I have never written a ghost story. I’ve never wanted to write a ghost story. So what uncanny wind was it that blew through my brain and compelled me to sign up for a week-long workshop titled “The Ghost Story: A Guide to Writing Compelling Prose?” Baker City, Oregon It all began on a slushy March evening in Enterprise, Oregon. My husband and I were just beginning a two-week road trip, meandering our way through places where he could film small-town cinemas of the West for a documentary project. We were off to a wintry start, on this first day of Spring, here at the edge of the Wallowa Mountains. I’d spotted a poster for a talk that evening hosted by Fishtrap, a nonprofit known for its annual Summer Gathering of Writers at nearby Wallowa Lake. Why not go, on this chilly night? The speaker was Molly Gloss, author of The Jump-off Creek, The Hearts of Horses, and other books and stories about women in the homestead-era West. Her knowledge of writing about and by western women is wide and deep. I scribbled notes like “...the real and changing West of Model-T Fords, movies and Prohibition” and “...the shadow of violence.” That night, I began reading The Jump-off Creek, a book steeped in cold hard daily life on a hardscrabble farm. No ghosts in sight. By the time we left Enterprise, I knew what I wanted to do: I wanted to go to the Fishtrap Summer Gathering and meet other western writers and get [...]