A broken bridge forces a group of travelers to stop and spend a cold night somewhere they hadn't planned to be. The poem is only a few lines long, but it quickly turns that small inconvenience into something eerier. The speaker describes the route they were following as "a vein / of spirits and apparitions," as if the path itself carries ghosts, and the night fills up with "stories old as fear."
What the speaker feels seems to shift from simple discomfort to unease, and then to disorientation. The last line, "am I not asleep," is a question with no answer. The speaker can't tell whether they're awake, listening to old tales, or dreaming them. That uncertainty is the heart of the poem.
The mood is hushed, chilly, and uncanny. The short lines and missing punctuation leave gaps, much like the darkness around the travelers, and the title "Ghosted" suggests the speaker may be haunted, or perhaps haunting the scene.