SYNOPSIS

1532 AD – there has been a series of child murders in a small, quaint town in England. The town sheriff suspects black cultists or Satanists are the culprits and suspicion falls on a mysterious young married couple but there is no solid proof that they committed the murders, so nothing is done against them. A group of vigilantes however, takes it upon themselves to kill the couple. They kidnap them then hang the husband by the neck on a tree. Next they impale a stake into the heart of the wife, standard procedures for killing witches at the time. They dig a hole to bury the woman then roll a huge boulder over it to cover it up. Finally they complete their scheme by throwing the dead husband into a lake for the fishes to feed on him. Mysteriously after that, the murders stopped.

October 2001- Brett Gable, age 300 and currently living in San Francisco, is suffering from severe depression. Back in 1740, in the same English town, while working on a town project, he had accidentally released a beautiful woman who had been buried under a huge boulder for 208 years. She had a stake impaled into her heart and had pitifully pleaded with him to pull it out! After he hesitantly pulled the stake out, she turned into a hideous, diabolical ghost. She gratefully granted him whatever he wished for. He asked for money – an endless supply of it. Wouldn’t most anyone in the same situation? Then, regretfully and foolishly, he asked for immortality so that he can enjoy his money forever.

Now lonely, betrayed and cheated of several million dollars by his girlfriend and her lover, Gable suffers a nervous breakdown. Then the horrific events of Sept. 11 in New York plunges his unstable mind into a black void. He is currently is so depressed, he contemplates suicide. He wants to die, if ever that is possible for an immortal. With his unlimited supply of money, he’s ‘been there, done that’, countless times over. Desperate, he tries to kill himself with a gunshot to his head - and fails miserably. He attempts suicide a total of 5 times, each attempt more bizarre than the previous, and survives them all!

Then, in a dream, the ghost appears before him. After almost 300 years, he has forgotten about her. He decides to return to England to try to find her. Perhaps she can grant him a final wish – to end his miserable life. He succeeds in conjuring her up then begs and pleads with her. She agrees, but on one condition. He reluctantly agrees. He really has no choice because he just found out that the souls of his wife and two children, who died some 250 years earlier, has been under the tight reins of the ghost since their deaths! In return for granting his wishes for money and immortality, she captured their souls when they died – without his knowledge, to become her ghostly slaves.

When he returns to San Francisco, he becomes the City’s most bizarre serial killer in its history. So notorious and brutal is he, the SFPD nicknames him ‘The Frisco Freak’. Just as he’s on his way to commit his 5th and final murder at the Golden Gate Bridge the police catches up with him. But Gable cannot afford to be captured - not until he has finished off his 5th victim. Only then will the ghost grant him his wishes to end his immortality and free his family. Alas, after a desperate attempt to kill a tourist, he fails to complete his murder spree. Gable is caught and the ghost, now angry that he failed, appears in the San Francisco county jail and impales the very same stake into his heart. The coroner certifies his dead and he is buried. But can an immortal really die?

Nine years later, during Memorial Day, visitors are visiting cemeteries to pay their respects to their departed loved ones. San Francisco gets rocked with a powerful earthquake. At the San Francisco Memorial Park, the earth splits open along several gravesites, one of them Gable’s. Out of his coffin he climbs, much to the horror of people rushing home. The ‘immortal’ has now become the ‘undead’. And he seeks revenge on certain people who had betrayed and stole from him when he was alive.

He kills his enemies viciously and now haunts the Golden Gate Bridge, the site of his unsuccessful last murder attempt, where he scares the wits out of tourists. Because of the haunting, the City’s tourism is now suffering. The Mayor desperately orders a séance to be conducted on the Bridge to help the ghost go towards the light. The medium succeeds in getting in touch with him, but instead of helping him, Gable’s ghost possesses the medium and kills more…

Reading the final two chapters, the reader might be reminded of ‘The Sixth Sense’ or ‘The Others’, both very frightening movies, but this story has an extra twist! In the end the main character of the novel asks himself:

"AM I A MAN, DREAMING THAT I AM A GHOST
OR
AM I GHOST, DREAMING THAT I AM A MAN?"

Although the story is a fast paced heart-pounding supernatural thriller, it also focuses on anti-racism. It also introduces to the reader the Theory of Balance – how nature balances the effects of the good with the bad and vice versa. It is also a powerful love story between the ghost and her husband.

The author W.S. Chin, a psychic with the 6th sense during his younger days has a passion for ghost-hunting his free time. He lived in England from 1970 – 1978 and now in San Francisco. Some of the ghostly encounters the author experienced as a child are chillingly conveyed in the book.

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