Dawn through the window woke me. I placed an extra pillow over my face to block it. When Amber woke, she panicked that the ghost children were smothering me. She was not going to stop the ghost children, but she was going to observe and record. Even at the expense of my life, she figured I would rather have been a part of the paranormal, particularly if it made for an entertaining story at her murder trial.

Ghosts are some of the loneliest people you will ever meet.

Whether ghosts exist, it was silly to go to an expensive, infamously haunted inn if you didn't at least want to pretend. There was no need to be the sort of person who goes to a horror movie and points out it is all fake. We know. It's a movie. We suspended our disbelief when the lights dimmed. You are not made erudite by waving at the projectionist.

The hauntings died down, as it were, since exhumed bones were taken off display and interred elsewhere. A lack of archaeological ghoulishness will do that.