Ghost Song

Sometimes, things in musical theatre can get a little weird. Or perhaps they were unusual from the start, and this is the logical conclusion. For whatever reason, every once in a while, a ghost is bound to pop up and sing a musical number, often as a warning or encouragement to The Hero. Sometimes the ghost is of someone who died in the course of the show, or of someone dead long before the overture. In any case, it can be a powerful device if used properly. These songs (and/or sequences) tend to be played for surrealism.

Subtrope of Dead Person Conversation, which is not necessarily musical, but which is based in the same principle. Compare The Dead Can Dance.

Examples of Ghost Song include:

• Carousel (Technically, anything Billy sings after his death.)
• Any musical version of A Christmas Carol is going to have at least one of these. Even if you don't count the spirits as ghosts for purposes of this trope (and it's supertrope Dead Person Conversation), Marley nearly always has a song of his own.
• Into the Woods ("No More", when the Baker is visited by his father, The Mysterious Man, who died at the end of Act One.)
  • Also, right before the Witch sings "Children Will Listen", the Baker's Wife consoles her husband, who is unsure of how to raise their child on his own.)
  • All of the characters who reappear at the beginning of the final sequence, reprising the "One Midnight Gone" material and delivering their final morals, are ghosts. This presumably includes Cinderella's Stepmother and family, who seemingly starved to death before they could find their "hidden kingdom".
• Les Misérables (During the "Epilogue", the ghosts of Fantine, and then Eponine, visit Valjean in his dying moments to usher him to the afterlife.
  • Averted with "Empty Chairs At Empty Tables."
• Passing Strange (After The Narrator interrupts the idealistic Youth's "Passing Phase" with an abrupt slide to the other end of the scale, his dead Mother returns to stop his depressingly cynical thought process with simple encouragement. "It's all right.")
• Almost all of Lily's material in The Secret Garden, especially "Come To My Garden", and a half-ghost duet "How Could I Ever Know".
  • In addition, the Greek Chorus ensemble is comprised of the ghosts of people Mary knew in India, including her parents.
• Spring Awakening ("Those You've Known," in which post-suicide Moritz and recently-deceased Wendla convince Melchior to move on after Melchior discovers Wendla has died from an abortion of their child.)
• Sunday in The Park With George ("Move On", in which the spirit of his great-grandmother—the female lead of Act One—visits George and tells him to stop angsting over his work.)
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (The final reprise of "The Ballad" at the end of the show starts with all of the principles—most of whom are dead at this point—singing the first verse in turns, and it all ends with the dead Todd and Lovett leading the company.)
• Urinetown (Arguably a flashback, but nevertheless, "Tell Her I Love Her" is a duet between Little Sally and the dead hero Bobby, who has been "sent to Urinetown", as she tells them his last words. Whether his joining in is part of a flashback or a ghost echoing Sally's words differs by production.)
• "The Letter" from the musical version Billy Elliot fits, being sung (in part) by Billy's dead mother.
• Fiddler on the Roof has a weird meta example, as the song "Tevye's Dream" is about the lead pretending to have had a dream in which a Ghost Song occurred, which he is now describing to his wife.
• Gleefully beaten to death in Moby Dick! The Musical. Esta lives for this trope. (Er, well.. you know.)
• The title song in Jesus Christ Superstar is sung by Judas, who has already hung himself.
• During a funeral in Antonia's Line, the dead woman sits up and starts singing. However, this is implied to be simply her granddaughter's vivid imagination.
• Cats has "Firefrorefiddle", a strange, specter-like entity, prancing about occasionally in the Gus the theatre cat song. It's not a literal ghost, but rather the memory of Gus's greatest role taking on a life of its own.
• Anything Gabe sings in Next to Normal. Especially the ironically-named "I'm Alive".
• "Painted Emblems of a Race" and "When the Night Wind Howls (Sir Roderick's Song)" from Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore, during which the ghosts get down from their painting to scare their descendant into being evil.
• In the reprise of "Wie Du" ("Like You") in Elisabeth, the title character asks her father's ghost for guidance. He's unable to help her, just like in the version of the song in which he was alive.
• In Benjamin Britten's operatic adaptation of The Turn of the Screw, the ghosts of Peter Quinn and Miss Jessel definitely exist. Quinn's ghost seduces little Miles in a sensuous serenade, and at the beginning of Act 2, the two ghosts use a duet as an expository device.
• The finale song in Little Shop of Horrors, "Don't Feed The Plants", is fittingly sung by the characters who were eaten by the plant.
• In Woody Allen's film Everyone Says I Love You, the ghost of the grandfather interrupts his own funeral to sing "Enjoy Yourself", accompanied by other ghosts who dance out of the funeral home.
• The song "Grim, Grinning Ghosts" from the Disney attraction 'The Haunted Mansion' probably counts.
• Since The Fix begins with his death, any song Senator Reed Chandler is in might qualify. Of course, one of those occasions is while his delinquent son Cal is on drugs, hence the might.