The Time of the Ghost is a supernatural English-language children's novel by Diana Wynne Jones, published by Macmillan in 1981.

Set in the English countryside, it features a teenage ghost who is one of four sisters, and observes the family, unable to remember which one she is.

In the present day, the adult, university-age Sally is in a hospital, badly injured after her abusive boyfriend threw her from a speeding car.

Some part of her has journeyed back seven years into the past, where, with the help of her sisters and their schoolboy friends, she must undo a rash bargain with the powerful and ancient goddess, Monigan.

Sally also seems to be romantically involved with a student at the school, the enigmatic fifth-former Julian Addiman, who mocks how the sisters seem to take the Worship of Monigan very seriously.

The seven years are now up, and Monigan had attempted to call in the debt, in the form of the boyfriend (now revealed to be the same Julian Addiman) tossing her out of the car.

As a teenager, she is fat and unattractive to boys, but in the future-part of the book, she has turned into a thin and beautiful young woman.

Her preferred mode of dress is a green sack, made by Cart; she has knots tied in her hair, and large buck teeth with a gap between them.