Pliny the Younger, a Roman writer and historian, wrote that his house in Athens was being haunted by an old man with a gray beard. Pliny’s account may be the earliest literary ghost story, but it was far from being the last. My own passion for ghost stories was conceived when I read The Haunting of Hill House as a girl. It terrified me! but I wanted more. Ghost stories fall into two categories, as I see it. The first category, obviously, is the fictional ghost story: The Turn of the Screw, The Shining, The Woman in Black, and many more. The second, and the one which prompted me to write my own ghost novel, is the first-person account of an actual extranormal experience. (I don’t love the way “paranormal” has been turned into a word that means “fake,” so . . . I made up my own.) When someone has a personal experience they can’t explain, whether it’s an apparition, a poltergeist, a presence, or some other manifestation, I think it’s a mistake to discount it. We may try to talk ourselves out of whatever we saw, or heard, or felt, but that’s invalidating our own witness. My…