The Sir Ghost is the guardian ghost of a Manus household, ordinarily the spirit of the most recently dead adult male, whose skull was cleaned and kept in a carved wooden bowl inside the dwelling. He supervises the sexual, economic and social conduct of his living kin, rewarding propriety with health and success in fishing and trade and answering lapses with sickness or death. When misfortune persisted, the household concluded that the ghost had failed or turned against them; his relics were then thrown into the lagoon and the ghost of another dead kinsman installed in his place. His will was learned through mediums, characteristically women, who relayed his diagnoses and demands at divination. The Sir Ghost is a role occupied in turn by different named dead rather than a single eternal personage, and the household guardian is always addressed as a particular late father, brother or son.