Ghost

 ( Afterlife ) 

In folklore studies, ghosts fall within the motif index designation E200–E599 ("Ghosts and other revenants").

The common Proto-Indo-European form is posited as * ǵʰoys-d-os, a Dental consonant suffix derivative of the root ǵʰéys-. This root also appears Proto-Germanic *gaistjan ("to terrify"; compare Old English gǽstan and Gothic usgaisjan), in Old Norse * geiski ("fear"; implied in geiskafullr, "full of fear"), and in Avestan zōiš- (in zōišnu, "shivering, trembling").

Besides denoting a "person's spirit or soul" (as "the life force" or "breath of life" that gives life to the body, in contrast to its purely material being), the Old English word is also used as a synonym of Latin spīritus in the meaning of "the breath of God or a god" from the earliest attestations (9th century). It could also denote any good or evil spirit, such as angels and demons (the Anglo-Saxon gospel refers to the demonic possession of Matthew 12:43 as se unclæna gast). Also from the Old English period, the word could denote the spirit of God, the "Holy Ghost" ( halgan gaste), after post-classical Latin spiritus sanctus .

Wraith is a Scots language word for ghost, spectre, or apparition. It appeared in Scottish Romanticist literature, and acquired the more general or figurative sense of portent or omen. In 18th- to 19th-century Scottish literature, it also applied to aquatic spirits. The word has no commonly accepted etymology; the OED notes "of obscure origin" only. An association with the verb writhe was the etymology favored by J. R. R. Tolkien. Tolkien's use of the word in the naming of the creatures known as the Ringwraiths has influenced later usage in fantasy literature. Bogeyman bogey . Merriam-Webster (2012-08-31). Retrieved on 2013-03-21. or bogy/bogie is a term for a ghost, and appears in Scottish poet John Mayne's Hallowe'en in 1780.Robert Chambers The life and works of Robert Burns, Volume 1 Lippincott, Grambo & co., 1854 Ulster Scots – Words and Phrases:"Bogie" BBC Retrieved December 18, 2010

A revenant is a deceased person returning from the dead to haunt the living, either as a disembodied ghost or alternatively as an animated ("undead") corpse. Also related is the concept of a fetch, the visible ghost or spirit of a person yet alive.

In many cultures, malignant, restless ghosts are distinguished from the more benign spirits involved in ancestor worship.Richard Cavendish (1994) The World of Ghosts and the Supernatural. Waymark Publications, Basingstoke: 5

Ancestor worship typically involves rites intended to prevent , of the dead, imagined as starving and envious of the living. Strategies for preventing revenants may either include sacrifice; that is, giving the dead food and drink to pacify them, or magical banishment of the deceased to force them not to return. Ritual feeding of the dead is performed in traditions like the Chinese Ghost Festival or the Western All Souls' Day. Magical banishment of the dead is present in many of the world's . The bodies found in many tumuli (kurgan) had been ritually bound before burial,e.g. in graves of the Irish Bronze Age IOL.ie and the custom of binding the dead persists, for example, in rural Anatolia."In the immediate aftermath of a death, the deceased is removed from the bed he died in and placed on the prepared floor, called a 'comfort bed.' His jaw is bound up and his feet tied together (usually at the big toes)." Kultur.gov.tr (archive version)

Nineteenth-century anthropologist James Frazer stated in his classic work The Golden Bough that souls were seen as the creature within that animated the body."If a man lives and moves, it can only be because he has a little man or animal inside, who moves him. The animal inside the animal, the man inside the man, is the soul. And as the activity of an animal or man is explained by the presence of the soul, so the repose of sleep or death is explained by its absence; sleep or trance being the temporary, death being the permanent absence of the soul... " The Golden Bough , Project Gutenberg. Retrieved January 16, 2007.

By the 5th century BC, classical Greece ghosts had become haunting, frightening creatures who could work to either good or evil purposes. The spirit of the dead was believed to hover near the resting place of the corpse, and cemeteries were places the living avoided. The dead were to be ritually mourned through public ceremony, sacrifice, and libations, or else they might return to haunt their families. The ancient Greeks held annual feasts to honor and placate the spirits of the dead, to which the family ghosts were invited, and after which they were "firmly invited to leave until the same time next year."Finucane, pp. 8–11

The 5th-century BC play Oresteia includes an appearance of the ghost of Clytemnestra, one of the first ghosts to appear in a work of fiction.

