Originally published in 1865, "The Trial for Murder" is Charles Dickens's exploration of the uncanny and the inexplicable, told as a first-person account by a respectable banker who experiences a series of supernatural visions surrounding a murder trial. The narrator witnesses a ghostly figure—the murdered man—who appears to him before, during, and after serving as jury foreman, wielding an influence over the trial that defies rational explanation. Dickens employs his characteristic attention to atmospheric detail and psychological realism to examine the boundary between objective fact and subjective experience, leaving readers to draw their own conclusions about what truly transpires.