  By using the ghost imaging technique, we experimentally demonstrate the
reconstruction of the diffraction pattern of a {\em pure phase} object by using
the classical correlation of incoherent thermal light split on a beam splitter.
The results once again underline that entanglement is not a necessary feature
of ghost imaging. The light we use is spatially highly incoherent with respect
to the object ($\approx 2 \mu$m speckle size) and is produced by a
pseudo-thermal source relying on the principle of near-field scattering. We
show that in these conditions no information on the phase object can be
retrieved by only measuring the light that passed through it, neither in a
direct measurement nor in a Hanbury Brown-Twiss (HBT) scheme. In general, we
show a remarkable complementarity between ghost imaging and the HBT scheme when
dealing with a phase object.