Plutarch, in the 1st century AD, described the haunting of the baths at Chaeronea by the ghost of a murdered man. The ghost's loud and frightful groans caused the people of the town to seal up the doors of the building.Finucane, pg 13 Another celebrated account of a haunted house from the ancient classical world is given by Pliny the Younger (). Pliny describes the haunting of a house in Athens, which was bought by the Stoicism philosopher Athenodorus, who lived about 100 years before Pliny. Knowing that the house was supposedly haunted, Athenodorus intentionally set up his writing desk in the room where the apparition was said to appear and sat there writing until late at night when he was disturbed by a ghost bound in chains. He followed the ghost outside where it indicated a spot on the ground. When Athenodorus later excavated the area, a shackled skeleton was unearthed. The haunting ceased when the skeleton was given a proper reburial. The writers Plautus and Lucian also wrote stories about haunted houses.

In the New Testament, according to Luke 24:37–39, following his resurrection, Jesus was forced to persuade the Twelve Apostles that he was not a ghost (some versions of the Bible, such as the KJV and NKJV, use the term "spirit"). Similarly, Jesus' followers at first believed he was a ghost (spirit) when they saw him walking on water.

One of the first persons to express disbelief in ghosts was Lucian of Samosata in the 2nd century AD. In his satirical novel The Lover of Lies ( 150 AD), he relates how Democritus "the learned man from Abdera in Thrace" lived in a tomb outside the to prove that cemeteries were not haunted by the spirits of the departed. Lucian relates how he persisted in his disbelief despite perpetrated by "some young men of Abdera" who dressed up in black robes with skull masks to frighten him."The Doubter" by Lucian in Roger Lancelyn Green (1970) Thirteen Uncanny Tales. London, Dent: 14–21; and Finucane, pg 26. This account by Lucian notes something about the popular classical expectation of how a ghost should look.

In the 5th century AD, the Christian priest Constantius of Lyon recorded an instance of the recurring theme of the improperly buried dead who come back to haunt the living, and who can only cease their haunting when their bones have been discovered and properly reburied.F. R. Hoare, The Western Fathers, Sheed & Ward: New York, 1954, pp. 294–5.

Most ghosts were souls assigned to Purgatory, condemned for a specific period to atone for their transgressions in life. Their penance was generally related to their sin. For example, the ghost of a man who had been abusive to his servants was condemned to tear off and swallow bits of his own tongue; the ghost of another man, who had neglected to leave his cloak to the poor, was condemned to wear the cloak, now "heavy as a church tower". These ghosts appeared to the living to ask for prayers to end their suffering. Other dead souls returned to urge the living to confess their sins before their own deaths.Fincucane, pp. 70–77.

Medieval European ghosts were more substantial than ghosts described in the Victorian era, and there are accounts of ghosts being wrestled with and physically restrained until a priest could arrive to hear its confession. Some were less solid, and could move through walls. Often they were described as paler and sadder versions of the person they had been while alive, and dressed in tattered gray rags. The vast majority of reported sightings were male.Finucane, pp. 83–84.

There were some reported cases of ghostly armies, fighting battles at night in the forest, or in the remains of an Iron Age hillfort, as at Wandlebury, near Cambridge, England. Living knights were sometimes challenged to single combat by phantom knights, which vanished when defeated.Finucane, pg. 79.

From the medieval period an apparition of a ghost is recorded from 1211, at the time of the Albigensian Crusade.Mark Gregory Pegg (2008) A Most Holy War. Oxford University Press, New York: 3–5, 116–117. Gervase of Tilbury, Marshal of Arles, wrote that the image of Guilhem, a boy recently murdered in the forest, appeared in his cousin's home in Beaucaire, near Avignon. This series of "visits" lasted all of the summer. Through his cousin, who spoke for him, the boy allegedly held conversations with anyone who wished, until the local priest requested to speak to the boy directly, leading to an extended disquisition on theology. The boy narrated the trauma of death and the unhappiness of his fellow souls in Purgatory, and reported that God was most pleased with the ongoing Crusade against the Cathar heretics, launched three years earlier. The time of the Albigensian Crusade in southern France was marked by intense and prolonged warfare, this constant bloodshed and dislocation of populations being the context for these reported visits by the murdered boy.

