The Leaf Sweeper

“Perhaps you don’t know how repulsive and loathsome is the ghost of a living man. The ghosts of the dead may be all right, but the ghost of mad Johnnie gave me the creeps…”

So speaks the narrator of Muriel Spark's haunting tale, 'The Leaf-sweeper', before going on to recount the disturbing and mercilessly witty story of a certain 'madman' - Johnnie Geddes, hell-bent on outlawing Christmas - who meets the most terrifying of all apparitions: himself.