Hans Becker ran his candy shop even while starving to death.  While this weakened his frame considerably, adding to his gaunt appearance, since his death, his companion has insisted on regular calisthenics and maintenance for the  body they share, and Hans complied.  However, the routine is mostly aerobic.
He's white, male, and vaguely Germanic in appearance, with large hands and small ears.  His accent, while warm, is decidedly from New York, where he currently maintains his store and holds a minor custodial post related to Liberty Island.

Hans' geist was originally a businessman-- a fairly famous and successful industrialist who championed moving from human labor to automated production.  A group of disgruntled and jobless workers caught him at the factory one night and threw him into the grinding gears of his own equipment, killing him painfully and-- just as important, to him-- ruining almost an entire day's worth of production.
Now he communicates with Hans in a few ways-- sometimes just a phantom voice, commanding and demanding, over the phone.  In any city or place of industry, nearby machinery seems to distort and rotate, lifting up bloody, squashed, and severed body parts as part of its operation-- perhaps a beckoning hand sticks out of an elevator, the gears of a printing press bring a speaking face (no head attached) into view, or a trail of bloodstains drips out of a car's exhaust pipe, spelling out spidery words.
If Hans is completely away from modern technology, perhaps out in the middle of a park or forest, the only sign of his geist's presence is a whispering voice on the wind.  Faint, questioning, not sure of who it is or what it's doing there.

Apart from his geist, notable NPCs from his background include the National Park Service, the clientele of his shop in Mott Haven, and the ghost of Hendrick van der Heul (former quartermaster of one William Kidd).