page_title: The Spectre-Barber
section_title: Plot
hierarchical_section_title: The Spectre-Barber / Plot
caption_attribution_description: English: "The Spectre Barber". Engraving by Allen Robert Branston of a drawing by John Fischer for Popular Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations (1823).
context_page_description: "The Spectre-Barber" is a short story, written by Johann Karl August Musäus included in his satirical retellings of collected folk stories, Volksmärchen der Deutschen. The story was translated into French by Jean-Baptiste Benoît Eyriès as part of his collection of German ghost-stories Fantasmagoriana, which inspired Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and John William Polidori's "The Vampyre". This French translation was then partially translated into English in Tales of the Dead, followed by more complete translations from the original German, such as those by Thomas Roscoe, and Thomas Carlyle, with a child-friendly abridged version being published in 1845.
context_section_description: "The Spectre-Barber" is set in sixteenth century Bremen. A wealthy merchant named Melchior dies suddenly and his son Franz (called François in Eyriès' translation, and Francis in Utterson's) inherits his father's wealth. Franz foolishly squanders his inheritance.
  Franz spies a neighbour's daughter, a spinner named Meta, and falls in love with her. With an eye towards regaining fortune and earning Meta's hand in marriage, Franz sells his last possessions, purchases a horse, and sets out on a journey.
  On his journey, Franz seeks shelter in a castle, despite rumours that the castle is haunted. In the middle of the night, Franz is awakened and sees the ghost of a barber sharpening his razors. The ghost motions to Franz, who complies and sits in front of the spectre. The spectre "placed the shaving-bib round his neck" and proceeds to remove all hair from Franz's head. Sensing that the spectre wants something, Franz "beckoned the phantom to seat himself in the chair", after which Franz shaves the spectre.
  The ghost had been a barber during his life, whose lord would play "all sorts of malicious tricks" on strangers, including preparing a bath for guests, then having the barber shave guests beards and heads closely before suddenly throwing them out "with raillery and ridicule". One victim, a holy man, cursed the ghost to haunt the castle until someone "without being invited or constrained, shall do to you, what you have so long done to others".
  In return for Franz having freed the ghost from the curse, the ghost tells Franz to return to Bremen at the Autumn equinox and wait for someone who will tell him what to do. At the appointed day, Franz meets a beggar who tells Franz of a dream in which an "angel stood at the foot of my bed" and told the beggar where to find buried treasure. Franz recognises the location from its description as a garden that had belonged to his father.
  Franz re-purchases the garden and discovers the treasure. His fortune restored, Franz proposes marriage to Meta, who accepts.
caption: Illustration by John Fischer, engraved by Allen Robert Branston
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