Dear Dr. Erzsébet Krajcsik-Nagy,

I am contacting you as a member of the general public, and not as a fellow scholar, though I must say my chosen field of art history does have certain similarities to yours. I read the interview with you in the online edition of the Plains Dispatch with great interest, and went on to seek out your research article mentioned therein, titled “On an Unusual Kind of Spatially Distributed Haunting.” I believe I have additional information which could shed light on the case study you mentioned.

I eagerly followed your descriptions of de novo arising hauntings in new construction in our town. I also appreciated how you discussed investigating the two hauntings that seemed to be exceptions in that they arose in single-family homes constructed approx. sixty years ago. I thought the quotes you provided from the qualitative interviews you conducted with Family M. were most revealing, especially when Mx. R. M. mentioned seeing “a phantom through the window, pacing to and fro in the backyard.” I did not expect the phantom to then appear in the house itself; as Mx. R. M. put it, “I saw a young woman, I think. She was crying and biting her fingers—not only the fingernails, but the fingers themselves. As I was about to speak, she vanished.” I am quoting this excerpt at length because this will be an important point in my argument.

I found it ingenious how you traced the soil originally transported from a specific construction site to other construction sites—and at least two backyard gardens—as the locus of the haunting. I must also admit that it made me feel uneasy, and that this unease related to another feeling I had been carrying for several years.

You see, I am the phantom, and though I have been unaware of the extent of the consternation I have inflicted upon people of my former hometown, I have had a suspicion for a few years. It dates back to the time when I was trying to show my spouse a street-view image of a location I used to frequent on my night walks, and instead of the familiar deserted plot by the roadside, I saw not only a construction site for new apartment buildings, with basements dug deep into the ground, but also a sign saying FREE SOIL AVAILABLE—CALL and a phone number I did not have the fortitude to dial. That this image had been taken years earlier did not ease my stress. Your article confirmed my concerns.

I agree with you in connecting the site of the former toy factory, and the soil that has been extracted from it, to hauntings at sites where the soil had been transported. I appreciated your classification of hauntings by intensity, which determined that events occurring in the apartment buildings at the former factory site were the most intense, and overall intensity correlated with the amount of soil transported.

I can assure you I am alive; but I have an explanation about how I could possibly haunt not just one, but many locations around my former hometown. It is related both to my personal circumstances, and to the political upheaval the country had been experiencing at the time. I have to add that I reached out to you not simply out of a wish to “set the record straight” or an abstract drive for knowledge that we as scholars certainly share; but also because, due to your activities in this time period, I felt that you were someone I could trust to handle this information respectfully.

Before I left the town, I would go on nightly walks, seeking out this deserted plot of land filled with rubble and vigorously growing weeds (I assume the soil must have been of good quality underneath the rubble). At that point I had already been contemplating leaving the country due to the harassment I’d experienced not only from the police but also from ordinary citizens and consequently had been under a great deal of stress. It was my sister who had first noticed the unusual happenings around me, ones that you could conceivably call ghostly. Mysterious noises, objects being displaced or breaking, and most distressingly, household items and light fixtures catching on fire. Even though I could not predict when occurrences would happen, I soon realized they could be elicited by intense emotion.

I went to the ruins of the factory to cry.

I was certain that at this deserted, uninhabited location, nothing could be ruined further, and there would be no danger either to myself or others.

Over time, I believe this led to a considerable accumulation of some form of psychic energy which would in turn elicit phenomena interpreted as hauntings, even in my absence. I cannot speculate about the mechanism any further; I defer to your expertise. I note that I do have the unfortunate habit of pacing and biting not only my fingernails, but my fingers themselves.

Of course, it is possible that I found this particular location because something drew me there, making the hauntings have a dual cause. If you have more to share about the history of the factory, I would gladly read it.

I also need to be clear about something. For all I have said about knowledge and exchange of information, my primary motivation in writing this letter is that you have been in touch with most of the affected families. Please convey my apologies to them, or allow me to do so myself—a personal visit is not currently possible for me, but I would gladly participate in a video call. I have read that hauntings can sometimes dissolve once their underlying cause is found, and I hope that that could be the case here as well, even if no soul of the deceased is involved.

I would prefer not to haunt anyone, with or without my knowledge.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Dr. Vera Szoboszlai (please call me Vera)