SMOKE GHOST

"Smoke Ghost" by Fritz Leiber, Jr.

In an office in some American metropolis, a woman called Miss Millick is taking dictation from a man called Mr
Wran. But he seems distracted, and asks her if shes ever seen a ghost. He is clear what he means:
I dont mean that traditional kind of ghost. I mean a ghost from the world today. With the soot (DUST, DIRT,
POWDER) of the factories in its face and the pounding of machinery in its soul. The kind that would haunt coal
yards and slip around at night through deserted office buildings like this one. A real ghost. Not something out of
books.
As the story continues, it becomes clear that Wran is haunted by a ghost like this and indeed, his imagination
may have called it into being. He sees, for instance, a shapeless black sack (large bag) lying on a roof and
becomes convinced that this is the creature; he goes to a psychiatrist; he ultimately comes to a conclusion
about the nature of the creature. Although a kind of equilibrium is reached, its clear that the creature is not
going away. From the start, then, Leibers vision was an urban one. Its also one that very deliberately puts the
reader in Wrans place, and allows us to overinterpret the same hints he does. And who, after all, hasnt seen an
inexplicable flicker (brief wavering light, electricity, lights: go on and off) of movement in some urban setting?
Re-read now, Smoke Ghost isnt without its flaws. Its one of those stories that very directly tells you what
meaning youre supposed to take from it. The passage I quoted above is pretty representative. Theres a lot of
didactic material in the story because its goal is that you accept both the Smoke Ghost and what it means.
So rather than an SF storys infodumps of science (the world is as it is and cannot be otherwise), here we get
infodumps of interpretation (this story is as it is and cannot be otherwise). But its still deservedly a classic, for
its ambition, for its deadly conciseness, and for its newness.
a reaction against the ghost as a haunter of libraries, cloisters and college rooms. Modern times require modern
ghosts; Wran makes this plain as he expands on his theme.
Have you ever thought what a ghost of our times would look like, Miss Millick? Just picture it. A smoky
composite face with the hungry anxiety of the unemployed, the neurotic restlessness of the person without
purpose, the high-pressure metropolitan worker, the uneasy resentment of the striker, the callous
opportunism of the scab, the aggressive whine of the panhandler, the inhibited terror of the bombed
civilian, and a thousand other twisted emotional patterns. Each one overlying and yet blending with the
other, like a pile of semi-transparent masks.
All Wran can see is varieties of pain, anger and worry, a composite face; individuality, however crudely
expressed, has been lost. People have become occupations and emotional patterns, their individuality somehow
obscured but not entirely erased, and its perhaps that incomplete erasure that worries Wran so much. His fellow
passengers on the elevated railway, however, are the usual reassuringly wooden-faced people everyone rides
home with, not showing their emotions at all. Indeed, it is Wran who commits the solecism of unconsciously
uttering a muffled cry when he is startled by something beyond the carriage window: However, the source of
Wrans anxiety : At first sight, his modern ghosts appear to be working-class ghosts, blue-collar ghosts,
ghosts with dirty hands, who queue up to punch their cards, who worry about losing their.
Catesby Wran is not himself part of that world. Instead, he is an advertising executive, high enough up the ladder
to have an office to himself, a secretary to take dictation. Perhaps that high-pressure metropolitan worker
inserted into that list is Wran, nervously clinging to his fragile middle-class status.
Height too is important. This is most clearly stated in the role of the elevated train in the story. Wran first sees
the mysterious figure from the window of the elevated train, and sees it again and again, but think too of the

