Or at the very least, I like the idea that they might exist, and that they still have business with us, the living. And that the business in question doesn’t always have to be something that requires scaring us to death. Back in the dawn of my publishing career, in South Africa in the mid-to-late 1980s, I used to write short stories which got picked up by various local magazines – the sort of thing that these days might be labeled “chicklit”, light romances, fiction whose entire purpose was to entertain the casual reader of a weekly or monthly magazine. I didn’t do a whole LOT of them, but I did a few, and what do you know, I couldn’t quite make myself go mainstream, not even then. At least two of my contributions were ghost stories as well as romances. I just can’t help myself, you see – I am indissolubly wedded to things that are not QUITE of this world, and even in what was supposed to be straight romantic fiction the ghosts manage to make their presence felt. They’re good stories.
