Shades of Gray

West Point psychologists Sam Bondurant and Liam FitzDonnell are assigned to find out why cadets living in a certain dormitory suffer especially disturbing nightmares and wake to the chill of a sad, benevolent presence in their room. The problem is given historical dimension by Maggie, Sam's wife, whose research shows that since the 1850s, the ghosts of a former teacher and his daughter have been sighted periodically in that area. The skeptical Sam and Liam, whose interest in Gaelic runes will tie in with the sightings, set up video cameras, tape recorders, EEGs and EKGs to monitor the sleeping cadets and the mysterious room. First novelist (and Lt. Colonel) O'Neill knows West Point, its environs and campus almost too wellhis detailed descriptions of the lives of instructors and plebes, complete with banter and vulgarity, are not as interesting as the supernatural events he chronicles. When he sets technology to the study of parapsychology, however, O'Neill makes good use of today's adult mechanical toys in a well-turned ghost story. (May)