Gately, the wraith, and the figurants — "it occurred to Gately that you…"
it occurred to Gately that you don’t normally think of wraiths or ghostish phantasms as being tall or short, or having bad posture, or wearing certain-colored socks. Much less having anything as specific as extrusive nostril-hair. There was a degree of, what, specificness about this figure in this dream that Gately found troubling.
Context
Gately's folk-phenomenology of ghosts: apparitions aren't supposed to come with brown socks and nostril-hair. The troubling "specificness" is the scene's quiet argument that this is no generic dream-figure — the detail level is evidence, and Gately, a career noticer of concrete detail, reads it exactly right.