SMOKE GHOST

elevator in his office block, and how so much centres around its rise and fall. Height represents status and
security, on the one hand, but with height comes an undefined sense of threat. Worry about losing their.
It had all begun on the elevated. There was a particular little sea of roofs he had grown into the habit of glancing at
just as the packed car carrying him homeward lurched around a turn. A dingy, melancholy little world of tar-paper,
tarred gravel and smoky brick. Rusty tin chimneys with odd conical hats suggested abandoned listening posts.
There was a washed-out advertisement of some ancient patent medicine on the nearest wall. Superficially it was
like ten thousand other drab city roofs. But he always saw it around dusk, either in the smoky half-light, or tinged
with red by the flat rays of a dirty sunset, or covered by ghostly wind-blown white sheets of rain-splash, or patched
with blackish snow; and it seemed unusually bleak and suggestive, almost beautifully ugly, though in no sense
picturesque; dreary but meaningful.
Wran it represents certain disagreeaible aspects of the frustrated, frightened century in which he lived, the
jangled century of hate and heavy industry and total wars (270). Yet, there is more to it than that. The phrases
sea of roofs and little world suggest that it is somehow cut off from the life of the streets altogether yet it is also, in
that nightly glance, the receptacle of Wrans concerns and has somehow given them a life of some sort. Height
represents status and security, on the one hand, but with height comes an undefined sense of threat. Worry
about losing their.
Its the nature of that life that is perhaps the most disturbing part of the story. First, there is the endless
contaminative drift of the soot that seems to pervade Wrans office, followed by a shapeless black sack that
gradually acquires a misshapen head, turns into a sodden, distorted face of sacking and coal dust and
becomes by turns a Negro, when he seeks to clarify what his doctor sees through the window, and then,
according to his doctors account, a white man in blackface. You see, the colour didnt seem to have any brown in
it. It was dead-black (273) before, finally, emerging in his sons cries of black man, black man (274). We might
begin to wonder again about those workers whom Wran catalogues and transforms into a composite ghostly face,
smoky and masked, and about what aspects of the twentieth century do frighten Wran.
Whats also fascinating about this story is the way in which Wran sets about dealing with his experience, attempting
to explain it away through psychology, drawing on his childhood experiences as what he calls a sensory prodigy
and his mothers attempts to transform him into a medium. If we notice a sense of disconnection and confusion in
Wrans experiences as an adult, the childhood discrepancy is even stronger, at least if we are to believe Wrans
own account. His matter-of-fact statement that he can see people through walls contrasts sharply with his
description of his mothers agonising attempts to persuade him to see dead people, dismissing his actual ability,
supposing we accept it as being real, trying instead to find something that is not there. Or rather, given the timing,
one might wonder if his mother understood that spiritualism thrives in time of war and that Wrans skills, properly
channelled, might provide her with solace or, more prosaically, with reflected glory. Its a complex emotional nexus,
not least with the involvement of the researchers and Wrans failure to deliver to order.
Again, in his final encounter with the spirit of the city, embodied in Miss Millick, herself representative of so many
city workers, one has the sense that Wran is caught somewhere between scientific modernity and something older,
buried deep in the human imagination, that been carried into the city and is now seeking to find a way to express
itself with the tools at hand. I hesitate to use the word primeval but its tempting to look back to Blackwoods The
Willows.
And indeed, for all this talk of modernity, what strikes me about Leibers story is how much it draws on the past as
well, wearing its Jamesian influences very clearly: in particular The Mezzotint and Oh Whistle and Ill Come to
You, My Lad come to mind. At the same time, Leiber very deftly captures that particular experience of riding home
at night along suburban train lines, looking out over the roofs and seeing a peculiar high-rise world that is invisible
from street level.

SMOKE GHOST

And possibly, in the end, it is all about imagination. Wrans focus on that cluster of roofs every evening has
somehow brought something into being but when he acknowledges its power, submits to it even, something vital is
lost. One wonders then what bargains the other wooden-faced passengers have made.

Describing the city

Dirt
2 a) smudges, smears, stains; b) inky; c) swab off; d) rag; e) murky
3 1 murky; 2 stain; 3 smudge; 4 inky
Nervous reactions
4 a) tittered; b) shiver/twitch; c) squirmed; d) blushed/all at sea; e) jumpy/on edge; f) gasping; g) stammered; h)
twitch/shiver; i) worked up
Main themes: The nature of a modern, urban ghost
The first half of the 20th century
Unemployment, poverty, industrial pollution, urban violence, racism, the threat of war;
It creates a general fear. War had started in Europe and other parts of the world. To many people it was inevitable
that it would affect the USA sooner or later;
Understanding the story
Section 1
Miss Millick is Mr Wrans secretary.
He is nervous and asks strange questions.
She feels uncomfortable and embarrassed.
He needs to talk to someone about whats happening to him.
Miss Millick uses it to try and lighten the mood (=make someone happier) and change the subject. Mr Wran stiffens
(become physically tense), stops talking about ghosts and gets back to work.
When Miss Millick leaves the room.
When he thinks about the elevated railway. An elevated railway (also known in Europe as overhead railway) is a
rapid transit railway with the tracks above street level on a viaduct or other steel, concrete
The story jumps back to explain the origins of Mr Wrans fears and obsessions.
He travelled past them on the elevated railway every evening on the way home from work. He didnt notice it on the
way in the morning because he was reading the newspaper.
The times he was living in.
A shapeless black sack.
Because it seemed to have moved nearer each time he saw it.
Dirt, and in particular, soot.
Because the image of the sack was starting to frighten him.
That he was experiencing a case of nerves and that maybe he should get his eyes checked; he was hoping for a
normal, rational explanation for what he was experiencing.
Section 2

