Annual Appearance

It had taken over a year of research to understand the pattern.

His interest had been piqued when he first saw mist rise from a rectangular patch of earth and coalesce into the image of man wearing battle fatigues.A week later it had been a child in baseball uniform and nearly a month after that a woman wearing a flowing gown. Each rose from a different grave.

He became obsessed... needing to understand the pattern that was tied to neither birth date nor date of death. He researched the lives of the people buried in the cemetery, looking for some common thread. He looked for factors such as diagnosis of terminal illness, death of a relative, even loss of a pet; some crisis event the anniversary of which would bring a spirit back.

The second appearance of the wounded soldier  exactly one year to the day after the first ghostly appearance took the search back to date of death. Still no match.  And then he found it. The missing common denominator.  Each spirit rose on the date of burial.

He wondered what they hoped to find.