A cotton gin, in case you don't know it, is a machine that combs the seeds out of cotton bolls so they can be spun into thread. People (by which I mean mostly slaves) had to do this by hand before the cotton gin was invented, and it was slow, tedious, and difficult work. With a cotton gin, however, you could just drop the bolls in one end of the machine, turn the handle, and get cotton fibers out the other end.

After you follow up on the first weird note --

I found a weird note!

First Note: "Even ghosts ... "

-- Harper will give you a second note. Solve that one --

Second Note: "There once was a ghost ... "

-- and it tells you to do something with the cotton gin and some seeds. Well, first you'll need some uncombed cotton bolls.

And luckily, there's a bag of cotton bolls in the upstairs hallway, on the blue dresser on the left. Now we just have to run them through the cotton gin to get the seeds.

Once you get it working, that is. Read to the end of this hint for step-by-step directions on how to get the gin working.

The goal here is to put all the "combs" (those wheel things) on the post at the left, and they have to go on in a specific order.

You'll need to get all seven combs on the post at the same time, so each one has to fit tight on the post. If you put on a comb and there's a gap between it and the last comb, it's not the right comb.

Some combs fit in more than one place, but only one place will let you assemble all seven. If you find that none of the combs fit, the last comb may be wrong.

The easiest way to do this is trial and error, unless you have a better eye for machines than I do and can figure out what those holes and posts signify. Me, I just tried one comb after the other till I got them all on.

Here is the order for the combs:

Cotton Gin, Amateur

Cotton Gin, Master

Once it's fixed, put the cotton in the top, then take the seeds from the little spout at right.