A ghost elimination device equipped in a television receiver extracts a reference signal from the television signal, the reference signal being inserted in the television signal in a certain sequence or at random with the intention of ghost elimination, implements the sequence decoding process and noise elimination process for the reference signal, and controls the characteristics of the ghost eliminating transversal filter which suppresses the transmission distortion. The device includes a sequence decoding circuit for decoding the transmission sequence of the reference signal, a transversal filter for suppressing the distortion of transmission path disposed in a rear stage of sequence decoding circuit, and a controller which introduces the reference signal provided by the filter to control the characteristics of the filter or apply the output of the sequence decoding circuit to the transversal filter through a noise elimination filter. The transversal filter has a tapped delay line formed of registers with an initialization terminal and an input terminal for controlling the initialization terminal.