The Ghost of Thomas Kempe is a low fantasy novel for children by Penelope Lively, first published by Heinemann in 1973 with illustrations by Anthony Maitland.

Set in present-day Oxfordshire, it features a boy and his modern family who are new in their English village, and seem beset by a poltergeist.

Soon the boy makes acquaintance with the eponymous Thomas Kempe, ghost of a 17th-century resident sorcerer who intends to stay.

Lively won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject.

[2][a] An interest in history, the passage of time and local change is a running theme in the work of Penelope Lively and can be seen in many of her books.