The Urban Dictionary defines ghost as “to avoid someone until they get the picture and stop contacting you.” If only that worked with robocalls. Americans received 30 billion robocalls last year and a friend of mine insists that all of them were to him. But I digress.

Long before it became a verb, Shakespeare wrote about ghosts in five of his plays. And Dickens famously wrote about several apparitions in “A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas.” (How many of you knew the whole name of the novella?)

The Chicago Shakespeare Theater unites with Dickens every year to present “A Q Brothers’ Christmas Carol”. The 2018 production is one of this season’s shows that was highlighted at the preview party. I go every year. Do yourself a big favor and see it (even if you think you don’t like hip-hop).

Barbara Gaines, the Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s Artistic Director, asked the audience how many of them had seen productions of the company in the Ruth Page Auditorium, where it resided for 12 years before moving to its present location in 1999. A smattering of people raised their hands, which inspired me to shout out to Gaines, after only one glass of wine, “What about the Red Lion?”, a pub that is owned by an friend of mine and that also is known for being haunted by ghosts.

Rather than ghosting me or asking staff to remove me from the room, Gaines asked me to repeat myself, and when I did, and she realized that I knew about the company’s birth on the rooftop of the Lincoln Avenue bar in 1986, she rose from her chair, and bowed and raised her hands in praise to me, whereupon Creative Producer Rick Boynton, who was on stage with her, jokingly took it one step further by asking if anyone had been to Barbara’s living room. A woman sitting in front of me raised her hand, thereby unceremoniously putting me in my place.