Haunted houses are featured in the 9th-century Arabian Nights (such as the tale of Ali the Cairene and the Haunted House in Baghdad).

David Turner, a retired physical chemist, suggested that ball lightning could cause inanimate objects to move erratically.

Joe Nickell of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry wrote that there was no credible scientific evidence that any location was inhabited by spirits of the dead. Limitations of perception and ordinary physical explanations can account for ghost sightings; for example, air pressure changes in a home causing doors to slam, humidity changes causing boards to creak, condensation in electrical connections causing intermittent behavior, or lights from a passing car reflected through a window at night. Pareidolia, an innate tendency to recognize patterns in random perceptions, is what some skeptics believe causes people to believe that they have 'seen ghosts'. Reports of ghosts "seen out of the corner of the eye" may be accounted for by the sensitivity of human peripheral vision. According to Nickell, peripheral vision can easily mislead, especially late at night when the brain is tired and more likely to misinterpret sights and sounds.

"Once the idea of a ghost appears in a household ... no longer is an object merely mislaid .... There gets to be a dynamic in a place where the idea that it's haunted takes on a life of its own. One-of-a-kind quirks that could never be repeated all become further evidence of the haunting." Nickell further states, "science cannot substantiate the existence of a 'life energy' that could survive death without dissipating or function at all without a brain... why would... clothes survive?'" He asks, if ghosts glide, then why do people claim to hear them with "heavy footfalls"? Nickell says that ghosts act the same way as "dreams, memories, and imaginings, because they too are mental creations. They are evidence – not of another world, but of this real and natural one."

Benjamin Radford from the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and author of the 2017 book Investigating Ghosts: The Scientific Search for Spirits writes that "ghost hunting is the world's most popular paranormal pursuit" yet, to date, ghost hunters cannot agree on what a ghost is, or offer proof that they exist; "it's all speculation and guesswork". He writes that it would be "useful and important to distinguish between types of spirits and apparitions. Until then it's merely a parlor game distracting amateur ghost hunters from the task at hand."

According to research in anomalistic psychology visions of ghosts may arise from hypnagogia hallucinations ("waking dreams" experienced in the transitional states to and from sleep). In a study of two experiments into alleged hauntings (Wiseman et al.. 2003) came to the conclusion "that people consistently report unusual experiences in 'haunted' areas because of environmental factors, which may differ across locations." Some of these factors included "the variance of local magnetic fields, size of location and lighting level stimuli of which witnesses may not be consciously aware".

Some researchers, such as Michael Persinger of Laurentian University, Canada, have speculated that changes in geomagnetic fields (created, e.g., by tectonic stresses in the Earth's crust or solar variation) could stimulate the brain's and produce many of the experiences associated with hauntings. Richard Wiseman . Retrieved September 25, 2007. Sound is thought to be another cause of supposed sightings. Richard Lord and Richard Wiseman have concluded that infrasound can cause humans to experience bizarre feelings in a room, such as anxiety, extreme sorrow, a feeling of being watched, or even the chills. Carbon monoxide poisoning, which can cause changes in perception of the visual and auditory systems, was speculated upon as a possible explanation for as early as 1921.

People who experience sleep paralysis often report seeing ghosts during their experiences. Neuroscientists Baland Jalal and V.S. Ramachandran have recently proposed neurological theories for why people hallucinate ghosts during sleep paralysis. Their theories emphasize the role of the parietal lobe and in triggering such ghostly hallucinations.

Jewish mythology and folkloric traditions describe , malicious possessing spirits believed to be the dislocated soul of a dead person. However, the term does not appear in the Kabbalah or literature, where it is rather called an "unclean spirit" or (). It supposedly leaves the host body once it has accomplished its goal, sometimes after being helped.

The Bhutas (singular 'Bhuta'), spirits of Apotheosis heroes, of fierce and evil beings, of Hindu deity and of animals, etc., are wrongly referred to as "ghosts" or "demons" and, in fact, are protective and benevolent beings. Though it is true that they can cause harm in their violent forms, as they are extremely powerful, they can be pacified through worship or offerings referred to as Bhuta Aradhana."Museums of India - National Handicrafts and Handilooms Museum, New Delhi" () by Jyontindra Jain and Aarti Aggarwala.

