Is the Gentleman Ghost the same guy as infamous Old West highwayman "Gentleman" Jim Craddock?
I confess this is one of those stories where I had to check sources outside of my usual oeuvre. The life and times of 19th century English highwaymen is, unfortunately, an area that my 21st century American university education failed to prepare me for. Fortunately you can find just about anything at the New York Public Library if you're willing to brave stacks of dusty books that were last signed out sometime in the 1970s and have been opened maybe twice ever since.
TO the best of my ability to correlate, this is the story of how one petty crook became an EVERYBODY problem and why we're liable to be stuck with him for a good long while.
(Just the first good picture of Craddock I found, zoom out and he's screaming at the Hawks, as usual)
James Craddock was born at sometime in the late 1830s to a member of the English gentry around the outskirts of London. The reason we don't have a specific date for his birth is because his mother was no said nobleman's wife. Abandoning his mistress soon after Jim's birth he was forced in his family's role as a peasant laborer in order to provide for himself and his ailing mother. On top of being looked down upon in even the less "polite" society of his humble upbringing because of his bastard heritage. At some point Craddock made a vow to himself, that he would live like the blue blood in his veins demanded. He would become a man of wealth.
Eventually that wealth came in the form of crime, under the name "Gentleman Jim", Craddock would rob from stagecoaches passing through the villages outside of London. As with many such masked criminals he was known for his quirks. Namely that he would only steal from the nouveau riche merchants and industrialists that were springing up during the gilded age of British industrialization. "True blue" noblemen and ladies were spared any hardship at his hands and sometimes even received a boon for the masked man. Craddock even raiding from the homes of the poor farmers and craftsmen he lived among rather than touch a single pearl on the neck of a wealthy duchess.
This, unsurprisingly, backfired. Quickly. With the normal people of his native area becoming more of a threat to him than the police posses sent to hunt him down. The choice became clear, if he stayed in the English countryside his BEST bet was being hanged by the baying mob that his actions had whipped up. So, in classic fashion, he set his sights on the land of opportunity in post civil war America. Craddock's diaries then become full of an INCESSANT whining about "colonials" (which in the 1870s is just PETTY from a geopolitical point of view) and the "mundanity" of American frontier living. And do not get me started on the racism.
His mortal life would end when he stumbled into the path of one Hannibal Hawkes, AKA the vigilante gunslinger Nighthawk. During a clash between Craddock, Nighthawk and Nighthawk's lady partner Cinnamon, Craddock took Cinnamon captive. Being discovered by Nighthawk some hours later after a frantic chase he taunted his lawman adversary with the implication that he had sexually assaulted and murdered his lady love. An implication that as A. a lie, Cinnamon had escaped his custody and was currently peeling hell for leather trying to stop what was going to come next because B. it motivated Nighthawk to lynch Craddock from a lonely tree outside town, Cinnamon arriving only moments too late to assuage her lover's anger.
Killed under (technically) false pretenses for a crime he (technically) didn't commit, Craddock was forced to walk the Earth as an unclean spirit. The explanation of the final and more modern part of this tale I'm passing off to my magic consultant, Gwen. Gwen?
Gwen: While Craddock WAS reborn as a ghost due to the unjust nature of his death, being killed for a crime you don't commit is pretty much ALWAYS going to leave your spirit to wander. He was left in the lurch because of the circumstances of said death...mainly that he was killed for being a bastard who had taunted a good man past his limits. The winds of vengeance that grant the unquiet dead power refused to summon themselves for him, leaving him no power with which to affect the world from beyond during the remainder of Nighthawk's lifetime.
The fact that Nighthawk was also a good man who died well in the defense of the innocent and the helpless also brought him out of Craddock's reach since his spirit would have pretty instantly been carried to his final reward upon the moment of his death. In normal circumstances this would have severed the trite connection Craddock still held to this plane, sending him tumbling down into whatever just deserts his actions during life had afforded him.
But Nighthawk was not a normal man. Nighthawk was a reincarnation of Pharaoh Khufu, and an ancestor of the modern hero Hawkman. Meaning than rather than shuffling off this mortal coil to the pearly gates, Khufu's spirit would continue its curse of being reborn, tethered to the spirit of his Queen Chayara for all time. And now Craddock's spirit was tethered to that of his killer until his "unfinished business" was laid to rest...the "unfinished business" of a murderous, sociopathic criminal who has the selfawareness of a clam.
So that's why WE'RE now stuck with him. Craddock's spirit can't be dropped into hell where it belongs so long as his murderer's soul still walks "unpunished" in daylight. And the forces of the beyond do not care to weigh in on the side of a man who got hanged after a life of violent crime because he taunted someone with having assaulted and murdered their significant other. TECHNICALLY killed for a crime he didn't commit, ZERO possible sympathy factor.
And the only other way to get rid of him long term would be for his soul to accept absolution, either recognizing the role of his own guilt in the end of his life, manifesting forgiveness for his death and moving in to whatever punishment or reward said action warranted. OR Hawkman's soul being permanently severed from the mortal plane, thus taking Craddock with him.
And personally I think the idea of someone permanently putting down Hawkman in this day and age is somehow MORE likely than the Gentleman Ghost finding Jesus or the like, call me a cynic.
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