A ghost is by nature one who yearns for what he cannot have. He may, like Hamlet’s father’s ghost, seek redress for wrongs done to him in life, or, like Marley’s ghost and the ghost of old Anchises, he may hope to affect the future. Depending on the moral order of whatever work he haunts, he may be prophet, justicer, or figure of reproach. But he wants something done in the world he left behind, which is why he keeps coming back to it and rattling his chains. And because he is dead he has to get someone else to Continue reading

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