In previous chapters we have witnessed how the Gothic shaped the types of ghosts which are associated with the uncanny, trauma and mourning. These ghosts have different characteristics and either incorporate, or head towards and then reject, elements from an earlier Gothic tradition. We have seen how ghosts might come alive again in the home, are forced to roam restlessly, seemingly beyond hope, or articulate versions of purgatorial mourning. These ghosts are frequently objects of sympathy but this chapter focuses on the presence of the malevolent ghost, who is clearly part of a recognisable Gothic tradition of vengeful ghosts: the sort we see in the work of Algernon Blackwood and Vernon Lee, to give just two examples. These malevolent ghosts represent in projected form the aspiration of a post-war culture which casts soldier-ghosts, or those closely associated with them, as evil entities because they inhibit the emergence of the post-war world. Clearly, this kind of ghost construction is not without ambivalence. These are ghosts who are familiar from the Walpolean tradition, who are seemingly trapped between the pull of the past and the desire to reach out for the new. This is a tension which characterises the fin-de-siècle Gothic world of Dracula, in which vampire hunters confront the feudal remnant that is Count Dracula – and yet they are beguiled by the vampire’s erotic freedoms, so that they too find it difficult to cast off the past. This established a notably Freudian framework for a Gothic subject who, in forms of war-induced melancholia, also cannot leave the past behind. These frameworks underpin many of the narratives discussed in this book and the presence of the malevolent ghost emphasises the ambivalence with which the war dead are regarded – as Gothic villains and as victims. In M. R. James, for example, there is a desire to memorialise the dead, but also the need to other them and so cast them off. Ultimately, to lay these Gothic ghosts to rest requires a demonisation of the war and those who perpetuated it, but it is difficult for the culture to forget the nature of their sacrifice, which explains the persistent ambivalence.