Miss Horlick is dead when you meet her
Playing the game through again just met Miss Horlick (Miss Havisham/old lady "where my Peter" that kooky broad) for first time on the way to meet Seth for the first time at coots. I decided to read all the tombstones at coots again and it turns out that... Miss Alma Horlick is buried there!
Her grave is the last on the left on the second row in when entering the graveyard from the front left entrance. It reads "Alma Horlick. 1911. Died alone. Age 65 years. The truth sets us free"
I was just talking to her!
So clearly she had all ready died, very recently, when John Marston met her. John Marston never knew her as a living person, he only met her after she died. So.... John Marston has the rare gift of communicating with the dead right? This explains the strange man too. In the first meeting he mentioned something about wishing that he had followed the correct path and wishing that he had had someone to guide him.
So both of these people are earthbound spirits then I suppose.
She couldn't find her Peter because he did die many years before and had all ready moved on by the time she died at 65... Which suggests that he perhaps wasn't as devoted to her as she was to him (if he was so devoted he'd remain earthbound until she died I would expect). It's even possible that Peter didnt die and that he faked his own death in order to get away from her because he felt she was too obsessive, or maybe he had conned her and the last part of the con was faking his own death so that he could leave with her money or some such. Either way another theory for why she can't find her Peter could be that he's not even dead yet.
Her death was probably brought on by a heart attack or some such when she finally accepted what happened with Peter, and it caused her to die.
The way I see it one thing is for damn near sure - when John Marston met Miss Horlick she was all ready dead. I suppose he helped her to move on.
Would've been better if her grave said that she died a good few years before and maybe you don't find the grave until after you've finished her stranger mission.
I feel beneath the white there is a redskin suffering, from centuries of taming