For a start, when he hears what the time is, it completely baffles him. "To his great astonishment, the heavy bell went on from six to seven, and from seven to eight, and regularly up to twelve; then stopped. Twelve! It was past two when he went to bed. The clock was wrong. An icicle must have got into the works!" "Why, it isn't possible," said Scrooge, "that I can have slept through a whole day and far into another night. It isn't possible that anything has happened to the sun, and this is twelve at noon!" He is also unsure whether Marley really did visit him, or whether it was just a dream. "Every time he resolved within himself, after mature inquiry, that it was all a dream, his mind flew back again, like a strong spring released, to it's first position, and presented the same problem to be worked all through, "Was it a dream or not?" Marley's ghost had a huge effect on him. "Marley's ghost bothered him exceedingly.".
Then, Scrooge remembers how Marley warned him of three spirits, who were going to visit him, and that the first of the three, would be at one o'clock exactly. He feels anxious, and wonders whether it really will happen, as the ghost said it would. He decides to stay awake, and count up to one o'clock. "Considering that he could no more go to sleep than go to heaven, this was perhaps the wisest resolution in his power." An hour later, the clock finally reaches the hour, and Scrooge feels thoroughly relieved that no spirit has appeared, for he didn't at all like the idea. "The hour itself," said Scrooge, triumphantly, "and nothing else!" But he spoke too soon, and when the hour bell sounded, and the first spirit did, in fact, appear, Scrooge was shocked. He had convinced himself that Marley's ghost was, indeed, nothing more than a mere dream.
The ghost of Christmas past is both young and old. "Like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man", "It's hair, which hung about its neck and down it's back, was white as if with age; and yet the face had not a wrinkle in it".
