Lets talk Ghosts

[Rusty64]

I searched the forum and it seems to be lacking a general discussion thread for ghosts(I'm limiting my definition here to refer to the spirits or energetic marks left by once living humans or animals). This thread is just here to post your beliefs on ghosts, how/why they form. I mean according to all popular afterlife beliefs(heaven, ascension, reincarnation, nothing) ghosts shouldn't exist, yet I'm sure most of you on this forum have had an experience with them in someway, most people even those who aren't into mysticism people have at least one solid "ghost story".

I'm not one 100% sure but I think there are two distinct entities that get labeled "ghosts" firstly the spirit of a person once living that is still on earth either due to being trapped somehow or perhaps by choice. And stains on reality left by people's psychic energy, the latter is very interesting to me and what I think makes up a lot of popular "hauntings" simply the mark left by a persons thoughts and actions, an automatic unthinking puppet, like a scratched recorded that keeps looping one part. It simply carry's out actions, and may or may not respond to stimui, and just hang around till the stagnet energy runs out or they're exorcised.

Lastly I have reason to belive that people who were particualrly trained or just talatneted in their clairvoyance and general mysical ability are better at commuication with the physical if they end up or choose to be a ghost than thoese that weren't. also of course the sooner after death the more potent a ghost, thats my personal theory to the whole "why are they not reincarnted/in an afterlife" simply that there is a liminal period between death and the next life, a spirual cooldown period.

 

[Eliyel]

Some interesting ideas here! I've grown to think thoughtforms are a big contender for a lot of ghost activity. Widespread stories or concentrated belief in a particular person's lingering spirit coming either from a bunch of spooky story enthusiasts, or grieving friends and family hoping to make contact, could easily have a way of taking direct shape in the nonphysical to mimic the deceased person. As time passes on and memories or emotions fade, that thoughtform gradually weakens, or it might end up growing stronger in cases of the story achieving far-reaching infamy.

I do think that actual spirits of the deceased might occasionally swing by to see how things are going, but I haven't personally seen a lot to convince me that people end up getting legitimately trapped after they die, or that they would want to hang around watching from the sidelines 24/7.

 

[Suayakoat]

I think ghosts are mere "glitches in the matrix" which appear when the "system" for processing Souls on this world goes wrong in one way or the other. I believe there are spiritual hierarchies and other entities responsible for the "processing" of souls on the planet and they are a little bit like the police or other law enforcement organization-they do their job for the most part and the system works well, however, well...there would always be those "outlaws" that manage to escape the system in one way or another and behold...ghosts! Spirits that have a particularly strong will, are unable to easily reach the other dimensions through trauma or just unfinished business here, and those who are simply too stubborn to accept they have died could and do turn into ghosts and we observe them in the physical. That is why, for example, fields of battle, e.g. place where many people unwillingly lost their lives, become haunted soon after the event. When too much of a life is wasted to death and the soul holding that life simply can't go on a ghost appears.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

I don't really have any strong ideas about what ghosts are, but I lean towards some variant of the 'stone tape' idea. Ghosts almost always associate with a place, and I think something about that place has trapped something that thinks it is still a person, or, like an LLM, displays behaviours that make us think that it is a person. Maybe there is some connection with poltergeists, maybe not.

 

[Swampdweller900]

Ghosts are fascinating because there seem to be a variety of different kinds that can arise from humans. Personally, I think a space and emotional experience is a huge part of what leaves a human ghost behind. But I think they fall into 3 main categories:

Emotional residue in a space from repeated exposure. This is your classic "replay" haunting where you get something like a woman is seen in a hallway, doing something mundane. My personal opinion is that years of doing the same thing, feeling the same heightened state, in the same place, can etch some part of our egos onto the space. These can exist in places where the person haunting the space didn't die, and the person might have died peacefully, hundreds of miles away.

Emotional residue from short or singular exposure to extremely high emotions. This is more like "someone was murdered here and we still hear the screams!" type of haunting. Especially when an end of life event occurs at the location. I personally think that these can also be spirits of people who don't realize they're dead, or don't want to transition over because of wanting to share information about the event of their lives that is so important that they get stuck in a loop thinking about it.

Spirit attachment to living people. This is less "I feel like grandma is with me now," and more like "Your dead mother is attached to you and draining your energy." Similar to the spirit feeling something was left undone, a haunting that follows someone around and is not attached to a location.

For the last two, these would sometimes fall into the category of "Hungry Ghosts" where there's a bit more sentience, and sometimes the spirits understand that they need to draw energy from our 3D mundane space to interact with us. I've heard one retelling of an NDE, likely unreliable, that some people pass and if they don't cross over, an entity attached to them will offer them "immortality" to turn them into some energetic leech that persists able to see our realm and not (or barely) interact. Which sounds friggin' terrible to me, but I can see people making that deal.

 

[Planet13]

I sometimes wonder whether “spirits” are less independent beings and more like echoes — not voices from outside, but resonances within us.
I once visited a place without knowing anything about my ancestry there. While I was there, a quiet idea arose from within me to look into my family tree. Later I discovered that several branches of my ancestors had lived in that exact area, and in the surrounding villages, about 300 years ago.
That made me question whether what we call “spirits” might sometimes be something else: a form of continuity. Memory that lives on through people rather than as a separate entity. A kind of ancestral resonance that surfaces when we’re ready to connect with it.
An echo isn’t a separate voice — it’s a response. Maybe certain places, histories, or moments activate something already present within us. Not because a spirit is actively reaching out, but because we are part of an ongoing story that stretches further back than we consciously know.
So perhaps “ghosts” are not always external presences. Perhaps sometimes they are the feeling of belonging to a longer thread of existence — the quiet awareness that we are not as disconnected from the past as we think.