Why ghosts wear clothes or white sheets instead of appearing in the nude

The main social role of the ghost before the modern period was to carry a message to the living from beyond the grave, so the link to burial clothing makes sense. [iStockphoto] 

When you think of a ghost, what comes to mind? A ghastly, mouldy winding-sheet? A malevolent pile of supernatural armour? Or a sinister gentleman in a stiff Victorian suit?

In 1863 George Cruikshank, the caricaturist and illustrator of Dickens’s novels, announced a “discovery” concerning the varied appearance of ghosts. It does not seem, he wrote: