Ghosts is the story of a woman, Mrs. Alving, who is preparing to open an orphanage in the memory of her husband Captain Alving on the tenth anniversary of his death.  On the surface, the captain was an honoured and respected man, but Mrs Alving knows that, in private, he was a cheating philanderer, and she is determined to raise a memorial to him so she will never have to speak of him again.  Oswald, Mrs. Alving's son, arrives home dying of syphilis and with a desire to marry the Alvings' maid, who Mrs. Alving reveals to him is actually his half-sister, a result of an affair of the captain's.  The "ghosts" are taboo topics that cannot be discussed but are ever-present, and the work remains one of Ibsen's most powerful plays.