The Haunted Mesa is a 1987 science fiction novel by American writer Louis L'Amour, set in the American Southwest amidst the ruins of the Anasazi. Plot summary Mike Raglan, a middle-aged man who specializes in paranormal investigations (and normally debunking the phenomena) has received urgent phone calls and mail from an old friend of his, Erik Hokart. Hokart was an independently wealthy scientist, inventor, and businessman who made his fortune in electronics. He was investigating a mysterious mountainous area in the Southwest, intending to build a secluded home on top of one particular mesa around which rumors had long swirled. His messages to Mike intimated that he was in deep trouble and desperately needed someone of his talents. Hokart doesn't show up at the designated meeting spot, but the next day Mike receives a package from him, delivered by an exotic female beauty. A man breaks into his room to try to steal the package, and is chased off with an Eric Ambler book and a threat from a .357 Magnum. The package contains Erik Hokart's journal of his quasi-archaeological expedition. The first night on the chosen mesa, glowing lines appear on the blueprint of a kiva (a room used for religious rituals) attached to the ruins of the house Hokart was using as a makeshift shelter. Hokart is a little perturbed when the glowing lines turn out to be correct, and he begins to excavate the underground kiva even though it looks to have been deliberately buried. It creeps out both him and his large guard dog, "Chief". Fully excavated, the kiva reveals itself as anomalous in having no sipapu but rather a blind window made out of a curious gray substance. After he finishes, Hokart discovers that a pencil of his had been stolen and replaced with a jar. Afraid, Hokart begins to leave; Chief mistakes his abrupt movements for an intention to attack the kiva and plunges through the window and into a far invisible distance through to an alternate dimension. Erik begins to consider the legends and beliefs of the Hopi: they say their people originally came from the Third World, which was evil, and so they climbed up into a kiva in this, the Fourth World, to escape it; the obvious speculation is that a malign power of the Third World was sealed by the burial of the kiva and that it wants the window