I think they die. Dissipate. Whatever.

HOWEVER... what if you had one of those crazy Americans who bought the stones and reassembled the house somewhere else? I bet he gets the ghost. The same for a crazy Brit who buys the bricks and paves his courtyard.

Betsy, here's the premise.

It would be based on the song "The Boughs of London", in which a nobleman's older daughter becomes engaged to a man her younger sister wants. She lures the older sister for a walk along the Thames and knowing she can't swim, pushes her in and watches her drown. Younger sister then goes home and steals older sister's fiance, who sounds like a total prat, but I didn't write the song, it's 15th century or thereabouts.

Anyway. a wandering musician wanders by and finds all these beautiful bones washed up on the south bank. He makes a harp out of them and strings it and takes it to the house (he's a wandering minstrel or some junk) and plays for the family, but the harp plays its own tune, which is an accusation of murder against the younger sister.

So this one has all the basics for my series: a crime, a haunting, a bckstory I get to rewrite, and I could actually focus on Ringan's house restoration side career.

My thinking is, the house once covered this huge tract of land, and was subdivided in the nineteenth century, and he's being hired privately (as opposed to the National Trust) because someone's bought the empty lot that was once part of the house, and wants to expand his Victorian cottage back onto the property next door. Which is where the ghosts from the song have been lying dormant for five hundred years.

Just beginning to puzzle this one out...

Any chance that he's expanding on to the flagstones/cobblestones of an old courtyard? That would work for me. Stone remembers.

A relative of mine had his wood flooring shipped in from an old house in the South. If you told me that wood remembered, I'd believe you. It's soft enough to sleep on -- it's obviously already magicked.

If you have a haunted house, and the house is torn down, what do you suppose happens to the ghosts?

Quite often, the ghosts remain bound to the land. Take "Poltergeist" or any number of "Indian grave yard" stories, for example.

If I understand the alleged metaphysics, it's not the physical place that holds a spirirt, it's the spirit's own sense of being unable to leave, or being bound by some unfinished task, or something like that. All in the ghost's mind.

Okay, I've heard that song, or a version thereof, but it wasn't called that. What... oh, The Wind and the Rain.

Katie, mine's the one covered by Martin Carthy and (I think) Pentangle as well. The premise - betrayal by one's sibling for love or greed - is a nice old one, but my series is tied to specifically UK-collected songs.

Stone and wood both; I like the concept of Ringan tracking down where some of the original stones went, probably from the hearth floor. The other thing is that there could be a little outdoor storage shed covering some of the original stones.

The hearth. Absolutely the hearth. That's a powerful, powerful symbol.

Betsy, I think I cross those: the hearthstones are the ones covered by the delapidated storage box in the yard. Down by the river, covered with 150 years or so of London grime....

OK. Filing that one in mental notes.

But, what did the sister who died care about? It could be bits of the old stable if she loved horses; or the fireplace mantel if she were a homebody; the hearth, as Betsy said; or, perhaps the grand piano or a harp or something in or around the music room if she were musical. A stone gargoyle if she were fanciful. I would think it would be effective to have whatever she's tied to be at least a little illustrative of her personality or interests.