10 Best Rock Songs About Ghosts

Feature Photo: Slawek K

So many people are afraid of ghosts. But I have a different philosophy. If I ever see a ghost, well then that will prove something to me something that has never been proven before. For something just based on belief, if I see a ghost, to me that means there is life after death. I don’t care if it’s a scary ghost; I’m hoping it’s a Friendly Ghost like Casper. Regardless of whatever type of ghost I see, I will know that there’s something beyond, and that will be comforting. I think?

# 10 – Ghosts Are Gone – Stevie Nicks

Stevie Nicks recorded “Ghosts Are Gone” for her 2011 album In Your Dreams, her first solo studio album in a decade. Nicks and Dave Stewart wrote the song, while Stewart and Glen Ballard produced the recording. The track is one of the harder-rocking moments on the album, built around a guitar riff that Nicks loved for its Led Zeppelin-like force. The ghosts in the lyric are memories and relationships that have finally lost their hold. Nicks does not sing the song like a quiet goodbye; she pushes it with the same rough-edged voice that made her early solo records so distinctive. “Ghosts Are Gone” works here because it treats haunting as something emotional that can eventually be left behind.

# 9 – The Legend Of Wooley Swamp – The Charlie Daniels Band

The Charlie Daniels Band released “The Legend of Wooley Swamp” in 1980 on the album Full Moon. The entire band shares the writing credit, and John Boylan produced the recording. Daniels drew the idea from Wooley Swamp in Bladen County, North Carolina, where he had gone night hunting when he was young. The song tells the story of miser Lucius Clay, the men who murder him for his money, and the revenge that seems to rise out of the swamp itself. Daniels delivers the story like a warning passed down by somebody who knows better than to go there after dark. Few Southern rock songs use ghost-story tradition as effectively as this one.

Read More: Top 10 Charlie Daniels Band Songs

# 8 – Wuthering Heights – Kate Bush

Kate Bush The Kick Inside Original EMI Records (Debut) Stereo release SW 17003 1970's Female Vocal Vinyl (1978)

Kate Bush released “Wuthering Heights” as her debut single in 1978 and included it on The Kick Inside. She wrote the song from the viewpoint of Catherine Earnshaw in Emily Brontë’s novel, turning Cathy’s ghostly return into a dramatic first-person performance. Andrew Powell produced the recording, with Ian Bairnson supplying the memorable guitar solo. The single went to number one in the United Kingdom and made Bush the first female artist to top the UK chart with a self-written song. Her high, theatrical vocal makes Cathy sound less like a literary character than somebody actually outside the window. “Wuthering Heights” remains one of rock’s great examples of a ghost story surviving the move from the page to a record.

# 7 – The Ghost Of Tom Joad – Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen released “The Ghost of Tom Joad” in 1995 as the title track of his eleventh studio album. Springsteen used John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and the long cultural life of Tom Joad to write about people still living without work, homes, security, or much reason for hope. The recording is deliberately spare, with Springsteen joined by musicians including Danny Federici, Garry Tallent, Marty Rifkin, and Gary Mallaber. Springsteen and Chuck Plotkin produced the track. Tom Joad is a ghost here because the character’s old promises about standing with the dispossessed keep returning in a new American landscape. The song is not supernatural, but the haunting is real enough.

Read More: Top 10 Bruce Springsteen Albums

# 6 – Ghosts Of Cape Horn – Gordon Lightfoot

Gordon Lightfoot wrote “Ghosts of Cape Horn” for a documentary about the sailing ships that once made the dangerous passage around the southern tip of South America. He included the song on his 1980 album Dream Street Rose. Lightfoot, Lenny Waronker, and Russ Titelman produced the album, with longtime players including Terry Clements, Rick Haynes, and Barry Keane among the musicians. The lyric imagines lost sailors still circling Cape Horn long after their ships and bodies disappeared into the sea. Lightfoot had always been good at making history sound personal, and the maritime setting gives him exactly the kind of story he handled best. “Ghosts of Cape Horn” feels less like fantasy than a sailor’s legend that has been repeated for generations.

# 5 – Ghost Town – The Specials

The Specials released “Ghost Town” as a single in 1981, and it became one of the defining British records of the period. Jerry Dammers wrote the song after seeing clubs close, unemployment rise, and cities deteriorate while the band toured the country. Producer John Collins recorded the group in a small eight-track studio in Leamington Spa, giving the track its strange, hollow atmosphere. The single reached number one in the United Kingdom while major civil unrest was breaking out across the country. There are no literal spirits in the song; the ghost town is a place where the life has been drained out of the streets. That image was so strong that the record still sounds tied to its moment without being trapped there.

Read More: Top 10 Songs From The Specials

# 4 – Ghostbusters – Ray Parker Jr.

Ray Parker Jr. wrote and recorded “Ghostbusters” as the theme song for the 1984 film of the same name. Parker produced the track himself and built it around a simple call-and-response hook that made the title impossible to forget. The single spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and became Parker’s only chart-topper there. It was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. The record treats the supernatural as a joke instead of a source of dread, which makes it the lightest song on this list by a wide margin. More than forty years later, the song and the movie are still almost impossible to separate.

Read More: Top 10 Ray Parker Jr. Songs

# 3 – The Ghosts Of Saturday Night – Tom Waits

Tom Waits closed his 1974 album The Heart of Saturday Night with “The Ghosts of Saturday Night (After Hours at Napoleone’s Pizza House).” Bones Howe produced the record and gave Waits enough room to build the song out of piano, jazz atmosphere, and street-corner detail. These ghosts are not dead people; they are the leftovers from a night that is almost over. Waits follows cab drivers, sailors, waitresses, cigarette butts, diner food, and empty streets as Saturday night turns into Sunday morning. The song works because nothing dramatic has to happen for the scene to feel haunted. Few writers have ever been better than Waits at making a nearly empty city sound full of people who were just there.

# 2 – (Ghost) Riders In The Sky – Outlaws

(Ghost) Riders In the Sky (Digitally Remastered, 1996)

The Outlaws recorded “(Ghost) Riders in the Sky” for their 1980 album Ghost Riders. Stan Jones wrote the Western standard decades earlier, and the Outlaws turned it into a long Southern rock performance built around electric guitars and big vocal harmonies. Gary Lyons, Hughie Thomasson, and Billy Jones produced the album. The lyric follows a cowboy who sees a spectral herd and the doomed riders chasing it across the sky. Even in a harder rock arrangement, the old warning at the center of the song still comes through clearly. The Outlaws did not modernize the ghost story so much as turn up the amplifiers around it.

Read More: Top 10 Outlaws Songs

# 1 – (Don’t Fear) The Reaper – Blue Öyster Cult

Agents Of Fortune-40th Anniversary Edition (180 Gram Audiophile Translucent Blue Vinyl/Limited Edition/Gatefold Cover)

Blue Öyster Cult released “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” on their 1976 album Agents of Fortune. Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser wrote the song and sang lead, while Murray Krugman, Sandy Pearlman, and David Lucas produced the recording. Dharma has explained that the song grew from thinking about mortality and the possibility that love might continue beyond death. The famous guitar figure gives the record an almost peaceful motion even while the lyric keeps returning to the end of life. It reached number twelve on the Billboard Hot 100 and became the biggest pop hit of Blue Öyster Cult’s career. The song earns the top spot because it turns death, ghosts, and whatever may come afterward into something mysterious without making it simply frightening.