People all over the world, and in all times and places, have believed in ghosts. This belief in existence beyond death has enriched the storytelling enterprise a hundredfold. The short stories contained in this book have as a central idea that the supernatural operates in relationships among men and women, between the past and the present, dream and logic, the living and the dead. In the operation of weird, or supernaturally guided action, individual impulse collaborates with external fatefulness¿supernatural forces within and without the characters guide them for good and for ill. But the characters in these stories also choose their weird, or embrace their fate according to their understanding of their own world. In this way, the stories enter the realm of the female gothic.