"I am born" begins David Copperfield, famously. However, this is a birth which is blighted by its timing: 12 o'clock on a Friday night at precisely the time the clock began to strike. Such untimeliness mean that David was destined to be unlucky in life and would be privileged to see ghosts and spirits. A dubious privilege. In David Copperfield, ghosts and other supernatural phenomena are invoked in relation to a range of male characters and situations. David is haunted by memories of people and of places he has been before. It is in the character of Uriah Heep, however, and in David's perception of and relationship with him, that the story is at its most supernatural.