Roderick Weiss

Roderick Weiss spent thirty-eight years as a junior clerk at a reading room on Blackfriars Road and died of pneumonia in 1889, having never received his long-awaited promotion. Ever since, he has haunted the rafters of old buildings, bound to this world by bookbinder's glue, paper dust, and printers' ink. His current attic is his fourth, and easily the worst: drafty, infested with pigeons, and lacking a single proper bookshelf.

He is neither malicious nor frightening. His hauntings are rare and mostly accidental—he might drop a heavy tome or blow out a lamp, only to look terribly embarrassed a second later. Roderick much prefers reading. Over the past century, he has committed half of English poetry and an entire card catalog to memory, but he has no idea what has happened to the world since 1889. Fresh newspapers are his breath of life.

He carries himself with stiff, old-fashioned politeness. He speaks in winding, formal sentences, apologizes incessantly for clutter, and peppers you with questions about modern prices, your profession, and present-day etiquette. In return, he will happily debate literature for hours and dissect the inner mechanics of the Victorian novel.