ABSTRACT
The Ghost-Seer was wildly successful, as it did, indeed, initiate a new sub-genre: that is, the conspiracy novel. The conspiracy novel internalizes the confidence trick, but it differs from those works falling within the “big con” sub-genre because it additionally includes two essential features first encountered in The Ghost-Seer. In Hamlet the ghost may very well be a counterfeit, but by the time we get to Otranto, or the modern ghost story, we are dealing, not with a possible counterfeit, but with the counterfeit’s ghost, a spectral simulation that nostalgically reminds us of the good old days when the question of a counterfeit ghost was a serious one for theologians, rather than a picayune one for the entertainment industry. The history related by the Ghost-Seer, then, is the history of how the German Prince came to be turned, from Protestant to Catholic, during his time in Venice, with grave political consequences.
