A family mystery, about what some secretly regarded as a true ghost story, became part of my family research when the yellowing, fragile page of a newspaper dated Tuesday, October 19th, 1880, turned up in the old family records I was studying. A ghost is the spirit of a dead person, or sometimes an animal, and sometimes manifests looking very much as they did in life, and is usually encountered in places the person spent a lot of time while they were corporeal. Family legend surrounds the Everett family as a result of the curious story of the Everett Ghost.

A person who won't 'let go' after they are dead becomes a ghost who haunts the area of the tragedy. Ghost stories are not always related to murder, tragic death or other violent demise. Others tell about women ghosts that could be seen in early mourning looking out of the Slogars hotel or dancing in the Eldorado hotel.

Ghosts are portrayed as having a semi-transparent, unspecific form, loosely resembling the person they once were. To combat this proliferation of evil spirits Thailand has its own special kind of «Ghost Buster», the Mho Phi or ghost doctor. Chinese culture is also loaded with testimonials of ghosts and Confucius even states that people must admire God and Ghosts and must keep themselves away from them.

For me as a family historian, the final act of the mystery concerns the death of Arundel Everett, some seventeen years after he and his family fled from the haunted house. Another one of the most famous paranormal stories is the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California.

Ghosts, whether you believe in them or not, are a part of human history. Even in the modern world people believe that the mummies also materialize in the form of ghosts and take reprisal and these facts are often shown in the horror movies also. To avoid being cursed and photo chronicles killed herself, she felt she had to continuously keep building a mansion to house the spirits and keep them satisfied.