What makes the typical ghost story?  Well, a ghost, of course, that haunts an innocent civilian.  Typically, the ghost only haunts someone in a ghost story because they have unfinished business fixed with the person present and they cannot be satisfied until their "worldly matters" are taken care of.  20th Century Ghost and The Lawyer and the Ghost exhibit both of these elements very clearly.  However, they have a different way of displaying those elements.  Despite the twist in the themes of the stories, they still serve the same purpose.  Analyzing these two texts, the reader can detect the similar themes of afterlife interference and personal fulfilment in both The Lawyer and the Ghost and 20th Century Ghost. 

 Joe Hill's 20th Century Ghost is a chapter of 20th Century Ghosts, a book of different horror short stories.  20th Century Ghost starts with a theatre owner, Alec Sheldon thinking about a spirit who has conversations with moviegoers until a young boy bursts out of the movie in astonishment.  Sheldon can tell that something was wrong, but does not exactly respond to it the way the boy did.  The child was describing his encounter with the spirit with a flushed look on his face while the theatre owner was listening in a calm state.  

The Lawyer and the Ghost by Charles Dickens is a short story explaining an engagement with a poor man moving into an apartment and a ghostly fellow who was once a beggar.  The ghost's goal is to scare the poor man out of his old apartment.  As a result, however, the man holds a casual conversation with the ghost and convinces him to do something more positive than haunting old miserable places.

Two specific themes these stories share are the spiritual interference with the living and the casual reactions that the people have with the ghosts.  In most ghost stories, it is expected that a spirit of some sort do everything in its power to put fear in a living being in the scariest way possible.  Although, the ghostly characters in these two appointed ghost stories do not make much of an effort of scaring anyone when intervening with the real world.  

The spirit in 20th Century Ghost simply sits next to certain people in the movies and talks to them about the film.  Ironically, it is said in the text that when "she gets excited about a movie, she needs to talk," showing how elated she is to connect with the worldly people and how comfortable she is with them, regardless of whether she is dead or alive.  Unlike most spirits, all she was interested in was engaging in conversations with those who attended the movies, instead of terrifying the public and inhibiting them from visiting the theatre.

Dickens' ghost in The Lawyer and the Ghost on the other hand has intentions that are not as kind.  
