There is a rather good reason to be talking about Mrs Veal right now.

This October, Canterbury will host City of Ghosts: The Canterbury Ghost Story Festival, a new festival celebrating the city’s remarkable place in the history of supernatural storytelling. Taking place at St Gregory’s on Saturday 3 October, the festival marks 320 years since The Apparition of Mrs Veal was first published, bringing together writers, historians, academics, performers and ghost story enthusiasts to explore how the modern ghost story began and where it has taken us since.

For a story that is more than three centuries old, The Apparition of Mrs Veal remains surprisingly familiar. It is widely regarded as one of the earliest modern English ghost stories, but its importance is not simply that it is old. What makes it worth returning to is the kind of ghost it gives us.

Mrs Veal isn’t particularly frightening. She doesn’t rattle chains, wander corridors or arrive with a terrible warning. She comes back to see a friend in Canterbury.

And that makes her a rather fascinating place to begin thinking about what a ghost story can be.

With City of Ghosts approaching, it seemed like the perfect time to look back at Mrs Veal and consider why this strange little story has endured for more than 300 years.

Mrs Veal died on Friday 7 September 1705. The following day, at about noon, she appeared to her friend Mrs Bargrave at her home in Canterbury.

What happened next is perhaps one of the strangest ghost stories ever recorded, not because it is particularly frightening, but because it isn’t.

Mrs Veal did not arrive as a terrifying apparition. There was no midnight encounter, no ominous warning, no supernatural spectacle. She simply appeared at the door and sat down with her old friend. For around two hours, the two women talked as though they had not been separated by death at all.

This is the remarkable thing about The Apparition of Mrs Veal. For all its importance in the history of the English ghost story, it is a remarkably quiet haunting. Mrs Veal comes back not to frighten the living, but simply to spend time with one of them.

The story was circulating in Canterbury almost immediately after the encounter. A contemporary account, written only five days later, records Mrs Veal’s visit in considerable detail. She appeared in a travelling habit and told Mrs Bargrave that she was going on a journey. They talked about mutual acquaintances and, importantly, about Mrs Bargrave’s unhappy marriage. Mrs Veal offered her reassurance, telling her to be patient and suggesting that her circumstances would improve. She also gave her instructions concerning family matters and asked her to pass on a message to her brother.

It is the ordinariness of the conversation that makes the story so striking.

At one point, Mrs Bargrave offered her friend something to drink. In one of the earliest accounts, this was chocolate; another contemporary version has her offering tea. Mrs Veal declined, explaining that if they began talking about eating and drinking, she would have to leave.

There is something wonderfully human about this exchange. The supernatural has entered the room, but the conventions of friendship have not changed. Mrs Bargrave still offers her guest refreshments. Mrs Veal still has somewhere else to be.

And perhaps this is where the story’s lasting power lies.

Mrs Veal has died, but she remains recognisably herself: a friend with things to say, people to think about and practical matters to settle. Her visit does not undo death. Instead, it creates a brief space in which death and ordinary life can exist alongside one another.

That makes Mrs Veal an intriguing early example of what can be called a healing haunting.

The phrase does not mean that the ghost somehow cures grief. Rather, it describes a haunting in which the return of the dead provides something lasting to the living: reassurance, information, companionship, or simply the chance to say what could not be said before death.

Mrs Veal’s visit contains all of these things.

She comes to comfort her friend. She comes to put certain matters in order. Most importantly, she comes because their relationship still matters.

This is an idea that would become familiar in later ghost stories, but Mrs Veal gets there remarkably early. Her haunting is not about revenge or punishment. For a modern reader, its interest lies somewhere else: in the persistence of ordinary human connection in extraordinary circumstances.

And there is one final detail that makes the story particularly moving. Mrs Veal does not stay.

Hers is a haunting with a purpose. After their conversation, she leaves, accompanied for part of the way by Mrs Bargrave. The visit has an ending. Mrs Veal comes back, says what she needs to say, and goes.

Perhaps that is why, more than three hundred years later, Mrs Veal feels less like a figure from the distant past than the ancestor of a very familiar kind of ghost story: the story in which the dead return not because they want to frighten us, but because they still have something to give.

Mrs Veal doesn’t come back to haunt a house.

She comes back to see a friend.

And, for one remarkable afternoon in Canterbury, death has to wait outside while an old connection continues on despite it.

Will I see you at City of Ghosts? I hope so.