Ghost Story characters

Appears from the start

Chicago's professional wizard - lately deceased. Shot dead by an unknown sniper, Harry finds that death is not the end of his obligations: he is sent back to his city as a ghost, unable to touch, be seen, or work magic the way he could in life, to solve his own murder. Six months have passed, the city has suffered in his absence, and the people he loves have been remade by his death in ways that hurt worse than the bullet did.

Also known as Captain Collin Murphy

First appears in chapter 2

The captain of a strange precinct in a rain-swept city between life and death - and Karrin Murphy's long-dead father. A cop to the marrow even in the hereafter, Jack gives Harry his assignment: go back, find your murderer, or three of the people you love will come to harm. He explains little, and what he leaves unsaid clearly matters as much as what he says.

First appears in chapter 4

Chicago's resident ectomancer - a small, bald, defensive man who talks to the dead for a living and has spent his life pretending to be a fraud so the frightening parts of his gift stay buried. Mort can see and hear Harry when almost no one else can, which makes him Harry's unwilling first ally. His modest manner conceals how much raw authority over spirits he actually holds, and something out in the dark has been testing his defenses every night.

First appears in chapter 4

The shade of a Colonial-era marine who has guarded Mortimer Lindquist for generations, an old soldier's ghost with a musket, an axe, and centuries of discipline. Sir Stuart teaches Harry the rules of being dead: that a ghost is made of memories, that daylight and running water are hazards, and that a spirit who forgets himself dissolves. He stands his post against the besieging dead with unshakable professionalism.

First appears in chapter 6

Formerly of Chicago PD, now the center of the city's supernatural defense - a civilian leading a scraped-together alliance of werewolves, practitioners, and stubborn ordinary people against the things that moved in when Harry died. Grief has honed her into something harder and more careful than the cop Harry knew. She cannot see or hear ghosts, and being unable to reach her is one of the sharpest costs of Harry's condition.

First appears in chapter 7

A slight, polka-loving medical examiner who has become one of the resistance's most valuable assets - not through power, but through method. Armed with borrowed knowledge and relentless scientific curiosity, Butters has turned himself into the group's supernatural analyst. He carries a certain skull with him, and he is among the first to take seriously the possibility that the ghost claiming to be Harry Dresden is exactly that.

First appears in chapter 8

A spirit of intellect who inhabits an enchanted skull, holding centuries of magical knowledge and the social instincts of a cheerfully lecherous teenager. Bob served Harry for years and passed to Butters' keeping after Harry's death. He is one of the only beings in Chicago who can verify that the ghost in the room is really his old boss - and one of the few who understands the things now stalking the city's spirit world.

Also known as The Rag Lady

First appears in chapter 12

Harry's apprentice - or what is left of her. Since Harry's death Molly has been living rough and waging a one-woman terror campaign against the Fomor's servitors, who whisper about the Rag Lady the way children whisper about monsters. Her gifts for illusion and mind magic have grown frighteningly sharp, and her grip on herself frighteningly loose. The wounds underneath - grief, guilt, and things she cannot tell anyone - trace straight back to the night Harry died.

First appears in chapter 10

A ragged teenage practitioner with a musician's ear and a survivor's reflexes, running with a crew of homeless boys under the thumb of a small-time sorcerer who styles himself their master. Fitz has just enough talent to hear a ghost's voice, which makes him the only person in Chicago Harry can simply talk to - and Harry, who knows exactly what it is to be a frightened boy owned by a bad teacher, cannot leave him where he is.

Also known as The Grey Ghost

First appears in chapter 27

The grey-cloaked spectre directing the nightly siege of Mortimer Lindquist's home commands wraiths and mad, tortured spirits with a necromancer's practiced hand. Harry has crossed this enemy before: the Corpsetaker, a body-stealing horror out of Kemmler's school of necromancy, survived the destruction of her flesh as a potent ghost - and a ghost with her skills needs only one thing to return to the world: a suitable body with the power to talk to the dead.

First appears in chapter 47

An archangel - unassuming in appearance, precise in speech, and very careful about the rules he operates under. Uriel's business is the balance of free will: correcting the scales when the other side cheats. He has taken a quiet, long-running interest in Harry Dresden's choices, and his role in the events surrounding Harry's death is larger than anyone suspects.