In folklore, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a dead person or non-human animal that is believed by some people to be able to appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely, from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes to realistic, lifelike forms, whether they resemble humans or animals. The deliberate attempt to contact the spirit of a deceased person is known as necromancy, or in spiritism as a séance. Other terms associated with it are apparition, haunt, haint, phantom, poltergeist, shade, specter, spirit, spook, wraith, demon, and ghoul.
The belief in the existence of an afterlife, as well as manifestations of the spirits of the dead, is widespread, dating back to animism or ancestor worship in pre-literate cultures. Certain religious practices—funeral rites, exorcisms, and some practices of spiritualism and ritual magic—are specifically designed to rest the spirits of the dead. Ghosts are generally described as solitary, human-like essences, though stories of ghostly armies and the ghosts of animals other than humans have also been recounted.Hole, pp. 150–163 They are believed to haunt particular locations, objects, or people they were associated with in life. According to a 2009 study by the Pew Research Center, 18% of Americans say they have seen a ghost.
Ghosts are not a scientifically testable concept.Bunge, Mario. Philosophy of Science: From Problem to Theory . Transaction Publishers; 1998. . p. 178–. The existence of ghosts is impossible to falsify, and ghost hunting has been classified as pseudoscience. Despite centuries of investigation, there is no scientific evidence that any location is inhabited by the spirits of the dead. Historically, certain toxic and psychoactive plants (such as datura and hyoscyamus niger), whose use has long been associated with necromancy and the underworld, have been shown to contain anticholinergic compounds that are pharmacologically linked to dementia (specifically DLB) as well as histological patterns of neurodegeneration. Recent research has indicated that ghost sightings may be related to degenerative brain diseases such as Alzheimer's disease.A case of progressive posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) with vivid hallucination: are some ghost tales vivid hallucinations in normal people? Furuya et al. Common prescription medication and over-the-counter drugs (such as sleep aids) may also, in rare instances, cause ghost-like hallucinations, particularly zolpidem and diphenhydramine. Older reports linked carbon monoxide poisoning to ghost-like hallucinations.
In folklore studies, ghosts fall within the motif index designation E200–E599 ("Ghosts and other revenants").
Terminology
Etymology The English word ghost comes from Old English gāst ("breath, spirit, soul, ghost"), which can be traced back to Proto-Germanic *gaistaz ("spirit, ghost"). It is cognate (linguistic sibling from a common origin) with Old Frisian gāst ("spirit, ghost, demon"), Old Saxon gēst ("soul, vitality, spirit, demon"), Old Dutch gēst ("spirit"), and Old High German ("spirit"). Although recorded descendants do not appear in North and East Germanic sources (where Gothic uses ahma and Old Norse uses m. or f.), linguists reconstruct *gaistaz as stemming from pre-Germanic *ghois-t-oz ("fury, anger"). This reconstruction is supported by its connection to Sanskrit hīḍ- ("to be angry") and héḍa ("anger"), and to Avestan zōižda- ("terrible"; in zōiždišta "most terrible")., s.v. ghost, n.
The common Proto-Indo-European form is posited as *ǵʰoys-d-os, a dental 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.
Usage and synonyms The now-prevailing sense of "the soul of a deceased person, spoken of as appearing in a visible form" only emerges in Middle English (14th century). The modern noun does, however, retain a wider field of application, extending on one hand to "soul", "spirit", "vital principle", "mind", or "psyche", the seat of feeling, thought, and moral judgement; on the other hand used figuratively of any shadowy outline, or fuzzy or unsubstantial image; in optics, photography, and cinematography especially, a flare, secondary image, or spurious signal.
The synonym spook is a Dutch loanword, akin to Low German (of uncertain etymology); it entered the English language via American English in the 19th century.Mencken, H. L. (1936, repr. 1980). The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States (4th edition). New York: Knopf, p. 108.Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, spook.Webster's New World College Dictionary (4th edition), Wiley, spook. Alternative words in modern usage include spectre (altn. specter; from Latin ), the Scottish wraith (of obscure origin), phantom (via French ultimately from Greek phantasma, compare fantasy) and apparition. The term shade in classical mythology translates Greek σκιά,οὗτος . Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon. or Latin ,umbra . Charlton T. Lewis, Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary in reference to the notion of spirits in the Greek underworld. The term poltergeist is a German word, literally a "noisy ghost", for a spirit said to manifest itself by invisibly moving and influencing objects.
Wraith is a Scots 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. Bogeybogey . 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., 1854Ulster 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.
Typology
Anthropological context
A notion of the transcendent, supernatural, or numinous, usually involving entities like ghosts, demons, or deities, is a cultural universal.Donald Brown (1991) Human Universals. Philadelphia, Temple University Press (online summary ). In pre-literate folk religions, these beliefs are often summarized under animism and ancestor worship. Some people believe the ghost or spirit never leaves Earth until there is no-one left to remember the one who died.Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology edited by J. Gordon Melton, Gale Group,
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 revenants, vengeful spirits 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 burial customs. 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.
Ghosts and the afterlife
Although the human soul was sometimes symbolically or literally depicted in ancient cultures as a bird or other animal, it appears to have been widely held that the soul was an exact reproduction of the body in every feature, even down to clothing the person wore. This is depicted in artwork from various ancient cultures, including such works as the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which shows deceased people in the afterlife appearing much as they did before death, including the style of dress.
Fear of ghosts
While deceased ancestors are universally regarded as venerable, and often believed to have a continued presence in some form of afterlife, the spirit of a deceased person that persists in the material world (a ghost) is regarded as an unnatural or undesirable state of affairs and the idea of ghosts or revenants is associated with a reaction of fear. This is universally the case in pre-modern folk cultures, but fear of ghosts also remains an integral aspect of the modern ghost story, Gothic horror, and other horror fiction dealing with the supernatural.
Common attributes Another widespread belief concerning ghosts is that they are composed of a misty, airy, or subtle material. Anthropologists link this idea to early beliefs that ghosts were the person within the person (the person's spirit), most noticeable in ancient cultures as a person's breath, which upon exhaling in colder climates appears visibly as a white mist. This belief may have also fostered the metaphorical meaning of "breath" in certain languages, such as the Latin spiritus and the Greek pneuma, which by analogy became extended to mean the soul. In the Bible, God is depicted as synthesising Adam, as a living soul, from the dust of the Earth and the breath of God.
In many traditional accounts, ghosts were often thought to be deceased people looking for vengeance (vengeful ghosts), or imprisoned on earth for bad things they did during life. The appearance of a ghost has often been regarded as an omen or portent of death. Seeing one's own ghostly double or "fetch" is a related omen of death.Hole, pp. 13–27 The impetus of haunting is commonly considered an unnatural death.