Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu (1814 — 1873) was an Irish writer of Gothic novels, one of the most influential ghost story writers of the nineteenth century. "Haunted Lives" follows the story of young and independent woman Laura Gray, who at one point of her life refuses to free a man from his debt to her family. She starts receiving threatening letters, and that is when mysterious man Alfred Dacre appears in her life, ready to solve all her problems.