The ghost and the bone-setter

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu presents this tale as part of the Purcell Papers, framed as an extract from the manuscript legacy of the fictional priest Francis Purcell. The story blends Irish folk superstition with comic oral storytelling. It follows Terry Neil, a village bone-setter, who becomes entangled in a night watch at an old castle believed to be haunted by a former landlord. What begins as a rustic supernatural anecdote turns into a darkly humorous encounter between the living and the dead, where bureaucratic earthly habits continue even beyond the grave. Le Fanu uses exaggerated dialect narration, rural superstition, and Gothic humor to explore fear, belief, and the absurd logic of folklore—where ghosts behave with the same petty concerns as the living.