Young or old, playful or terrifying, clad in the brocades of the 16th century or the jeans of today, the phantoms of these tales vary as much as the places they haunt. Some are ghosts in the strictest sense, troubled over deeds left undone or unavenged at the time of their deaths; others, like the Georgia Werewolf and the wold-girl of west Texas, are more unusual. They may be as passionate as Vivia who disguised herself as a man to follow her lover to Oklahoma, and killed him when she witnessed his infidelity or as genteel as the Lady in White, who showed up at a Delaware farmhouse during a...