The Intangibles File: A Gathering of Heirs

by Ann Gray

It is 1870 and peculiar events are taking place inside Atlanta, Georgia’s exclusive Briarcrest Hotel. Nobody associated with the hotel, newly constructed upon the ashes of the Morgan Heirs’ burned-out hilltop home, Briars, wishes to talk about these events. Jeremy Carter, the hotel’s young desk clerk—though warned by his superiors to ignore unsettling “happenings”—watchfully and secretly records each incident as it occurs in a spare hotel registration ledger, a file he Intangibles. In Briarcrest’s sixth year, absentee owner Morgana Heirs Moss returns from Virginia with her son Joshua, favoring her investment with a first inspection. Arriving unannounced and without reservations, she engages Carter in an immediate and ongoing conflict, later demanding to see Carter’s Intangibles file. Therein, she discovers multiple witnesses’ testimonies to bizarre incidents attributable to a ghostly figure who wanders the hotel’s corridors. When family members and former servants begin turning up unexpectedly under differing and sometimes frightening circumstances, Morgana arranges a reunion. What happens next is best left untold…here.

287 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2005