Ghost of a Chance (The first book in the Ghostfinders series) (2010) A novel by Simon Green

Everybody knows there are bad places in the world.

Houses that make you walk by on the other side of the street. Bedrooms that no-one in their right mind would try to sleep in. The television screen that isn’t empty enough, the mirror with too many faces reflected in it, the voice in the night, and the dark at the top of the stairs. There are bad places everywhere, in crowded towns and empty fields. Places where there are no safety barriers, where the walls of the world have worn thin, places . . . where we know we’re not safe. It’s in these bad places that we see things we don’t want to see.

Ghosts. They’ve been around as long as we have, in one form or another. Strange sights and sounds, visitations and wonders, spirits of cold earth and empty graves come back to trouble the living. Things that won’t lie down; and none of them bound by the laws of the living. The dead; and things that aren’t dead enough.

There are bad places in the world, but it isn’t ghosts that make these places bad; it’s the bad places that make ghosts.

As the world changes, so do the ways in which we see ghosts. From dark shapes in the night and ancestral revenants to lovers separated too soon and thwarted enemies; from stone tape recordings and electromagnetic phenomena to men and women caught in repeating loops of Time, like insects trapped in amber. Ghosts have always been with us, like guests reluctant to leave the party, like bad memories that won’t go away . . . Ghosts are nightmares of the Past, refusing to give way to the Present. Mankind’s dark side, Humanity’s unconscious.

England’s dreaming . . .

And so, in this brave new twenty-first century, don’t expect ghosts to be limited to old manor houses or abandoned rectories. The modern idea of the bad place, the genius loci, the setting that disturbs and troubles us, has moved on. These days you’re more likely to see ghosts in empty car parks, in shut-down factories, or in an underpass with a bad reputation. Places where it can get very dark and very dangerous, and no-one with any sense goes there alone.

There are such things as ghosts whether you believe in them or not. Tapping on your window late at night, waiting patiently to be noticed at the foot of your bed, stubbornly refusing to lie down. And that’s where the Carnacki Institute comes in. The Institute exists to investigate, interpret, and hopefully Do Something About all the many mysteries and strange supernatural events that flare up every year. All the things that shouldn’t happen but unfortunately do. The Institute’s field agents are trained to deal with spooks and spirits, poltergeists and demons, Timeslips and other-dimensional incursions. They are ghost finders, and when they find them . . . they step on them. Hard.

Of course, not all ghosts are dark forces, intent on Humanity’s ruin. Some are poor lost souls, trying to find their way home. And they . . . can be the most dangerous of all.