It’s the month for a good ghost story, and a Maine author has the perfect tale: an account of North America’s first documented ghost, a specter that appeared in 1799 in Downeast Maine.

Michelle Shores’ book, The Gathering Room, concerns the haunting of the coastal town of Sullivan by Nelly Butler, the young wife of Capt. George Butler. She had died in childbirth three years before but returned in ghostly garb to urge her husband to marry another woman.