The Haunted Man And The Ghost's Bargain

The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain is a novella by Charles Dickens first published in 1848. It is the fifth and last of Dickens’s Christmas novellas. The story is more about the spirit of Christmas than about the holiday itself, harking back to the first in the series, A Christmas Carol. The tale centres on a Professor Redlaw and those close to him.

Redlaw is a teacher of chemistry who often broods over wrongs done him and grief from his past. He is attended to by his servants Mr. Swidger and his 87-year-old father who helps the cook, Milly William, decorate Redlaw’s rooms with holly. He is haunted by a spirit, who is not so much a ghost as Redlaw’s phantom twin and is “an awful likeness of himself...with his features, and his bright eyes, and his grizzled hair, and dressed in the gloomy shadow of his dress...” This Ghost appears and proposes to Redlaw that he can allow him to “forget the sorrow, wrong, and trouble you have known...to cancel their remembrance...” The Ghost also promises that Redlaw will have the power to bestow this same gift on anyone he meets. Redlaw is hesitant at first, but finally agrees. After the Ghost bestows his gift, a child dressed in rags with no shoes appears in Redlaw’s house. He seems terrified of Redlaw but becomes his unwilling companion.