Spike the Ghost

The first episode centring on Spike in Angel, season 5, is "Hell Bound", an October 22, 2003 episode written by Steven S. DeKnight, the writer who later went on develop the first season of Marvel's Daredevil series for Netflix. He takes advantage of Spike's situation, stuck in a ghost state, to have him start seeing of gruesomely mutilated apparitions.

According to the Buffyverse Wiki, this is the only episode in either series to have a viewer discretion advisory, though I think the end result is not nearly as creepy as "Hush". But it's not bad. It's a lot of opportunities for James Marsters to react to things and he was really good at doing that. He had a range of subtle facial expressions that were very effective at pulling the viewer into his character's experience. Why am I using past tense? He's not dead.

Looks like he's mainly doing voice work these days. I wonder why. Wikipedia shows how often he won awards for his work in the Buffyverse. Maybe he's just not ambitious. I can relate.