The Churel, also spelled as Charail, Churreyl, Chudail, Chudel, Chuṛail, Cuḍail or Cuḍel (, ), is a spirit of a woman who died during pregnancy or childbirth, which may be a revenant said to occur in South Asia and Southeast Asia, particularly popular in India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan. The churel is typically described as "the restless ghost of an unpurified living thing", but because she is often said to latch on to trees, she is also called a tree-spirit. According to some legends, a woman who dies during childbirth or pregnancy or from suffering at the hands of her in-laws will come back as a revenant churel for revenge, particularly targeting the males in her family.

The churel is mostly described as extremely ugly and hideous but is able to shape-shift and disguise herself as a beautiful woman to lure men into the woods or mountains where she either kills them or sucks up their Vitality or virility, turning them into old men. Their feet are believed to be turned the other way around, so the toes face the direction of their back. The churel is called as Pichal Peri in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

There are many folk remedies and folkloric sayings that elaborate on how to get rid of revenant, bhoot and churels, and a number measures that supposedly prevent churels from coming to life. The family of a woman who dies a traumatic, tragic, or unnatural death might perform special rituals fearing that the victimised woman might return as a churel. The corpses of suspected churels are also buried in a particular method and posture so as to prevent her from returning.

The ghosts take many forms, depending on how the person died, and are often harmful. Many Chinese ghost beliefs have been accepted by neighboring cultures, notably Japan and southeast Asia. Ghost beliefs are closely associated with traditional Chinese religion based on ancestor worship, many of which were incorporated in Taoism. Later beliefs were influenced by Buddhism, and in turn influenced and created uniquely Chinese Buddhist beliefs.

Many Chinese today believe it possible to contact the spirits of their ancestors through a medium, and that ancestors can help descendants if properly respected and rewarded. The annual ghost festival is celebrated by Chinese around the world. On this day, ghosts and spirits, including those of the deceased ancestors, come out from the underworld. Ghosts are described in classical Chinese texts as well as modern literature and films.

An article in the China Post stated that nearly 87 percent of Chinese office workers believe in ghosts, and some 52 percent of workers will wear hand art, necklaces, crosses, or even place a crystal ball on their desks to keep ghosts at bay, according to the poll. The prevalence of belief is such that the ruling party has actively sought to discourage citizens.

Like their Chinese folklore and Western counterparts, they are thought to be spirits kept from a peaceful afterlife.

Spirits of the dead appear in literature as early as Homer's Odyssey, which features a journey to the underworld and the hero encountering the ghosts of the dead, and the Old Testament, in which the Witch of Endor summons the spirit of the prophet Samuel.

In English Renaissance theater, ghosts were often depicted in the garb of the living and even in armor, as with the ghost of Hamlet's father. Armor, being out-of-date by the time of the Renaissance, gave the stage ghost a sense of antiquity.Ann Jones & Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory, Cambridge University Press, 2000. But the sheeted ghost began to gain ground on stage in the 19th century because an armored ghost could not satisfactorily convey the requisite spookiness: it clanked and creaked, and had to be moved about by complicated pulley systems or elevators. These clanking ghosts being hoisted about the stage became objects of ridicule as they became clichéd stage elements. Ann Jones and Peter Stallybrass, in Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory, point out, "In fact, it is as laughter increasingly threatens the Ghost that he starts to be staged not in armor but in some form of 'spirit drapery'."

Famous literary apparitions from this period are the ghosts of A Christmas Carol, in which Ebenezer Scrooge is helped to see the error of his ways by the ghost of his former colleague Jacob Marley, and the ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet to Come.

Children's benevolent ghost stories became popular, such as Casper the Friendly Ghost, created in the 1930s and appearing in comics, , and eventually a 1995 feature film.

With the advent of motion pictures and television, screen depictions of ghosts became common, and spanned a variety of genres; the works of Shakespeare, Dickens and Wilde have all been made into cinematic versions. Novel-length tales have been difficult to adapt to cinema, although that of The Haunting of Hill House to The Haunting in 1963 is an exception.

Sentimental depictions during this period were more popular in cinema than horror, and include the 1947 film The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, which was later adapted to television with a successful 1968–1970 TV series. Genuine psychological horror films from this period include 1944's The Uninvited, and 1945's Dead of Night.