Hal on Himself's late delusions
Himself allegedly used to see his father’s ghost on stairways sometimes, but then again toward the end he used to see black-widow spiders in his hair, too, and claimed I wasn’t speaking sometimes when I was sitting right there speaking to him.
Context
The three-generation ghost line, dropped by Hal in the same breath as Himself's other terminal delusions. That Himself saw his own father's ghost "on stairways" is precise inheritance: James Sr. drank himself to death on a Tucson stairway (per 071/099), so the father haunts the son at the exact site of his dying. And Hal files it beside the spiders-in-the-hair and the delusion that Hal wasn't speaking — the same withdrawal that will later make Gately's ward a place the dead drop in. The male line is a chain of men appearing to each other on staircases, hearing and unhearing.