In this paper the spectral properties of the abstract Klein–Gordon equation are studied. The main tool is an indefinite inner product known as the charge inner product. Under certain assumptions on the potential V, two operators are associated with the Klein–Gordon equation and studied in Krein spaces generated by the charge inner product. It is shown that the operators are self-adjoint and definitizable in these Krein spaces. As a consequence, they possess spectral functions with singularities, their essential spectra are real with a gap around 0 and their non-real spectra consist of finitely many eigenvalues of finite algebraic multiplicity which are symmetric to the real axis. One of these operators generates a strongly continuous group of unitary operators in the Krein space; the other one gives rise to two bounded semi-groups. Finally, the results are applied to the Klein–Gordon equation in ℝn.