The Computer
Ghost
William Zoltán Apró
The Computer Ghost is based on true events. My daughter Liza's game disappeared. A princess with shifting eyes appeared. The hacker behind it was named Phoenix. This book introduces real ghosts from Hungarian history — Rozina, Ilona, István, Zsuzsanna — and real locations: Vasad Castle and the Csévharaszt church ruin.
Late one evening, in the quiet hour after supper, my daughter Liza opened her game and found it gone. In its place was 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. Those two stories, separated by thirty years, quietly became one.
The Computer Ghost is what I wrote afterwards — a quiet, magical novel for readers ages 8 to 13 — and for ages 5 to 7 when a grown-up reads it aloud at bedtime. It is true and it is not. The ghosts in it are real people from Hungarian history. The places are real places you can visit.
Real ghosts. Real places. One quiet mystery.
The real ghosts
Rozina, Ilona, István, Zsuzsanna — four people who lived, loved, and were forgotten. Now they keep watch over the Vasad lines.
Meet them →The real locations
Vasad Castle and the thousand-year-old church ruin at Csévharaszt. You can visit them. The ghosts walked these grounds.
See the places →For parents & teachers
Discussion questions, classroom activities, and the historical background behind every chapter.
Read the guide →A small, glowing thing of a book — I read it in one sitting and then read it again.
— A reader, age 9
Apró writes with the gentle confidence of a true storyteller. The kind of book children remember at thirty.
— Booksellers' Quarterly
Where the story is real.
A quiet village in Pest county, Hungary — its castle, its thousand-year-old church, and the lanes where Rozina, Ilona, István and Zsuzsanna once walked. You can visit them all.
