Let's be honest: lazily-written ghost stories are pretty common. That's not what I'm talking about today.
"The Ghost Guard" by Bryan Irvine (Archive version or Wikisource version) is a surprisingly good ghost story. One that, in the veil of a fairly trite genre, managed to say, or at least hint, interesting things about valuable ideas like justice, duty, mercy, and revenge.
It's not unpredictable, and it's not complex, but it does a good job of building up atmosphere and a peculiar sense of ambivalence about the main character.
Irvine's writing is solid, with good descriptions of places and characters' states of mind. The pacing is steady, with proper amounts of time spent on the creepy moments, and just enough explanation to show how what is happening shouldn't be. He doesn't gloss over these crucial moments, and he doesn't dwell on them until they become melodrama, either.
The setting is dark: a prison in the middle of a swampy forest. The convicts are dreary and hopeless. The guards are isolated and paranoid. The main character, Asa Shores is a strange man, a prison guard who sees his duty with so little emotion that even the other guards and wardens are unnerved. Duty and justice, without mercy.
Yet on the other hand, Shores is shown to be a warm, charitable man to the other guards. He just has absolutely zero regard for the prisoners.
And it is here that the main conflict of the story grows: Shores shoots an escaping convict, but this time the prisoner survives. The prisoner talks it over with Shores, and we get an interesting little dialogue in which Shores admits he has no mercy for escaping convicts, but he asks Hulsey, the man he shot: Would you have any mercy for me, if you had a chance?
Hulsey is forced to admit... he would not. So is Shores really wrong?
The story proceeds from there and includes some genuinely creepy "paranormal activity" as well as a daring and well-thought-out prison break that is clever, tense, and ruthless.
What else can I say? It was a story that I expected much less from than I got. The YouTube video includes a spoiler section that has its own chapter, if you want a bit more. Check it out at either of the links at the top of the post.
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