If I Were a Ghost Places Rich Anthony in the Chicago Folk Line of Gentle Afterlife Songs
A Joliet Songwriter’s One-Day Ghost Follows John Prine and Steve Goodman’s Lighter Take on Dying
If I Were a Ghost has now been released twice. Rich Anthony first released the homespun acoustic folk-pop song on 13 October 2025. That version was called If I Were a Ghost for Just One Day. On 18 September 2026 it returned under the shorter title, four seconds longer at three minutes and 58 seconds. Both versions ask what a person would do with one day as a friendly ghost. The answer belongs to a Chicago folk tradition older than either recording.
Rich Anthony’s ghost song is in the playlist below, and the Rich Anthony profile gathers every feature our titles have written about the music. If I Were a Ghost reached this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news desks. Press play for the one-day haunting, then keep reading for the Chicago songs behind it.
John Prine and Steve Goodman Set the Chicago Folk Tone for Songs Like If I Were a Ghost
Rich Anthony is the recording name of Richard Anthony Goberville, a songwriter from Joliet, Illinois. The city sits 40 miles southwest of Chicago. The folk music that grew up in Chicago’s small clubs has its own way of handling death: a joke near the front, and something tender underneath.
John Prine is the clearest example. Born in Maywood, Illinois, in 1946, he worked as a postman for five years. He tried out his songs at open mic nights at the Fifth Peg in Chicago. The film critic Roger Ebert heard him there by chance in 1970 and wrote the first printed review of his music.
Prine’s third album, Sweet Revenge, came out in October 1973. Its second track, Please Don’t Bury Me, opens with a man who wakes up, puts on his slippers, walks into the kitchen and dies. For the rest of the song, he refuses the cold ground and gives his body away, piece by piece. Prine said the song first followed a different man, Tom Brewster, who dies and comes back as a rooster.
Forty-five years later, Prine closed The Tree of Forgiveness with When I Get to Heaven. It is a list of plans for the afterlife. First he shakes God’s hand. Then come a vodka and ginger ale and a cigarette nine miles long. The album came out on 13 April 2018. It debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200, the best chart position of his career. It was his last album of new songs, and Prine died on 7 April 2020.
Steve Goodman Took His Own Funeral to Wrigley Field in Song
Steve Goodman, a Chicago native, met Prine at the Old Town School of Folk Music. He became a friend and an early champion. In 1971 he brought Kris Kristofferson and Paul Anka to hear Prine at the Earl of Old Town. Both men had record deals by the end of that year.
Ten years later, Goodman wrote A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request in a Cincinnati hotel. By his own account, it was the night of 13 March 1981. Goodman performed it that year on a WGN radio show hosted by Roy Leonard, with Jethro Burns on banjo. Its narrator wants his coffin carried around Wrigley Field and his ashes thrown on a bonfire there. That way they can blow over the wall onto Waveland Avenue. The song appeared on Goodman’s 1984 album Affordable Art. Goodman died of leukaemia in September that year, aged 36. Friends later slipped into Wrigley Field to leave some of his ashes there.
Rich Anthony’s If I Were a Ghost Skips the Funeral and Spends the Day Abroad
Rich Anthony starts where those songs stop. If I Were a Ghost has no funeral and no last wishes, only a pass for a single day. The ghost floats out of the window with “no bills, no chores, no shoes, no keys”. It rides the breeze to Tokyo and sneaks onto planes without a passport. A ghost dog comes along, and the pair chase cars in Zanzibar. Then they settle down inside a candy jar.
The mischief stays close to home as well. The ghost would haunt the gym just for the laughs and make Johnny miss every pass. It would turn off the lights in spooky ways and reset the clocks to misbehave. Prine’s narrator gives his body away, and Goodman’s sends his ashes over the Wrigley Field wall. Those two men arranged their own exits in song. This ghost simply goes out to play.
Halfway through, the lyric slows down to ask what a ghost would keep. Would I still feel the sunset’s glow? it wonders. Then it asks whether it would miss hugs or apple pie. The last verse answers by drifting through the night, still watching over the people it loves.
Two Recordings a Year Apart, and Where Acoustic Listeners Will Find the Song
The two versions sit almost a year apart, and both arrived in the run-up to Halloween. The first used the full hook as its title. The 2026 single drops the last four words and runs four seconds longer. Colin Schlegel recorded its live instruments. Both versions remain on Spotify, side by side in the catalogue.
On AcousticMusic.News the song now sits in our acoustic and unplugged playlist. It suits listeners who keep Sweet Revenge close at hand and want something gentler for the autumn. It also suits anyone who likes a story they can follow from the first line to the last.
From the AcousticMusic.News curator team: “If I Were a Ghost describes itself as ‘a little weird, in the best ghost way’, and that is accurate: a Halloween song built to make a room smile rather than jump, which is why it went into our acoustic playlist.”
Hear If I Were a Ghost on Apple Music or on every streaming service, then follow Rich Anthony across platforms: Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube channel, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and the link page.
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