Eleanor Morton says there are three types of ghost. First are the tape-recorder ghosts, found on the same spot at the same time every night, week or year, making the same groaning noises. Then there are unfinished-business ghosts: ‘admin ghosts’, as if they’re staying late in the office to finish that one last bit of filing. Finally, there are poltergeists, literally ‘noisy ghosts’ in German. Typical of the Germans to focus more on the disruptiveness than the spookiness.

It’s spookiness rather than ghosts that Morton is interested in unpicking. Why do we like feeling haunted? Why do most people say they don’t believe in ghosts just before describing that one time they saw one? Paraphrasing her ‘undiagnosed, on-the-spectrum’ dad (hard relate), she muses at one point that god is a human construct which distracts us from the meaninglessness of the universe. Well, what’s a ghost but a little fragment of left-over religion?

The show is not just about that. It’s also about the ways in which people can be haunted by things that have happened to them and the things they’ve done to other people. Fun stuff, right? Sometimes the shift between hee-hee and sombre silence is tricky for the audience to manage. But lots to like here, and lots to be haunted by later. 

Eleanor Morton: Haunted House, Monkey Barrel, until 25 August, 12.05pm; main picture: Trudy Stade