[Samuel] Johnson had a peculiar temperament. For a time he was extremely interested in the subject of ghosts. He was so interested in them that he spent several nights in an abandoned house to see if he could meet one. Apparently, he didn’t. There’s a famous passage by the Scottish writer, Thomas Carlyle … in which he talks about Johnson, saying that Johnson wanted to see a ghost. And Carlyle wonders: "What is a ghost? A ghost is a spirit that has taken corporal form and appears for a while among men.” Then Carlyle adds, "How could Johnson not have thought of this when faced with the spectacle of the human multitudes he loved so much in the streets of London, for if a ghost were a spirit that has taken a corporal form for a brief interval, why did it not occur to him that the London multitudes were ghosts, that he himself was a ghost? What is each man but a spirit that has taken corporal form briefly and then disappears? What are men if not ghosts? —A Lecture on Johnson and Boswell by Borges

Here's a precursor to Marc Davis' concept sketches of carousing ghosts for Disneyland's Haunted Mansion.  We find it in a 1906 issue of Puck magazine.

An illustration from an 1884 issue of Puck magazine.  This should be of interest: Seance Parlor Feng Shui.

An illustration from an 1877 issue of Punch magazine.  This should be of interest: Seance Parlor Feng Shui.

An illustration from a 1920 issue of McClure's magazine.  The caption reads: "There are privileged persons who possess the faculty of allowing their organisms to be used as a medium of communication by intelligences on the other side of the veil."  This should be of interest: Seance Parlor Feng Shui.

An illustration from an 1896 issue of Pall Mall magazine.  The caption reads: "The mist condensed into a body."

"The smoky couple!"
"Long live smoke!"
"And all things that go up in smoke."
—Aldo Palazzeschi, Perelà: The Man of Smoke (1936)

This illustration of a smoky couple is from Graham's magazine, 1854.