Please keep your seats, pray thee, and don't be afraid
I'm only a ghost, just a poor harmless shade
My name is James Christopher Benjamin Binns
I was cut right down in the midst of my sins.

When I lived on this earth, my wife often said
If I should die first, then she'd never get wed.
Tonight I called on her, through keyhole I crept
If ghosts could have tears, oh I'm sure I'd have wept.

A man held my wife in his tender embrace,
She called him her husband, he'd taken my place.
To make matters worse, and to crown all my woes
The fellow was wearing my best Sunday clothes.

I'll try to forget my old false-hearted wife
And give you a flavour of my present life:
I get good engagements, with cash in advance
Attending a medium's midnight séance.
I rap on the tables and kick up such scenes,
I ring clanging bells and I bang tambourines.