Village ghost finally possesses joint (8)
I believe the answer is:
township
'village' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'ghost finally possesses joint' is the wordplay.
'finally' says to take the final letters.
'possesses' becomes 'owns' ('own' can be a synonym of 'possess').
'joint' becomes 'hip' (part of body).
The final letter of 'ghost' is 't'.
't'+'owns'+'hip'='TOWNSHIP'
(Other definitions for township that I've seen before include "Poor suburb (South Africa) - county division (US) - part of parish (England)" , "In South Africa during apartheid, an urban area assigned to black nationals" , "Small community" , "Old manor" , "Settlement" .)