Don Draper Sees Dead People

Don Draper's a gifted storyteller, a lousy husband, a mesmerizing lover, a capricious boss. He's also our bridge to the netherworld, given his shamanic ability to see and occasionally communicate with dead people. 

Don's already living the life of a dead man, given that he has a dead man's identity. He watched the real Don Draper die, and then he killed — "killed" — Dick Whitman instead. Not to be a fairy-tale witch here, but that comes at a cost, and for Don (our Don, not the real dead Don), that cost is that he never gets to be quite as alive as other people do. He's so sad, even when he's happy. And he never gets to not think about dying. It's his Franny and Zooey–style constant prayer: I'm going to die; I'm going to die; I'm going to die. He's a little bit dead already, and so every once in a while, he sees a fellow cadaver.

read the article by Margaret Lyons
Don Draper Sees Dead People -- Vulture