"My name is Lucy Joan Carlyle. I talk with the living and the dead, and it sometimes gets so I can't tell the difference anymore."
Lucy Joan Carlyle is the first-person narrator in The Empty Graves. She declares that psychic abilities make it possible for her to conduct psychic investigations. Her psychic abilities enable her to get messages from ghosts. Not all people can do psychic investigations. Only those with the strongest psychic abilities can navigate the underworld. Lucy Joan Carlyle's special abilities surmise she is an extraordinary and gifted lady. All her recollections in the book are based on her first-hand experiences. Therefore, she is a highly reliable narrator who can be trusted to expound on what happens in the underworld.
"Many remarkable things had been said about Marisa Fittes, the first and greatest psychic investigator of us all. How, together with her partner, Tom Rotwell, she had devised most of the ghost-hunting techniques that operatives like us still used. How she had improvised her first rapier from a snapped-off iron railing; how she'd converse with ghosts as easily as if they were flesh and blood. How she'd created the first psychic detection agency, and how, when she died, half of London came to watch as her coffin was carried from Westminster Abbey to the Strand."
Lucy Joan Carlyle uses a parallel sentence structure to underscore Marisa Fittes' extraordinariness. In the structure above, four sentences begin with the word how. Marissa Fittes achievements are noteworthy due to her extraordinarily psychic powers. Lucy Joan and her team decide to investigate Marissa Fittes' grave. They do not believe that she is buried there. The book's title alludes to the grave's strange emptiness. It is ironic that the grave, which is treated as the shrine, is empty. Unraveling the secrets of Marisa Fittes' empty grave is a major conflict that Lucy Joan and her colleagues aim to solve.
" Our experiences had indicated that there was a strong connection between the activity of spirits-in particular their keenness to return to our world—and the presence of living persons on the Other Side. It seemed that when the land of the dead was invaded, the dead became active and much more likely to invade the land of the living."
Lucy Joan Carlyle explains the root cause of the epidemic of ghosts that has plagued Britain for half a century. She understands the root cause once she and Lockwood tour the Other Side. The epidemic is a response from the ghosts. It occurs once the ghosts realize that the living has invaded their space. Accordingly, ghosts seek revenge by attacking the living as well. Ghosts are vengeful beings that do not like it when the living invade their space. Most people in the ordinary population do not understand the cause of the exasperating ghost infestations. Operatives like Joan and the Lockwood Company keep their discovery a secret.
