Ghosts in Literature

From The Odyssey to the Harry Potter books, the shades of people who used to live on the earth have haunted our stories. Sometimes these opaque creatures are quite real in stories, other times they are figments of the imagination, and other times it's never quite clear. But in this list of novels enlivened, so to speak, by visitations from the dead, I won't say which is which.

...3: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

This may be Dickens' best loved work. A deceased business associate and three more ghosts appear to the sour and miserly Ebenezer Scrooge to show him Christmas past, present and future, sights that change him forever.

...5: Hamlet by William Shakespeare.

The dead father of Hamlet, the prince of Denmark, appears to his son and accuses Hamlet's uncle Claudius (now on the throne) of having murdered him. Hamlet declines into a state of paralysis as he decides whether or not to avenge his father.

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