The sociable ghost Being the adventures of a reporter who was invited by the sociable ghost to a grand banquet, ball, and convention under the ground of old Trinity churchyard. A true tale of the things he saw and did not see while he was not there.Olive HarperOmniClassics · Literature
The sociable ghost Being the adventures of a reporter who was invited by the sociable ghost to a grand banquet, ball, and convention under the ground of old Trinity churchyard. A true tale of the things he saw and did not see while he was not there.
Olive HarperRead The Sociable Ghost by Olive Harper: a comic ghost story in which a New York reporter discovers the social life beneath Trinity churchyard.
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About the book
Rejected in love and freshly wounded by an assignment to describe his beloved's wedding presents, a young reporter withdraws into Trinity churchyard after dark. His solitude ends when a ghost proves more interested in conversation and earthly comforts than in frightening him. The encounter becomes an invitation to an underground gathering, where the dead hold a banquet, exchange stories, and pursue recognizable social ambitions. Harper uses the reporter's strange evening to examine wealth, reputation, memorial customs, and the pretensions that survive ordinary life with surprising ease. The fantastic setting permits comic comparisons between what people say about themselves and what their habits reveal. Its ghosts are sociable partly because death has failed to remove their appetite for company, performance, and a good argument.
- Social pretension
- Memory and mortality
- Supernatural comedy
Why read it
The reporter's professional eye meets an afterlife that supplies both a remarkable assignment and a satirical version of his own city.
English J. S. Ogilvie text with the 1903 copyright, credited to Olive Harper and another