In Nostromo, recurring imagery of ghosts suggests that Sulaco is haunted by unresolved greed, violence, and moral failure. The novel opens with a legend: the story of treasure hunters who vanished in the mountains while searching for hidden wealth. These men are never recovered, and their disappearance becomes part of the nation’s folklore. The novel emphasizes how their fate lingers in collective memory, noting that their story survives as a tale of “tenacious gringo ghosts” (6) who are rich but perpetually thirsty. Their disappearance symbolizes the persistence of greed, a force that can outlast individual lives. By beginning in this way, the novel establishes greed as an original sin embedded in Sulaco’s history. The ghosts of the treasure seekers anticipate the later obsession with silver embodied by the San Tomé mine. What changes over time is not desire but scale. Individual adventurers are replaced by corporations and investors, yet the underlying impulse remains the same. The ghost story thus frames the novel as a repetition of past transgressions. Greed becomes spectral, returning in new forms. Sulaco is haunted not by supernatural apparitions but by the memory of exploitation, which resurfaces whenever wealth is sought without moral restraint.

This haunting quality takes on a more intimate and psychological form in the character of Dr. Monygham, whose life has been reduced to something like a living death. After being tortured by a former regime, Monygham emerges physically alive but inwardly destroyed. His existence is defined by numbness and detachment. He moves through Sulaco as a ghost, present but unacknowledged, watching rather than participating. The novel reinforces this impression by emphasizing Monygham’s marginal position in the community. His cynical tone and bitter humor give him the air of a specter who knows truths others prefer to forget. In his ghostliness, Monygham embodies the memory of state violence that the ruling elites would rather erase. His damaged body and spirit stand as evidence that power in Costaguana is arbitrary and cruel. Monygham functions as a ghost of violence past, a reminder that beneath the rhetoric of progress and stability lies the constant threat of terror. 

Other characters in Nostromo gradually assume ghost-like qualities as they become consumed by the forces that haunt Sulaco, most notably Nostromo himself. Initially celebrated as vibrant, visible, and indispensable, Nostromo’s identity erodes as he becomes obsessed with the hidden silver. Like the treasure hunters of the opening chapter, he is drawn into secrecy and isolation. His relationship to the silver removes him from human connection, reducing his life to guarding a buried hoard. Conrad underscores this transformation by depicting Nostromo as increasingly invisible, moving silently, watching from the margins, living a double life. He becomes, in effect, the ghost of the earlier adventurers, repeating their fate in modern form. The silver defines him, yet it also empties him. He exists for something buried, something inert, something that cannot return recognition or meaning. Other figures, too, take on spectral aspects. Charles Gould becomes haunted by the mine, living more for an abstraction than for human relationships. Decoud drifts into existential emptiness, cut off from belief or belonging. Through these figures, the novel suggests that obsession with power and wealth turns people into shadows of themselves. Ghosts in Nostromo are symptoms of moral disintegration. They represent lives hollowed out by greed, violence, and denial. Sulaco becomes crowded with such specters, living reminders that the past is never truly buried.