We live in a rational age in which science and modern technology have removed doubt and ignorance. We no longer fear the dark, we no longer need to use superstitious symbols to protect our houses and families. We know what is happening in the world and are in contact with friends and family who might live miles away. Ours is a rational world… or is it?

These short ghost stories are not set in remote Scottish castles or haunted Victorian houses. They are about the modern world, places where you would not expect to encounter the supernatural. Just because we can see the world on television, speak with people across the oceans and know exactly what causes natural phenomena, the happenings that so terrified our ancestors, does not mean that ghosts have disappeared. Scientific progress has not buried the supernatural.

Children play with long dead ghostly friends, a cruise ship is haunted, a Stuart tragedy reveals its secret in a horrifying way, a married man revisits his past in Florence where he meets his death lured by the ghost of a former lover, a doctor fails to save his wife’s death in a car accident and is haunted to destruction by her spirit, a man is obsessed by a dream, an art dealer steals a painting from an old lady but her ghost returns to pursue him, a man buys a First World War memorial plaque and wished he had never seen it.

Reason and logic still dream.