Crystal Hickerson sees ghosts.

She’s not scared.

She’s inspired.

The Pontiac author of four books has found a way to weave ghosts into her writing, in a style she describes as a mix of “supernatural, thriller and paranormal” genres.

“I have seen ghosts,” she said. “I saw two while awake and experienced others while in a dream state. There always are ghosts in my stories.”

Hickerson traces her passion for writing to her childhood, when she and friends would think up ideas to write about. Time and again, Hickerson’s stories were more elaborate and more evolved.

“I started putting pen to paper when I was little, maybe 12 years old or so,” she said. “Me and a best friend would write down stories and share it the next day and do make believe. My stories were so long. I wanted to keep going.”

Born in Queens, New York, and raised in Manhattan and Tennessee, Hickerson, 57, packed her love of writing with her as she grew, traveled and lived in such far-flung places as Las Vegas, Tacoma and Italy.

She settled in Michigan some three decades ago, arriving on the recommendation of a friend who promised that Flint was an “up and coming city.”

Hickerson said she “fell in love with southeast Michigan and Michigan itself.

“That was 30 years ago,” she said. “I just stayed.”

A mother of two grown children, Hickerson made a career as a hospice care professional and grief counselor. There, too, she found reasons for writing.

“Hospice is one of those areas where you either like it or you just can’t do it,” she said.

Over time, Hickerson said, the “end of life” environment in hospice — and learning about “the other side of life” — proved “very inspirational” and influenced her writing. Ideas, she said, can come from observations, comments and overheard phrases that stick in her memory.

A hospice was the setting for one of her novels — “The Volunteer” — telling the emotional journey of a woman who volunteers to work at a local hospice after the death of her mother on hospice care.

“This novel will take you behind the scenes and give you an inside peek into the real world of hospice volunteering,” promises promotional material for the novel.

Like many authors, Hickerson is a voracious reader. Among her favorites, she said, are Stephen King — the so-called “King of Horror” — and James Patterson, although she said her writing style does not mimic theirs.

“My writing comes from me,” Hickerson said. “I am not trying to get inside Stephen King’s head — thank goodness.”

But in King, she said, she found some useful wisdom about writing, citing his advice that “stories are inside you. They are begging to come out.”

Adds Hickerson: “A lot of times when you write, something takes over.”

Such was the case, she said, with her novel, “The Magician.” The book examines the “evolution of man” and the “dawn of a new age.”

The novel, she said, “completely spiraled into something else” once she started writing.

“A lot of times, I let my muse go where it wants,” she said. “A lot of times it takes a while, but sometimes it kind of takes off.”

The process, she said, can help “cleanse my palate from dark things.”

In her novel “Wanted”, Hickerson tracks the life of a woman who survived a brutal attack that murdered her daughter and left the woman in a coma.

“With nothing left, she searched for a reason to live,” according to an overview of the book. “She found it: vengeance. When your soul is empty, darkness finds a great place to live.”

Crystal Hickerson’s books can be found at Amazon and at lulu.com/spotlight/crystalhickerson.