Rahee Ku is an up-and-coming teen actress, who has been spoiled by her success. After receiving an award, she throws a petty tantrum on the ride home, which causes a traffic accident that kills her parents. She survives, but the emotional shock has locked her face into a neutral expression, unable to express emotion. Unfortunately, this means her acting career is over.
Wandering the streets despondently, she finds herself drawn into a mysterious theater, where she is compelled onto the stage and possessed, acting out the part in a tragic play. For this is the Ghost Theater, where spirits that are Barred from the Afterlife are given a chance to work through whatever trauma or unfinished business is holding them back from passing on.
Most people would freak out and flee, yet Rahee not only returns, but browbeats the manager Caron into giving her a permanent position. For on the stage, in the brief moments that she's possessed, her face works normally, and she has hope that it may cure her condition.
But it will be a harrowing job, for many of the spirits have terrible trauma to work through, and not all are necessarily innocent victims themselves...
The official English translation can be read here
, and it has already reach its series finale on December 19, 2020.
The webcomic contains examples of:
- Asshole Victim: Pureun's father, whom almost no readers shed tears for.
- Barred from the Afterlife: The theater's purpose is to help the dead resolve this issue.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Pureun Shim was an innocent teenage girl, whose hideously irresponsible father sold her to human traffickers to support his gambling habit. In death, she seems to hold no resentment, simply wanting see him one last time and say goodbye. It turns out to be a ruse to bring him to her so she can murder him from beyond the grave.
- Cessation of Existence: Seeking out the theater is a risky prospect for the dead. They'll either work through their trauma and enter Nirvana, or fail and be extinguished. Many spend years or sometimes decades as a restless spirit before they're willing to take the plunge.
- Early-Bird Cameo: The prologue of Rahee's story is mentioned in the epilogue of "Story from Afar" in Ghost Teller where the news of her parents' death and the shock she experienced made it to the news.
- Grey-and-Gray Morality: The deceased are rarely guiltless victims. By the time the full story comes out, the reader is often left in some doubt precisely whom to sympathize with.
- Frozen Face: Rahee has one due to the shock of indirectly causing her parents' deaths. Being possessed gives her brief respite.
- Laser-Guided Karma: The living can be drawn into the theater In their dreams. It can be to meet and say goodbye to a ghost that loved them, but it can also be to face their sins if they were responsible for the spirit's death or misery. This can include dying for real if Caron decides it's warranted.
- Shared Universe: The epilogue of Ghost Teller features of a cameo of Caron and the teacher from Refund High School, another series that LICO worked on, and confirming that Ghost Theater shared a similar universe as Ghost Teller and Refund High School.
- Shoutout: The show Paddy seems to be watching in chapter 30 is Garden Club Detective Squad.
- Spoiled Brat:
- Rahee at the beginning of the story. She begins learning empathy as she helps the ghosts with their problems.
- Many of the students at Seoyeon High School are rich brats protected from the consequences of their actions by their influential parents.
- The Stoic: Rahee appears to be, to anyone who doesn't know her story.
- Willing Channeler: Rahee, Paddy and Caron allow the spirits to possess them to act out their parts in the plays, and work through their issues. This is not without risk, since a malevolent ghost can refuse to relinquish the body.
