All my gratitude and support as always to my agent, Rebecca Podos, without whom I would have never gotten this far. Thank you for always being an amazing person to work with, and just being an amazing person in every metric.
My thanks and appreciation to my editor, Annette Pollert-Morgan, for her invaluable and lovely insights and work, as this book would be all the lesser without her guidance. Also my grateful acknowledgment to the rest of the Sourcebooks team, without whom this book would not have been possible—Beth Oleniczak, Madison Nankervis, Chelsey Moler Ford, Neha Patel, Liz Dresner, Kelly Lawler, Leonardo Santamaria, Laura Boren, and Danielle McNaughton.
My love for all things horror started when I was six years old, when I picked up a book with a cat on the cover and thought it was going to be a marvelous story about pets—and it turned out to be Pet Sematary by Stephen King, so I suppose that technically I was right. But unlike most other parents who would take the book away and look for something a little more age-appropriate, mine continued to encourage me to read all the kinds of books I wanted no matter the genre. And now here we are!
For my partner, Les, who hates scary books but would watch all the horror films I wanted with me regardless. I know you’re not going to read this one, either, but I love you all the same. And also for my eldest, Ezio, and my youngest, Altair, the latter of whom has already shown a similar love for all things horror even at three years old.
As a rather eager ghost hunter but foolish young adult in my early twenties, I once stayed overnight at an underground cemetery for a travel gig and was soon romped into ghost hunting with a few other like-minded friends once they learned. While I am suspicious by nature and have never believed in ghosts myself, much less seen any (though not for lack of trying), I have always loved the idea of creepy places and staying in haunted mansions that no sane person would willingly go to. Many things in this book were inspired by the old cave and island haunts I used to explore then, which is why this is also a shoutout to my old ghost squad and our weird fascination for the unseen, the unholy, and the things that go bump in the night—Liv, Annabelle, Mark, Nestor, and Alph!