Clumsy. That's what she always thought she was, until she went into the mirror shop and there was the one mirror way at the back that showed a whole cluster of spirits and demons clinging to her shoulders and back and legs and...well, everywhere, really. Once she saw it, she felt the pinpricks of their claws through her clothes. She spun to face ( Read more... )

The forest grew on Halloween. Ghost trees rose through the pavement, mushrooms sprouting around their roots and along the asphalt streets like it was the finest loam. Birds flew through the foliage and vanished. Fox and deer poked their heads around the trunks of the trees or bounded across the road, causing vans full of trick-or-treaters to slam ( Read more... )

I don't mind the headless riders so much. At least you know where you are with them. It's the ghosts that pretend to be real, that seem real in every way, but then disappear mysteriously and let you find out that there was a legend about them from however many years ago that I don't like. Do you know how much time I spent looking for vanishing ( Read more... )

The uncanny wail echoed through the space station, followed by a skirl of bagpipe music. Captain Amos buried his face in his hands. "Haunts." "Haunts," confirmed his first executive officer. "We are a scientific ship, we do not believe in haunts," the Captain reminded him. His exec shrugged. "Neither do they. They say they stumbled across an ( Read more... )

The dying do their own work. They finish what must be finished--which is their death. That is all that they need to do. A very few have other things that must be done, even at the end. Words to a loved one. Reassurance. The last piece of a project. Usually these things fall away as death grows near, but sometimes the need grows. We think that's ( Read more... )

Ghosts are everywhere. They walk along our neural pathways, hike over the gray ridged mountains of our cortex, and whisper memories in our ear when we are resting. Mostly they fade to mind, and stay there, a hundred, a million ghosts of people we've met and loved or read. Only rarely can they be called out, or stay out, but they are ghosts, make no ( Read more... )

Drifting through the trees, weightless in real time, while around everything else moves in slow-motion. I move slow, but if you glance up, all you'll see is leaves rustling quickly or maybe a flicker of white. It is a frustration, I tell you. I understand why some ghosts start zooming through people, or deliberately creating cold breezes. The ( Read more... )

In Hollywood, old stars never die. They just sink into the pavement. You think the walk of stars is just a nice idea with the little hand prints and names and stars for famous people? Nuh-uh. They may not know it, but it's just a sign of what's to come. Walk down any street in Hollywood, and you can feel the lighter-than-air touch of the stars ( Read more... )

The ghost trees noticed when their song boat vanished from the lake nearby, but they did not know what to do about it. At first, they waited patiently for the song boat to be returned, though mists rose up from the lake and swaddled their trunks in a layer of thick fog that had no joy of song, no life remembered, in it. And then the oldest tree ( Read more... )