" Ghosts bridge the past to the present; they speak across the seemingly insurmountable barriers of death and time, connecting us to what we thought was lost. They give us hope for a life beyond death and because of this help us to cope with loss and grief. Their presence is the promise that we don’t have to say goodbye to our loved ones right away and that—as with Athendorus’s haunting—what was left undone in one’s life might yet be finished by one’s ghost. "

― , Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places