The Riddle of Raven's Gulch by Mary Francis Shura

The Riddle of Raven's Gulch was published by Weekly Reader Books in hardcover in 1975.  The book was also reprinted by Scholastic in softcover under the title The Riddle of Raven Hollow.  Both editions are very common.  

Summary:

The first time Bart hears that Raven's Gulch is haunted, he laughs.  After all, Bart visits the gulch every day.  His newspaper route takes him past the gulch, and his friend, old Mr. Bergen, lives right by the gulch. 

The rumors begin to bother Bart, because they taint his good feelings about his favorite place.  He decides to look into the situation.

Bart learns that a strange car has been seen near the gulch.  Neighbors have reported odd sounds and lights.  Bart sees a shadowy figure in the gulch and soon realizes that something dangerous is going on.  He must find out what it is.

Here's how Bart describes Raven's Gulch on pages 14 and 15.

Everything changes at once when you leave Maple Street.  My bike tires stop that funny singing noise that they make on pavement.  The sound is hidden and muffled as I hit the rutted road.  I can hear my canvas paper bag hit my side soft like a dog's tail wagging.  Instead of green lawns there are deep grassy pastures held back by fencing that staggers raggedly along the roadside.  Even if the sun is shining back on Maple Street, those big trees whose branches meet above the road make it seem like twilight all the time.

I figured they must have laid that road out by an animal trail because it wanders around a lot instead of going straight.  Even though it's bumped and curvy it isn't too hard to bike on because there is never any traffic to watch out for.  I can just wheel any old place in the road. 

After a couple of fenced off pastures, I come to Raven's Gulch.  Maybe it sounds silly but I always think of Raven's Gulch as being my very own place.  Sure, it  has NO TRESPASSING signs posted all along the fence, but Mr. Burgen put them up and he and I are friends.  

More times than I can remember he has told me in his heavy foreign accent, to "Pay those signs no mind."

I take him at his word, too, because there's no time of the year that Raven's Gulch isn't just great.

The spring is the loudest time.  The place is thick with birds and though they sing like everything, they can't drown out the rush of the melted snow water making that little stream into a small icy river.  All sorts of bushy plants bloom and the place is wild with bees.  

In summer I like the berries.  Nobody has ever trimmed those old blackberry brambles and they sprawl around in thorny mountains.  There is no way you can reach the inside ones (which always look the fattest and blackest) because the thorns are curved and mean.  But even just picking on the outside I get quarts and quarts of berries.  Last summer I sold twelve boxes to Mr. Kovacs at the store and took four or five pails to Mr. Burgen's housekeeper for deep dish pies.  After the berries are gone and it gets hot, I like to just sit there in the green cool by the stream and watch the slivers of minnows flicker in the dark of the water and catch tadpoles in my fingers to take home.

The author had me hooked at this point.  This excellent description gave me a reason to care.  Raven's Gulch sounded fabulous, and I wanted Bart to solve the mystery so that he could continue to enjoy his special place.

I like this remark from page 29:

"Things like that don't exist," I said, almost sounding angry without meaning to.

"What really is don't scare people," he said quietly.  "It's what they think is."

This book was written in a fashion that makes it pleasant to read.  It hits the right tone and is interesting from start to finish.  The story is pretty simple and has just 124 pages, but it reads like a series book.  I really enjoyed it.