Dickens’ ghost novella ‘The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain’ is a Christmas tale of morality alike to ‘A Christmas Carol’ whereas is written far more poorly. It had some positive elements such as a reasonable moral message that past sorrows are important to remember as it allows us to forgive, the final line serving alike to the final moral of the story in fairy tales: “Keep my memory green”. It also had a small paragraph describing the Street Urchin in the expected Dickensian tone of pity, that such children were unaffected by the curse to forget sorrows for all they knew was the lowest life of the low, and therefore as it was the norm they knew no sorrow because they had always suffered, of which though a frequent message of his was still powerful. Lastly, the gothic and gloomy setting of the city was fitting and commendable, whereas that is as far as my praise goes as the novella in its entirety was extremely confusing. I am likely to doubt myself and assume that I have misread it but I have read some other reviews and many address the same issue. I felt that many passages and events were left unexplained, and though the tale had some leniency for this as it was supernatural, non-supernatural elements were also confusing. The scenes also felt extremely patched together, the narratives of the two families and the ‘Haunted Man’ Redlaw not being particulate associated at all. I struggled to follow the plot and was unengaged by the characters, the spirit figure was also very unexplained and therefore uninteresting as the antagonist of a supernatural tale. I feel it was a work trying to mimic the success of ‘A Christmas Carol’ whereas failing miserably in its attempt to do so.