The ghost replies "This nesting of stories is a warning to you. Don't get caught in a cycle or drown in an ocean of stories. Your fate hangs in the balance." Then it stands up and stretches forth its hand. "Come with me," it demands.

You rise and reach out for the ghostly hand.

You sit stubbornly in your chair.  

Stories told inside stories are a familiar pattern, from the Thousand and One Nights, and from portions of The Lord of the Rings. But that kind of story within a story within a story is not what we're trying to discern.

No it's not, but one story surrounding another is something like what we're trying to show. What we're looking for is the surrounding but usually implicit meta-story about the composition/performance of the explicit story.

Our comments do show some of the decisions that went into the little example story. But do the comments we make on our side form a "story"?

There's the story of trying to pin down what we do mean.

That's a story guiding the composition of our side, but not the story expressed on our side.

There is always a meta^ n-story around and guiding writing and reading on any level.