Ghost Stories by Caroline More

By the time oliphant wrote this story, she was a widow hohad lost two children in infancy and a beloved daughter aged 11. Surrounded by feckless men, she saw her own sons growing up sickly and dependent. Underlying guilt is a parental failure in the upbringing of her sons. Ghosts, it is often said, return because of unfinishe business. It is the unfinished business within a writer's soul that creates the truest poetic ghost stories.