No, he was only mostly dead.  Mab got to him before he was all dead, he never was a ghost in Ghost Story.

Depends on your definition of dead and ghost. Was corpstaker dead? she was as dead as Harry and trying to get back back.

I think we can trust Lea in this:

“When Corpsetaker’s spirit still dwelt upon the mortal coil, even bodies with latent talent were hospitable enough for her to exercise her full power. But thanks to you, and like you, my dear godson, she has passed beyond the threshold between life and death. Now she requires a body with a much greater inherent talent in order to use her gifts once she is inside it.”

Harry was dead. Just not gone.

Except we do not know when Justine was infected. She was a captive in even hand and she could have been infected during her captivity. That explains her escape, the Fomor have too much experience in holding captives to make escape easy.

One possibility is that we are talking about two different apocalypses. One to make this reality in an unlivable hell and the other to make it into an unreal chaos. Pick your place.

And also of casting out demons as a form of healing.

Uriel has lunch with Odin and was not concerned about Molly being winter lady at all. The white council does not understand purpose. At least most of them.

Gard somewhere talked about the importance of finding your purpose. It is another way of looking at things than the free will idea but it is not incompatible. Mab found a purpose in defending reality, she probably actively looked for it because for an immortal nowadays to have any meaning you must have a purpose.

The purpose of Uriel, or one of his purposes, is to enable free will. That includes offering denarian hosts other choices than the ones they get from the fallen. The knights make that possible.

So maybe Uriel made a deal with Vadderung about Murphy’s soul but that deal would include a free willed choice like Karin had to chose to die as a warrior. What is next is more flexible than just left or right.

Just like Uriel’s deal with Mab about Harry was based about a free willed choice for Harry. Literally with those doors in ghost story.

A monster like Uriel is defined by its purpose, its nature. As Mab said somewhere in battle ground that power is shaped by choices she made as a mortal. What she is was shaped by free willed choices in the past.

The white council is afraid of monster hood. They should be more concerned with the choices they make.

But if Harry becomes immortal he must find a purpose.

Flinging rocks at people, if flinging keys works just fine to get around the defence then rocks work even better. I was saying don't think about it too hard because in the end it's one line of backstory that hasn't aged well.

Ebenezer probably tried some complex magical trick and did not think it through. He also did not know about his daughters curse so he assumed papa raith could recover from any normal damage and just fill his tank again.

With the knowledge of the curse he could just go for the Kincaid approach as many times as needed but that simply did not occur to him and he did not have that knowledge. And he was also molded by white council training as papa Raith remarked.

He is also an older generation. We never see Ebenezer use a gun.

It was obviously meant as a wink and a nod to the Christmas Eve story, but it seemed kind of odd to me that at Mid-Summer, Michael was already telling Harry he was invited for Christmas.  It would have been more cohesive with something like "our home is always open to you".  Anyone else feel like that seemed a bit weird?

For some people it is a big thing. For others it is something they dread and try to avoid. Aparently Christmass is a big thing for the carpenters.

On the will Harry see Murphy again debate: Wizards are often considered to not be mortals, so there's a chance there. I don't think that would be within the time covered by the series. The other thing is that there's always an exception somewhere. I wouldn't be surprised if the BAT is that exception where all the Einherjarin come out to die one last time. That way Jim gets to kill Murphy twice.

But that is the nice thing about being an einherjar. After they kill her she can start partying and the next day Jim can kill her again and again.