I like the explicit English accent and also the way the bass guitar seems to run over measures.
Ray Davies claims (in his autobiography "Americana") that The Kinks were the first British Invaders to sing without an American accent. That's interesting in its own right if you've ever wondered who affected whom.
I know why the song haunts me.
I think to understand the song, you have to read the word "ghost" as "spirit" -- ghost having all those friendly Casper-like connotations.
I also remember the German term Geistiges Eigentum from patent law. Eigentum means "property" and geistiges is a declined adjective modifying "property." The word Geist is cognate with our word ghost but in this context means neither ghost nor spirit -- it means intellectual.
