Ghost Station (novel)

Ghost Station is a science-fiction horror novel from 2024 by American writer Stacey Kade, who published it under the pen name S. A. Barnes. The author has described the book as combining psychological horror with body horror.

The story centers on Ophelia Bray, a psychologist who has built her career studying Eckhart-Reiser syndrome (ERS), a controversial condition that can cause mental instability in people who travel through space. Some believe ERS is real, while others think it is made up; being labeled with it can make someone unemployable. After one of Ophelia’s clients commits suicide in a very public way, she becomes the target of criticism and scandal. To wait things out, she takes a job on a small exploration ship, testing new technology meant to improve the crew’s sleep and lower their risk of developing ERS.

The crew does not welcome Ophelia, especially after learning she comes from a wealthy, powerful family. In truth, she grew up poor on a mining planet and only joined that family after her father murdered nearly everyone in her colony. She keeps this secret, knowing it would make the crew reject her further. The team lands on a planet with strange ruins that appear to be from an old civilization, tasked with reclaiming an abandoned outpost and checking if the site can be recolonized. Soon after landing, Ophelia and the crew experience odd phenomena, and some people start acting strangely. Ophelia worries that ERS might be affecting them, or that someone—or something—on the planet is sabotaging their mission.

Eventually, they discover the ruins are actually a parasitic alien lifeform that looks like buildings when it forms large colonies. The crew’s parent company knew about the parasites and hoped the crew would return infected so the company could experiment on them. To prevent this, Ophelia and the crew enter cold storage and send out a message revealing the truth. The novel ends with them waking up decades later, after a cure for the parasite has been developed.

Barnes drew inspiration from the Great Filter theory, which suggests most civilizations are destroyed before they can achieve interstellar travel. She was also influenced by her paternal grandmother, who had dementia. In the early stages, her grandmother seemed normal but had episodes of confusion, fear, and memory loss.