Ghost

A **Ghost** is the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that is believed 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. The deliberate attempt to contact the spirit of a deceased person is known as necromancy, or in spiritism as a séance.

## Terminology

The English word ghost continues Old English gāst. Stemming from Proto-Germanic *\**gaistaz, it is cognate with Old Frisian gāst, Old Saxon gēst, Old Dutch gēst, and Old High German geist. Although this form is not attested in North Germanic and East Germanic languages, it appears to be a dental suffix derivative of pre-Germanic *\**ghois-d-oz, which is comparable to Sanskrit héḍas and Avestan zōižda. The prior Proto-Indo-European form is reconstructed as *\**ǵʰéys-d-os, from the root *\**ǵʰéys*-*, which is reflected in Old Norse geisa and *\**geiski, in Gothic usgaisjan and usgaisnan, as well as in Avestan zōiš.

## Typology

A notion of the transcendent, supernatural, or numinous, usually involving entities like ghosts, demons, or deities, is a cultural universal. 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.

## History

There are many references to ghosts in Mesopotamian religions – the religions of Sumer, Babylon, Assyria, and other early states in Mesopotamia. Traces of these beliefs survive in the later Abrahamic religions that came to dominate the region. Ghosts were thought to be created at time of death, taking on the memory and personality of the dead person. They traveled to the Shadow Realm, where they were assigned a position, and led an existence similar in some ways to that of the living. Relatives of the dead were expected to make offerings of food and drink to the dead to ease their conditions. If they did not, the ghosts could inflict misfortune and illness on the living. Traditional healing practices ascribed a variety of illnesses to the action of ghosts, while others were caused by gods or demons.

## Religion

The Hebrew Bible contains several references to owb, which are in a few places akin to ghosts of classical mythology but mostly describing mediums in connection with necromancy and spirit-consulting, which are grouped with witchcraft and other forms of divination under the category of forbidden occult activities. The most notable reference to a ghost is in the First Book of Samuel, in which a disguised King Saul has the Witch of Endor conduct a seance to summon the dead prophet Samuel. A similar term appearing throughout the scriptures is repha', which while describing the race of "giants" formerly inhabiting Canaan in many verses, also refer to dead ancestors of Sheol in many others such as in the Book of Isaiah.

## Culture

For the Igbo people, a man is simultaneously a physical and spiritual entity. However, it is his spirited dimension that is eternal. In the Akan conception, we witness five parts of the human personality. We have the Nipadua, the Okra, Sunsum, Ntoro, Mogya. The Humr people of southwestern Kordofan, Sudan consume the drink Umm Nyolokh, which is prepared from the liver and bone marrow of giraffes. Richard Rudgley hypothesises that Umm Nyolokh may contain DMT and certain online websites further theorise that giraffe liver might owe its putative psychoactivity to substances derived from psychoactive plants, such as Acacia consumed by the animal. The drink is said to cause hallucinations of giraffes, believed by the Humr to be the ghosts of giraffes.

## Depictions

Ghosts are prominent in story-telling of various nations. The ghost story is ubiquitous across all cultures from oral folktales to works of literature. While ghost stories are often explicitly meant to be scary, they have been written to serve all sorts of purposes, from comedy to morality tales. Ghosts often appear in the narrative as sentinels or prophets of things to come. Belief in ghosts is found in all cultures around the world, and thus ghost stories may be passed down orally or in written form.

## Capabilities

A ghost is a spirit of the dead, often bound to stay until certain conditions are met. This can vary from honorable burial, unfinished business or self-appointed duties.

## Common powers

**Cold Presence:** Ghosts have the ability to project a field that lowers the temperature around them, creating a constant chill.

**Corporealization:** Ghosts can transform non-corporeal beings and themselves, into a physical form with a tangible body.

**Ectoplasm Manipulation:** Ghosts can create, shape and manipulate extra-planar energy called ectoplasm, which comes from the roots ektos meaning “outside” and plasma meaning “something formed or molded”, as such it can be understood as a variable-state form of matter-energy coming from realms beyond the physical.

**Electronic Disruption:** Ghosts can disrupt electronic signals, causing cell phones and other electrical appliances to work erratically, or fail completely.

**Energy Independence:** Ghosts have an independence from energy, having no need to eat, drink, sleep, ATP, Mitchondrion.

**Haunting:** Ghosts can cause an area, buildings, vehicles, or objects to become a festering ground for ghosts and lost spirits.

**Immortality:** Ghosts possess immortality, a state where they can never die.

**Inaudibility:** Ghosts are inaudible, either being able to be completely silent or allow themselves to only be heard by certain individuals or make things around them inaudible too.

**Inodorosity:** Ghosts bodies possess no discernible scent, allowing them to evade users of Enhanced Smell among other things.

**Intangibility:** Ghosts can move through solid objects and ignore most physical effects in their way; the exact means of how this is done vary between slipping partially into other dimensions, being able to make their particles move between different particles, being a non-physical being of energy, vibrating their molecules into a new quantum frequency, etc. Regardless the user can ignore most attacks, physical dangers, and gravity.

**Invisibility:** Ghosts can render themselves unseen by the naked eye and become invisible in visible spectrum.

**Invulnerability:** Ghosts are immune to any forms of physical damage and harm regardless of its type or level of power, unable to feel physical pain, and is immune to bleeding or loss of limb.

**Flight:** Ghosts can fly or otherwise move through the air using various methods.

**Physical Force Immunity:** Ghosts are unaffected by various physical forces.

**Portal Creation:** Ghosts can open a hole in the universe connecting two non-adjacent locations.

**Possession:** Ghosts can inhabit or take over the body of other beings, whether sentient or not, by stealing their motor functions and senses.

**Psionics:** Ghosts can use various forms of psychic abilities, including psychokinesis, telepathy, teleportation, precognition, etc.

**Regenerative Healing Factor:** Ghosts possess a regenerative healing factor, meaning that they can rapidly heal and get restored to their optimal and full health at an extremely fast rate.

**Shapeshifting:** Ghosts can change their shape, size, color, density, texture, cellular composition, and atomic composition to mimic qualities, impersonate entities, amplify abilities, and traverse environments.

**Supernatural Condition:** Ghosts possess supernatural capabilities, attributes and aspects that are drastically beyond what is naturally possible.