Children chucked rocks at their windows and called them "ghosty men."

How could they think of anything but sinning, with all these ghosty reminders?

It was all dark except for the ghosty flip of a window curtain in a breath of night wind.

The ghosty fingers of her own clung, hot and bony thin, to her wrists.

Ghoulie or ghosty or long-legged beastie, I just want my hand held.

Ghosty echoes sighed about gold and silver, about treasure and wealth.

I don't give a frog's hoot how many ghosty ol' badgers live there-take me to it.

The photographer Ziad Antar made a portrait of him using a film expired since 1976, provoking ghosty effect.

He directs Vikki to the castle to another portal, guarded by a ghosty barrier, an evil tree, and a moat dragon.

Washington Post critic Adam Bernstein observed: "Ghosty Men has the breezy vibrancy of a magazine story.

Ghosty Men also chronicles the parallel life of Arthur Lidz, the hermit uncle featured in Unstrung Heroes.

Luc Sante, author of Low Life, wrote: "Franz Lidz's Ghosty Men is funny and moving and full of odd details, and it will make you clean up your room."

The film was based on a 1991 memoir by Franz Lidz, whose 2003 urban historical Ghosty Men (published by Bloomsbury USA) is the definitive history of the Collyers.

Franz Lidz is the author of "Ghosty Men: The Strange but True Story of the Collyer Brothers, New York's Greatest Hoarders," being published this month by Bloomsbury.

Bonner talked about human stress and interactive systems, while he thought about the Cluster off Cyteen, where startides warped space, and a ghosty malfunction on the boards you hoped to God was an artifact of that space, while a Union spotter was close to picking up your presence.