In return, the Bear asks for one pot of honey, one piece of stardust, one secret baptism, and a photo of a ghost.

It is revealed that Rose performed the baptism in the sea on a baby she abducted from a teenage mother ("The Camera Shop").

Later, Rose brings the Bear one pot of honey, one piece of stardust, one secret baptism, and a photo of a ghost.

The Bear reveals that he never intended to kill the Astronomer and turn Pearl into a crow and tells Rose to take revenge herself ("Bad Men").

The Photographer, now revealed to be Rose, has to make a decision whether she should save the Victim or take a photo of the ghost to give to the Bear.

Each actor plays multiple roles; in the original production, the following doubling is used: The piece draws on numerous sources of inspiration, including Arabian Nights, Matsukaze (a Japanese Noh drama), Grimms' Fairy Tales, Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher", James Joyce's Ulysses, Rosemary Timperley's "Harry", Thelonious Monk's "Ruby, My Dear", "Epistrophy", and "'Round Midnight", The Twilight Zone (particularly "The After Hours" and "In His Image"), 2001: A Space Odyssey, David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust, Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods, Cosmos (both the Carl Sagan and Neil DeGrasse Tyson versions), Stephen King's Dark Tower series, The Legend of Zelda and Castlevania, Neil Gaiman's Sandman, Bill Willingham's Fables, Ken Wilber's A Brief History of Everything, Tina Satter's Seagull (Thinking of You), Frozen, R. Umar Abbasi's NY Post photo, and "The Wind & Rain", a 17th-century English murder ballad.

[2] The music is scored for four voices, cello, guitars, dulcimer, Celtic harp, erhu, autoharp, piano, keyboards and percussion, and is inspired by murder ballads, doo-wop, angular bebop, Chinese folk, Islamic adhan, and the music of Bernard Herrmann and George Crumb.

The production starred Brent Arnold, Brittain Ashford, Gelsey Bell, and Dave Malloy, and was directed by Annie Tippe.

Tremper NY (July 2015), American Repertory Theater's Club Oberon in Cambridge, MA (September 2015), San Francisco's Curran Theatre (October 2015), and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (August 2016).

The show was also presented for a month-long engagement at the New York Theatre Workshop in October 2017, where it launched the inaugural season of Next Door at NYTW, a "new works program that provides a creative home for artists and theatre companies who produce their own work" in a 75-seat black box theater space.

The Chicago premiere of Ghost Quartet was presented from July 12 through August 17, 2019, by Black Button Eyes Productions.

The production was revived again in January 2025, playing Sydney's Hayes Theatre with returning cast members Butler, Lee and Sizer being joined by Cameron Bajraktarevic-Hayward.

[7] Ghost Quartet premiered in London as the inaugural production of the newly refurbished Boulevard Theatre on October 24, 2019, and closed on January 4, 2020.

The voguish term "mash-up" doesn't begin to capture its breadth or its quirky sincerity... Ghost Quartet uses languages as varied as gospel, folk ballads, honky-tonk anthems of heartbreak, electropop, doo-wop and jazz à la Thelonious Monk... directed with unobtrusive cunning by Annie Tippe... Mr. Malloy is infectiously in love with the dark arts of storytelling in all its forms..."[9] On October 31, 2014, the album was released by the ensemble via Bandcamp.

[11] On March 15, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dave Malloy uploaded a full video recording of the same live performance on his YouTube channel.