A quiet novel, based on true events.
The Computer Ghost began the night my daughter Liza opened her game and found someone else inside it. A princess with shifting eyes who knew her name. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I had spent years tracking a hacker called Phoenix — and as Liza described what she saw, those two stories, separated by thirty years, quietly became one.
I wrote the novel afterwards, slowly, the way you write a thing you want a child to remember at thirty. It is a children's book, ages 8 to 13 — and ages 5 to 7 when read aloud — and I have written it gently enough that the grown-up doing the reading is welcome inside the story too.
The real ghosts
Four people appear in the book under their own names — Rozina, Ilona, István, and Zsuzsanna. They lived. They were forgotten. The novel asks what it would mean to remember them, kindly, through the eyes of a child.
Vilma (Hugonnai Vilma)
Hungary's first woman doctor.
A real person. Vilma was born in 1847. When she was eighteen, she married Szilassy György — a member of the same Szilassy family that owned the Vasad estate. The young couple lived in Vasad from 1865 to 1867, and their first son was born there.
Vilma wanted to become a doctor, but in Hungary at that time, girls were not allowed to study medicine. She travelled to Zürich in Switzerland, where women could study, and graduated in 1879. When she came home, the authorities refused to recognise her degree — because she was a woman. She fought for eighteen years. Finally, in 1897, she became the first officially recognised woman doctor in all of Hungary.
“My sword is science. My shield is work.”
Vilma appears in the Vasad Castle Story at the beginning of this book. She is connected to the Szilassy family — the same family whose name appears among the ghosts. Her story echoes Bill's: both were told that what they wanted to do was impossible. Both did it anyway. She was real.
The real locations
The story is set at Vasad Castle and the thousand-year-old church ruin at Csévharaszt. Both are real places in Pest county, Hungary. You can walk the grounds where the ghosts walk in the book.
About the author
William Zoltán Apró
Hungary, 2024
William Zoltán Apró (Bill Apró) is a former Australian Federal Police Intelligence Officer and one of the earliest pioneers in cybercrime investigation and computer forensics.
In 1990, he led the arrest of Phoenix — one of the world's most skilled hackers — using techniques that were decades ahead of their time. He helped establish the world's first operational computer forensics capability and developed real-time keystroke monitoring that became the blueprint for digital law enforcement worldwide.
His previous book, HACKERS: Australia's Darkest Hack and the Rise of AI-Driven Crime, is a non-fiction account of the world's first real-time computer intrusion investigation — including the targeting of NASA, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the White House.
The Computer Ghost is his first children's book, based on true events — including the real ghosts of Vasad (Rozina, Ilona, István, Zsuzsanna), the real locations of Vasad Castle and the Csévharaszti Puszta Church, and the author's own daughter Liza.
He divides his time between Vasad, Hungary, and the rest of the world.
The Computer Ghost is published by Pro Platinum Press®.
For readers, parents, and teachers
If you are reading the book with a child or a class, the Parents & Teachers guide has discussion questions, suggested classroom activities, and a brief historical note for each chapter.