Recounting the haunting – real or imagined – of a young man by his dead lover, the song is one of the most noted of the 'death ditties' that populated the pop charts, on both sides of the Atlantic, in the early to mid-1960s.

It is distinguished in particular by its eerie, echoing sound (a hallmark of Meek's production style) and by the ghostly, foreboding female wails that form its backing vocal, by Lissa Gray.

[7] In 2012 the journalist Tom Ewing described the song as "the weirdest and most gripping British record to hit the top yet", with Leyton's vocal "clutching at your sleeve, desperate to tell a story of loss and madness.

Meek turns the drums into phantom horsemen and fills the record's dark spaces with melodrama – a keening female voice on the chorus rounds the effect off.

In 1983, the British psychobilly band The Meteors released a version on their album Wrecking Crew, followed a couple of years later by Dave Vanian and the Phantom Chords.