When a practical, no-nonsense American family buys a grand old English country house, they're cheerfully unbothered by the warnings that it comes with a resident ghost. Sir Simon de Canterville has haunted the halls for three centuries, terrifying every previous occupant, but the modern, skeptical Otises simply won't play along: they scrub his ominous bloodstain away with a household cleaner, offer to oil his clanking chains, and let their mischievous twin boys torment him at every turn. Soon the proud old specter, humiliated and exasperated, scarcely knows what to do. Wilde's witty 1887 tale turns a classic ghost story delightfully on its head.