Adrenaline Junky

I just found this little story idea from a dream I had in February 1998.

It’s a ghost story about a spirit who feeds off the fear and adrenaline given off by people who are risk takers. He, in life, was a risk taker and died in his early 30s from one of his risk taking adventures. He’s been haunting this family for generations.

The story starts with a young girl, just barely 18. She’s going to be going away to college and she is already beginning to miss her boyfriend who will be going to college in town. They have unprotected sex.

On her way home she sees a handsome man wearing dark clothes. He smiles at her. She gets shivers – he gives her the creeps.

That night she is haunted by nightmares. She tells them to her mother and grandmother – both widows – who she lives with in a Victorian 3-story house.

As the story unfolds, it turns out both her mother and grandmother also are haunted by this spirit, however her grandmother knows him by name. She is the hero of the story. The mother, in her grief has been in denial for years and is an ineffectual woman.

The grandmother, along with her new boyfriend – who, it turns out, is also haunted by this ghost – confronts the spirit. The boyfriend dies in the battle that defeats the spirit.