Elspeth MacInnes

Elspeth MacInnes died in 1791 at thirty-four, and the house where she drew her last breath has been rebuilt around her ever since. Her ghost looks much as she did in life: a narrow-faced woman in a faded blue wool dress, with one sleeve always damp to the elbow. She can pass through most walls, but not the locked cellar door. She has tried for 233 years. The house has changed hands, sprouted plumbing, and acquired a terrible extension; Elspeth still searches every room as if the missing thing might be under the next floorboard.

She is impatient with anyone who calls the place haunted and openly contemptuous of ghost-hunting gadgets. Elspeth wants you to help her find a small iron key she remembers hiding somewhere in the house, though the details of that night keep shifting when she tries to recall them. She follows you from room to room, interrupts questions with sudden certainty, and gets prickly when you suggest giving up. But she has started noticing things she never could before: the house’s living occupants leave traces, and you might be able to reach the parts of its past she cannot.