The Last Cohort: A Novel of Dark Academia

As a child, Olivia befriended a ghost who troubled the school playground. As a grad student in anthropology, Olivia aims to study hauntings. But her plans are stymied when she can't get funding for her research. Worse, she and her fellow grads—Veronica and Ramesh—learn their program is being defunded as political protests roil the campus.

​The department chair, Stefan Driscoll, frets as he watches his students turn into virtual zombies. He fears they are losing their humanity—imagination, empathy, and thought itself—just as the humanities are under assault on campus. He agonizes over the imminent death of his daughter Alma from colon cancer, and he still laments his long-departed wife. She died under mysterious circumstance in Spain where he was doing fieldwork.

Olivia is assigned to work in the anthropology archives over the summer. Her tasks are tedious and mind-numbing, until she stumbles upon Stefan's fieldnotes from Spain. They recount the details of a séance in which a miega conjured up his wife's spirit. Olivia realizes the séance provides a method for her own research. She enlists the grudging help of Veronica and Ramesh to conduct and record the spiritual encounter.

Then all Hell breaks loose…