I do not ordinarily believe the spirits of the dead walk the earth, not even the streets of the ghost town of Bodie. However, rest assured that this ghostly photograph is one image, not a double exposure. It was not manipulated in Photoshop, except that it was sepia-toned to give it an old-fashioned look. Happy Halloween!

Over the years, a collection of rangers, caretakers, and visitors claim to have seen or heard ghosts in the ghost town of Bodie. On my first visit to the town, made with friends on skis in the dead of winter, two lonely rangers told me about a murdered Chinese woman who occasionally appeared in a window in one of the buildings near the center of town. The rangers had themselves never seen the woman, but both had heard odd noises emanating from that building at night. My friends and I were glad to ski out of town before the sun dropped out of sight.