Our story begins with our main character, Sandrine Berner, or Sandy for short, looking for work. She was very happy with her life a few months previously. She had a well-loved job at the library and a boyfriend named Simon. Now, post-pandemic, she was unemployed and single. Her flatmate Celine finds a job in the paper that looks perfect. A gentleman looking for a ghost-sensitive individual to clear up an issue at his castle-turned hostel.

Against her better judgment, she decides to give it a try. She meets the owner, Louis Connelly, who she refers to as a "modern day hippie". He's followed by her two new teammates, Theophil or Theo for short, and Matthew. She isn't expecting to work with one fellow investigator let alone two, but they all sign up to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Each of them has a set of skills that compliments the other two. Sandy is able to sense ghosts and sometimes communicate with them. She inherited this ability from her wise woman grandmother. Theo's full abilities remain a bit mysterious, but he is able to see ghosts. Matthew's specialty is on the technical side of ghost hunting. He has surveillance cameras, various types of sensors, and pretty much anything else they could need.

They soon have a close encounter with the castle's unwelcome guests, as well as an introduction to a few of the welcome customers. And what is going on beyond the castle itself, in the cottage ruins just outside of the castle grounds? It's a mystery begging to be solved. They will need all of their special skills to get to the bottom of the hauntings. And as often happens in these types of stories, things are not always as they first appear.

This story was written by Jinn Tiole, Wattpad user jinnis. She wrote it for the 2021 ONC (Open Novella Contest) and was awarded an honorable mention. This is a challenging contest with many excellent entries. Writers must select at least one of the writing prompts. Then they need to pass three word-count milestones and be judged at least twice. The story must be at least 20,000 words in length, not to exceed 40,000.

The author packs a lot into a novella-length work; the story comes in at 24,545 words in length. I was sad that the story ended so soon. It could easily be expanded to a full-length book. But lucky for us, she's currently working on the sequel, Raven's Curse, for ONC 2022. I look forward to reading it. Check out our interview with Jinn here.