Jason Todd did not set out to join a ghost tour.

He was tracking a smuggler. Low-level, jumpy, the kind of guy who melted under pressure and sprinted down dark alleyways near Gotham’s oldest cemeteries. Jason was planning an ambush. What he wasn’t planning was stumbling into a group of tourists clutching lanterns and hot cocoa, led by a tour guide in a velvet blazer and fingerless gloves, proclaiming:

“And here we reach the most active supernatural site in Gotham—the alley where the Red Hood appears between 3 and 4 AM, smelling like gunpowder and existential dread.”

Jason froze behind a headstone.

She gestured dramatically at thin air. “He walks right through this space—doesn’t talk, doesn’t blink, just glares. Classic residual haunting. And sometimes, if you're lucky, you smell motor oil.”

He was definitely wearing motor oil.

One of the tourists gasped. Jason blinked, slightly offended… and then stepped forward out of the shadows—slowly, dramatically, bathed in red glow from a lantern like a budget horror movie.

The group screamed. Phones came out. The guide looked delighted.

“There! See? Just like I said! No eye contact, no verbal acknowledgment, just brooding spectral presence! He’s so dead.”

Jason didn’t say a word. He gave them a slow, stoic nod like he was auditioning for Phantom of the Alleyway and vanished behind the mausoleum.

The next night? He came back.

Not for the smuggler. For her.

She was running the tour again, pointing out “ectoplasmic bullet holes” in brick. He leaned against the same wall mid-pose, arms crossed, watching her tell three dozen tourists that he was Gotham’s “most emotionally repressed apparition.”

By week three, she was offering him cocoa.

By week five, she asked if he could float.

Jason levitated three inches using a grapple line and no shame.

He didn’t correct her.

Not because he was bored.

Because no one had ever looked at him like a mystery worth loving before.