Songfacts®:

• "The Ghost In You" was written by Psychedelic Furs lead singer Richard Butler and his brother/bass player, Tim. The poignant lyrics about matters of the heart are typical of Richard's work.
• This was released as a single from the band's fourth album, Mirror Moves. By this time, Richard and Tim Butler had moved from England to America and the group seemed staged for stardom in that country, but they never really caught on. "Ghost In You" was the only song from the album to chart in the US, reaching #59. The biggest American breakthrough for the Furs came when their 1981 song "Pretty In Pink" was adapted for the 1986 John Hughes movie starring Molly Ringwald.
• The band, which started as a 6-piece, was down to a trio for the Mirror Moves album: lead singer Richard Butler, guitarist John Ashton, and bass player Tim Butler. Their producer, Keith Forsey, did double duty, handling drums in place of Vince Ely, who had recently left the Furs.
• A few soundtracks featured this minor hit from The Psychedelic Furs... by other artists. Counting Crows recorded it for the '90s teen comedy Clueless and Sugar Ray's Mark McGrath covered it for the Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore romantic comedy 50 First Dates. On the small screen, Matthew Puckett's cover was used in an episode of the SyFy channel reboot of Being Human (season one's "Some Thing to Watch Over Me"). The Furs' version was finally featured on the '80s-themed series Stranger Things in the season 2 episode "The Pollywog."
• A slew of other artists have also included covers of the song on their albums or in live performances, including Vernion Process (on Catalysts), Duncan Sheik (on Whisper House and Covers 80's) and BT (on These Hopeful Machines). Robyn Hitchcock gave the song an acoustic makeover for a memorable in-store performance at New York's Tower Records in 1989.
• The video was directed by Tim Pope, whose work was all over MTV at the time. It shows lead singer Richard Butler at a makeup table, then performing in a landscape of altered reality with special effects that hold up surprisingly well. The Psychedelic Furs had a head start on most American acts when it came to music videos because like most British bands, they were making them before MTV went on the air in 1981.
• This song opens with a careless motorist running a traffic light:
  
  A man in my shoes runs a light
  And all the papers lied tonight
  
  In a Songfacts interview with lead singer Richard Butler, he explained: "It's saying a person like me, or perhaps even me, takes chances, runs a light. It's my little metaphor for taking chances, and then it goes into pretty straightforward, 'The papers lied tonight, but falling over you is the news of the day.'"