The Podcast

Mia and Lucia started the podcast in the summer holidays, mainly because they were bored. Mia had grown up in Dunedin, and Lucia's family had moved there from Chile when she was ten. They called the show "Southern Shivers", and every week they told a local legend: the ghost in the old school, the strange lights on the hills above the harbor, the piano that was said to play itself in an empty house at the top of their street.

For the first two months, they had about forty listeners, most of whom were relatives. Then, one Tuesday, an email arrived that changed everything. A man called Graham Pike wrote that he had seen a ghost on the steps of the old wool store by the harbor. He said that it had been a woman in a long gray coat, that she had been carrying a small light, and that she had disappeared when he called out to her.

"We have to follow this up," Lucia said. Mia agreed, although she admitted later that she had been slightly scared. They phoned Mr. Pike, who invited them to his house. He was a retired bus driver, and he told them that he walked past the wool store every night at around eleven because he couldn't sleep. He insisted that he had never believed in ghosts before. "I'm not the kind of man who imagines things," he said.

The episode about Mr. Pike's ghost was their most popular ever. Within a week, three more people had written to them. A student claimed that she had seen the same woman a few weeks earlier. A taxi driver said he had noticed a light near the wool store but had assumed it was a security guard. And a woman who ran a cafe across the road told them that customers had been asking about the ghost all week, and that she had started selling "ghost cupcakes".

The girls decided to interview everyone and compare their stories. Nobody agreed about the details. The student said the woman had been wearing a hat; Mr. Pike was sure she hadn't. The taxi driver couldn't remember whether the light had been white or yellow. Lucia, who wanted to study law, pointed out that witnesses often remembered things differently, especially in the dark. Mia replied that this didn't prove there was no ghost. It only proved that people were bad at noticing hats.

The security company that looked after the building denied that any of its guards had been there at night. The manager explained that the building had been empty for years and that the alarm had never gone off. When Mia asked him whether anyone else had a key, he refused to answer, which, of course, made the girls even more curious.

So, one cold Friday night, with their parents' permission and Lucia's older brother as a bodyguard, they sat on a bench opposite the wool store with their microphones. At five to eleven, they saw her: a tall figure in a long gray coat, walking slowly along the front of the building with a small light swinging from one hand. Lucia grabbed Mia's arm. Mia forgot to press record.

Lucia's brother, who was less impressed, simply crossed the road and said good evening. The ghost turned round. She was a woman of about seventy, the light was a torch, and behind her, very slowly, came a small, elderly white dog. Her name was Mrs. Dunn. She explained that she walked her dog every night at that time because he refused to go out when the streets were busy. Her family had owned the wool store many years ago, she added, and she still had a key, so she always checked that the doors were locked on her way past.

When Lucia asked why she had disappeared when Mr. Pike called out, Mrs. Dunn laughed. She admitted that she was a little deaf, and said she had probably just turned into the side lane to follow the dog, who had seen a cat.

The next episode was called "The Ghost Who Walks a Dog". Mrs. Dunn agreed to appear on it, and she told the listeners that she had walked past that building every night for twenty years and had never once been mistaken for a ghost. Mr. Pike phoned in to apologize. He admitted that he had probably been tired, and he offered to buy her a coffee. The cafe owner announced that she would keep selling the cupcakes anyway.

The show now has nearly two thousand listeners. Lucia says the best thing about it is learning to ask good questions. Mia says it is the cupcakes.