Ghosts

Ghosts appear at the Walpurgis Night ball as beings whom the Proktophantasmist insists cannot exist on ordinary ground, but whose continued presence exposes the limits of his certainty. The dancers answer his attempt to banish them with ridicule, making the dispute over their reality a contest over who gets to define what counts as knowledge.

The Proktophantasmist’s Objection

The Proktophantasmist calls the dancers accursed and asks how they dare venture among the living. He claims that it has already been demonstrated that ghosts cannot stand on ordinary foundations, and treats their dancing as an absurd breach of that supposed rule. His argument is not presented as detached inquiry: he arrives at the ball to rebuke and expel, bringing the language of demonstration into a scene that continues on its own terms.

His confidence is unsettled by the contrast between his declared certainty and the evidence surrounding him. He later insists that the devils are undaunted by rules and that Tegel remains haunted despite his efforts to sweep away folly. The complaint reveals the limits of his supposedly enlightening intervention: neither his reasoning nor his attempts to clear the place have made the haunting disappear.

The Dancers’ Reply

A dancing figure identified as the Fair One asks why the Proktophantasmist has come to their ball at all. Another response turns his habits into the joke: when others dance, he weighs and comments on every step; movement that cannot be verbally dissected might as well not have occurred for him. If the dancers moved only in the regular, dull rotation he prefers, perhaps he would show goodwill, especially if they listened to his exhortations.

The exchange makes the ghosts more than objects of his argument. They dance, speak, and collectively refuse his demand to leave. Their presence is established through the scene’s action, while his claim that they cannot stand on ordinary ground becomes one more intrusion into a ball whose participants do not accept his authority.

Haunting and Comic Reversal

When the Proktophantasmist again orders the gathering to vanish, the Fair One tells him to stop boring them. His expulsion attempt thus reverses into his own exclusion: the dancers do not disappear; instead, they dismiss the unwelcome lecturer. The ghosts’ comic force lies in this reversal, which lets their continued dancing answer an abstract denial more decisively than argument could.

Tegel’s haunting broadens the joke beyond the ball. The Proktophantasmist’s own words acknowledge that the place remains haunted despite his sweeping and stirring, while his repeated insistence that the matter is unheard-of only emphasizes his inability to master it. Ghosts function here as the supernatural presence that rationalistic certainty tries, and fails, to tidy away.