If someone asked me, “Do you believe in ghosts and the supernatural?” I would reply, “Of course not! Well — not really.”

A longer, more truthful answer would be, “I’ve never seen a ghost or anything even close to that description, but I am interested in ghost stories and why people tell them. That includes coincidences and unexplained phenomena that others may have experienced or reported over the centuries.”

Five years ago, I started writing a few paranormal short stories, some with supernatural elements. None involved vampires or werewolves, and I steered away from horror. Perhaps the Covid epidemic, which made life so unpredictable, had led me to this odd turn, but I also needed a diversion from a full-length novel I was revising. Since these short stories were an unexpected detour, I called my emerging collection, “Sidetracks.”

Looking back, I now see early signs of my fascination with supernatural stories; in some ways, it practically runs in the family. I grew up hearing ghost stories from my grandmother.She presented them to me as truth, often something that had happened to friends of hers. In a family photo, my seven-year-old self is clutching a favorite Christmas gift: a book titled “Alfred Hitchcock’s Haunted Houseful.” My father’s favorite TV show was “The Twilight Zone,” which came into our living room on Friday nights with its sinister music and suave narrator. Rod Serling had turned to writing supernatural scripts after fighting censorship in the golden age of television. He obviously had a lot to say about society and human nature.

One day, when I was about 12, I reached up to grab a well-worn paperback off my parents’ bookshelves: a short story collection that included Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” Her story got inside my head and never left.  As I was writing this blog post, I realized that its awful conclusion— a scene Jackson left mostly to the reader’s imagination — had no doubt influenced a scene in my first novel, “Gallows Road,” published in 2022. I’d still been upset about the rule of the mob and blind obedience. The event that inspired my book was not fantasy, however. The 1753 execution of a young woman in my native Connecticut had haunted me for years.

Paranormal stories aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, especially if they veer too close to our nightmares. Like bad dreams, however, a scary story might somehow help us — both the reader and the writer — to confront a childhood fear or grown-up worry. Perhaps, in some way, those stories steel our nerves for whatever strange or challenging experience might be waiting around the next dark corner in life. We don’t need to take any actual risks, however, since we understand that it’s just “make believe.”

I might not know where this “Sidetrack” will take me, but I do know I’m enjoying a chance to explore new perspectives through paranormal stories. And there’s nothing scary about that.

Illustration: “The Ghost Story” by Frederick Smallfield (1829-1915)