Jesse Seaton bought the Miller House knowing it was haunted. A divorced true-crime writer circling the drain of his career, he needed a story worth telling. A colonial Virginia mansion where every male owner for two hundred and fifty years had either killed someone or killed himself? That was a book deal.

The history is ugly and well-documented. Bishop Miller built the house in 1772. Six years later, he strangled his wife Evangeline and sealed her body in the cellar. Hanged himself six months after that. The next owner lasted three years before he beat a servant to death. The one after that drowned his business partner. Eight men. Eight acts of violence. All of them reported seeing a woman in white with bruises circling her throat.

Jesse doesn't believe in ghosts. He believes in royalty checks.

But five weeks into his stay, some ...