In Stephen King’s The Shining, Delbert Grady is the ghost of one of the previous caretakers of the Overlook Hotel. He murdered his wife as well as their two young daughters many winters before Jack Torrance’s own psychotic break doing the same job. His life ended in suicide.
Stuart Ullman, the priggish hotel general manager, told Jack that Delbert drank and fell victim to cabin fever. He also informs Jack that Delbert was uneducated.
During the period when the hotel seduces and overpowers Jack’s own personality, Delbert Grady appears to Jack as a hallucination. In the vision, Delbert Grady metamorphosises into a very suave, elegant, and precisely spoken British butler type. The illusion of Delbert chastises Jack for having less than perfect control over his family and explains that he effectively chastised his own family. He did so with an axe.