By margaret Powell

THE SHADOWED windows mirrored Suzi’s cold eyed scrutiny, as she came to a halt outside her home for the night.

‘Creepy or what,’ she decided, ‘This might be worth the hassle after all.’ The hassle had been finding her way to Castle Scath, without benefit of satnav signals, along a Z grade country road, to five miles beyond the back of wherever. Suzi didn’t usually take on such tedious projects, but the ghost-hunting gig was becoming overcrowded, so she would stick with the haunted hotel marketing world until she broke into the cushy, cashy TV circuit.

Suzi parked the sports Merc, and picked up her Louis Vuitton weekender. Fake of course, but high quality fake, just like her best clients, hoping to break into the lucrative ghost experience hotel boom. You wouldn’t believe how much some people paid to have a sleepless night, scared shitless by the resident undead.

Suzi had clawed her way up to be top scout for the Company. Her years as ‘The Lovely Susan’ gifted her with insider gen on the magic trade. Haunted Hall Hotels was picky. No tapes of moaning ghosts, rattling chains, dangling threads, or puffs of air. It had to be believable. Trouble was, some hotel owners thought their visitations were for real.

Suzi’s job was to separate the go-ers from the gullible, and recruit the most commercial set ups. She wouldn’t debunk them. That would break the spell, and atmosphere was a desirable commodity. She just had to work out who knew what was really going on, and how they were doing it, then make sure that the performance would stand up to scrutiny.