Stephens could find no explanation for the manner of death. The victim was fully dressed in a suit and tie, but had died from several bullet wounds to his heart. His clothes did not have any holes or blood on them. No one reported hearing any gunshots. A note read that despite his death, he refused to leave the neighborhood.

Ghosts do not often commit murder. They haunt. They instill fear. They might so inhabit a person’s psyche as to drive her to suicide. But actual slaughter is rare.

Drake’s father was murdered by a ghost, and on that day Drake became a ghost hunter.

He inhabited the darkness. He learned about betrayal and lonely hearts and the isolation of eternity. He drank in whispers and sang of misfortune.

But she could distinguish the difference, both etymologically and historically, between each of them. Her favorite stories were set in burial grounds, Gothic narratives dripping with death and love and tragedy.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I’ve decided to haunt you.”

“Whatever you say.” Jackson went back to bed.

Samantha started following Jackson wherever he went. People often caught him talking to himself, and decided he was crazy.

It was not long before Jackson’s boss fired him. “You’re behavior lately has been unacceptable.”

“But my dead wife is haunting me.”

Across the water, standing astern, laughing, the ghostly flicker of the Buccaneer gripped my eye. But with relief I heard his mast crashing into the sea. Our gamble had worked. The Hell Frigate drifted away helplessly.