feminist ghosts?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 86885

"jwcpgh" wrote:
I was chatting with a listee offlist and she observed that there 
are no female house ghosts in canon.  
> 
> 
"Serena Moonsilver" wrote:
The Grey Lady is the ghost for Ravenclaw...I don't think this in 
cannon but in an interview with JKR

Carol responds:
Here's what the Lexicon says on this question:
"The Grey Lady (Ravenclaw ghost) (SS12)
"Very little is known about the Grey Lady apart from the fact that she
is very tall and she is the resident ghost of Ravenclaw. Harry and Ron
encounter her gliding past in the corridor while out looking for the
Mirror of Erised (SS12). According to a letter written by JKR to Nina
Young, the Grey Lady is "a highly intellectual young lady" and a woman
with strong scholarly or literary interests. "She never found true
love as she never found a man up to her standards." 

"So how do we know that the Grey Lady is the Ravenclaw ghost? JKR
showed a page from her notebook in a televised interview. Clearly
visible on that page was the list of house ghosts which indicated that
the Ravenclaw ghost was the Grey Lady. . . ." 

Here's the link if you want it:
http://www.hp-lexicon.org/hogwarts_ghosts.html
 
The reference in SS/PS Ch. 12 says only, "They passed the ghost of a
tall witch gliding in the opposite direction (SS p. 210, near the end
of the chapter). This in itself doesn't prove that the ghost in
question is the Grey Lady or that she's the house ghost of Ravenclaw,
but I see no reason to question the Lexicon here. In any case, we do
have a canonical reference to a female ghost other than Moaning
Myrtle. JKR's description of her in the letter sounds remarkably
similar to my impression of Rowena Ravenclaw, the founder of Ravenclaw
House. Presumably we'll see a bit more of her in future books given
the clear idea of her in JKR's imagination.

"jwcpgh"(?) wrote:
<snip>
Myrtle is the only female ghost I can think of-and she clearly has 
some, shall we say, unresolved issues.  I wonder if Bertha 
Jorkins' ghost is wandering around out there somewhere.
 
Serenamoonsilver(?) wrote:
Hmm...but who or where would she haunt?

Carol responds:
Since Barty Crouch Sr., who cast the memory spell, is dead, and
Voldemort presumably has no fear of ghosts, how about Wormtail, who
betrayed her to Voldemort?

Carol, who hopes that the attributions are correct in this post as
they were a bit hard to follow