Because the psychiatrist asked him to, and because he had mentioned that there was something about
his childhood that might be affecting him now.
He was a clairvoyant, he could do things like see through walls, and read peoples thoughts. He could see
things that other people couldnt.

SMOKE GHOST

She tried to make him communicate with the spirits of the dead.
At first the tests seemed to show that he was a clairvoyant , but when the psychologists tried to
demonstrate his powers in public, Cates became nervous and the demonstration was a failure.
He feels happier and more confident.
Because he sees a black face staring in at he window.
The doctor is nervous and scared.
Smudges of soot.
He had confirmed that the black figure really existed.
Section 3

Because he doesnt want the black figure to follow him home.

Because he doesnt want the thing thats following him to know hes in the office.
His conversation with Miss Millick.
Philosophical thoughts about how the world functions.
Because his young son had seen a black face at the window of their home.
Because hes worried about his family.
Section 4

The face of the thing. The black figure.

Hes terrified.
He thinks the thing is coming to attack him.
Very relieved.
Her shoes are leaving black prints on the floor. She bends back the metal with supernatural strength.
Because he has seen the blackness creeping into Miss Millicks body and taking over. When she moves
towards him, he runs away.
Calm and determined.
That the thing will come back.
Maybe Miss Millick was in love with Catesby.
The psychiatrist looked like a good man.
He seemed to be scared by the face in the window.
Perhaps the ghost would leave him alone now.
The rooftops looked normal and didnt frighten him anymore.
Literary analysis Plot

Catesby sees a strange object on a rooftop.

Catesby visits a psychiatrist.
Catesby is visited by a team of university psychologists.
The psychiatrist sees a prowler. (sb] who sneaks around)
merodeador, merodeadora
Catesbys son is frightened by a face at his window
Catesbys secretary faints on the rooftop of their office building.
Why is the order different?:
The smudges (dirty spot mancha) of dirt. The psychiatrist and Catesbys son.

Character
Catesby is in his thirties. He is married with a son. He works in advertising. He had special psychic powers as a
child.
Miss Millick is a secretary. She is single. We get the impression that she is not as well educated as Catesby. The
opening section of the story is told from her point of view. She tells us that Catesby is acting in a way that is strange
for him.
The ghost is black. It has a face. It can move quickly. We dont know if its real or not. Not everybody can see it.

SMOKE GHOST

Miss Millick. So that we see Catesby from a different angle. She is an ordinary person, introducing us to this
extraordinary story.
When Miss Millick leaves the room. The ghost appears to him, or is in his head. The internal action in Catesbys
head is far more interesting that the external facts that Miss Millick sees and experiences.
When he was a young boy and he was thought to have psychic powers;
When he first saw the black figure of the ghost. The flashbacks place the past events in the context of the present
events and shows how they are connected.
Maybe Catesby can see the ghost because of his special powers;
We see how the sightings of the ghost built up and have created Catesbys present state of mind.
Atmosphere
Style
Adjectives: They are all negative. Dark, dirty, depressing.
Metaphors:
What the rooftop and the ghost represent: adjectives frustrated, frightened, jangled. (Suggested answer)
Half darkness is significant because Catesby may be imagining what he sees he is tired and the light is fading.
Prowler noun [C] UK /pra.lr/
someone who moves around quietly in a place, trying not to be seen, often before committing a crim