Puzzle Book

20,000 Ghosts

A One-Word Word Search

Two hundred word searches, each one hiding the word GHOST as many times as its page number. The grids are built from the letters G, H, O, S and T and nothing else, so there is no word list to work through and nowhere obvious to start. The first hundred are a pleasant haunting. The second hundred are a nightmare.

200 Puzzles · 258 Pages · September 2026

Paperback, published independently through Amazon KDP.

Word SearchHalloween
20,000 Ghosts
Paperback · 258 Pages

What you're actually getting

The details that are easy to miss in an Amazon listing, written out plainly.

01 / 03
Puzzles

200 Grids / 26x41

Each page hides GHOST as many times as its page number, running in any of eight directions. That is 20,100 ghosts in all.
Trim

6in x 9in / 258 Pages

Solutions printed in the back, four to a page.
Answer Key

Free Online

Every grid, full size, one to a page, in one PDF.

The first page, and the last.

Both solved, side by side.

The solution to the first puzzle in 20,000 Ghosts: a twenty-six by forty-one grid of the letters G, H, O, S and T with a single GHOST circled near the middle.
The first page. One ghost, somewhere in there.
The solution to the last puzzle in 20,000 Ghosts: the same size grid with two hundred GHOSTs circled, crossing and overlapping until about three letters in every four are inside one.
The last page. Two hundred of them, running through each other.
A puzzle page from inside 20,000 Ghosts: a twenty-six by forty-one grid filled entirely with the letters G, H, O, S and T, under the instruction to find GHOST 165 times, with a small cartoon ghost peeking out of the outside margin.
The Story Behind It

Page one hides one ghost. Page two hundred hides two hundred.

There is no word list, and nowhere obvious to start. Every letter on the page is one of the five you are looking for, so the usual trick — scanning for an unusual letter and working outward — does not get you anywhere. You end up reading the grid instead of searching it.

The early pages are gentle. One ghost, then two, then three, and you find them faster than you expect. Somewhere in the second half that stops being true. The grid fills up, the ghosts start overlapping and running through each other, and finding the last few means going back over ground you were certain you had already covered.

Two hundred pages of that, with a few ghosts loose in the margins keeping you company.