense of adventure that continues to influence both his life and his storytelling. Wilderness can offer freedom, perspective, and clarity, but it can also strip away the illusion of control.
That duality is especially present in Phantom Ranch, where the breathtaking isolation of the Grand Canyon becomes both sanctuary and threat.
For Scott, getting outside remains a way to explore, reset, and reconnect with what matters.
THINGS AREN'T ALWAYS WHAT THEY SEEM.
Whether he's writing about a remote journey into the Grand Canyon or a supernatural experience that began with a Ouija board, Scott Wells starts with something that refuses to be forgotten and asks:
What if there is more to the story than we think we know?
His answer is fiction that keeps readers questioning what's real, what isn't, and what might be waiting just beneath the surface.