Contemporary writing is haunted by the manifestation of the repressed. This is why the beginning of this new millennium may appropriately be coined 'the era of monstrological revenance': disruptive, angry, and vengeful. The act of writing is henceforth dispossessed, powerless, and unauthoritative. This article is mainly concerned with the question of reading today's ghostly literary productions, focusing on the limits of interpretation, understanding, and comprehension as containment. This is illustrated via an ethical re-evaluation of Toni Morrison's Beloved and Gayl Jones's Corregidora in their encounter with trauma theorists, but mainly with Jacques Derrida's overwhelming reflections on mourning, spectrality, and testimony. **********
