Horatio Ernest Topper
Horatio Ernest Topper was a ghost. In his home universe, he was well-reputed in the spirit world. Known as the Undead Haberdasher of New Orleans, he was married to the Lady in White and an acquaintance of Stingy Jack himself, with whom he traditionally spent Christmas.
However, he was dragged out of his home universe and ended up wandering through several other dimensions for a number of months. First staying at “a mansion almost like his original abode”, he then ended up in “lonely old Ghost Manor”, in “a barren moor”, then to “an unfamiliar Spirit Realm”, and to the Cupid Homeworld. Ultimately, he was accidentally transported to the Jynx Dimension by Sebastian Steer in December 2020 in the course of Steer's experiments with trying to give the Clown Emperor a soul. By that point, Topper was quite depressed and dispirited, particularly as he'd lost his top hat during one of his previous endeavours. However, wandering into the Throne Room of the Imperial Castle after the Clown departed but before Steer freed himsel from the broom closet, Topper found the top hat discarded by the Clown and took it for himself as a kind of Christmas present from the universe. (PROSE: The Time of the Toymaker)
Behind the scenes
Background
Horatio Topper previously appeared in The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids in the earlier 2020 story Pythagoras-858 and the Quest for the Stovepipe, which acted as a prequel for Jenny Everywhere Meets The Crew Of The Copper-Colored Cupids.
However, the character actually started out several years earlier as an alternate-universe variation of the Hatbox Ghost, a character from The Haunted Mansion. The version seen in The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupdis retained traits added to the character by Aristide Twain, including the birth name “Horatio Topper”, while carefully eliding the name of his original haunt (the copyrighted Gracey Manor) and changing his appearance to a more humanoid look distinct from the trademarked skeletal version. In the knowledge of the association, a discerning reader might recognise the Lady in White as the Beating Heart Bride, and the version of Stingy Jack known to Horatio as Jack Skellington.
