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Are ghosts real? What to know about paranormal activity, according to experts

Half of Americans believe their house is haunted with a ghost

Have you ever experienced something that defies all logic? An unseen presence, or something so inexplicable that it can only be described as supernatural ?

You’re not alone.

According to a 2022 YouGov poll , nearly two-thirds of Americans say they’ve had a paranormal encounter of some kind, including things like hearing unexplained voices , seeing objects move on their own volition, as well as other experiences that can only be considered...well, unearthly.

And nearly one in five people polled claimed to have seen a spirit or a ghost .

While apparitions from the afterlife make for scary horror movies and spooky campfire tales , the question "Are ghosts real?" is one people of almost every culture have been pondering for thousands of years, if not since the beginning of time.

To better understand the plausibility of apparitions and other paranormal activity , TODAY reached out to a trio of experts to share their thoughts on the spirit world and whether or not ghosts really exist. And if you're experiencing a haunting or hosting an unwanted visitor, they've got some advice.

So: What are ghosts?

For many people, the word “ghost” conjures up one of two images: A menacing apparition that terrorizes unsuspecting homeowners, or a cute trick-or-treater covered in a white bed sheet.

Pop-culture perceptions aside, the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a ghost as a “disembodied soul,” or the soul of someone who’s died that either lives in the spirit world or, somehow, still exists in ours.

Sherrie Dillard , medium and author of the book “I’m Still With You,” says it's important to distinguish between ghosts and the spirits of loved ones who have passed on. Because according to Dillard, they aren't the same thing.

When loved ones die, she says they leave the earth and pass into a "higher loving existence," whether it be heaven, "the light" or any other concept of the afterlife.

Similar to ghosts, Dillard says that we may occasionally feel the presence of those loved ones after they are gone, whether it be in dreams, paranormal activity or other encounter. And in those instances, she says we typically have feelings of warmth, recognition or love.

“It doesn’t emotionally incite,” she tells TODAY.com. “For most people, we don’t get scared or fearful. Most of the time people will recognize, ‘Oh, I feel like my grandmother was here, or my mother or father, or just have that feeling.’”

Ghosts, however, are a different story. Dillard says we rarely, if ever, know who they are. “Usually, it strikes us as a different energy. It strikes us as something we’re not familiar with,” she explains.

If not acquaintances or loved ones, then...who are they?

“Most commonly, ghosts are human beings, people who pass over and, for various reasons, resist going into that higher level of love and resolution," says Dillard. She explains that one of the reasons a ghost might stick around instead of moving on to “the other side” is trauma.

“They may have been in a sudden accident, or some trauma unexpectedly, and they don’t realize that they are actually passed over,” she says. “I know that sounds strange, but it’s true.”

Confused or “lost,” the ghost lingers. “What they do is they try clinging to any kind of energy source; they’ll cling to a house or the people in the house.”

Ghosts can also be attached to other physical objects, she says, including antiques or anything with a “strong emotional energy.”

Psychic and medium Chip Coffey has appeared on more than 130 paranormal TV shows, including “Kindred Spirits.” And much like Dillard, he considers ghosts to be deceased people whose souls haven’t properly transitioned.

“They’re kind of stuck in the middle someplace. They’ve remained on the third-dimension plane and, for whatever reason, they may have, they haven’t completed their transition into Spirit,” he tells TODAY.com.

What does science say about ghosts?

Christine Simmonds-Moore, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology at the University of West Georgia who specializes in parapsychological research.

According to Simmonds-Moore, ghosts are found in every single culture and have been recorded throughout history.

“Ghosts come from experience,” she tells TODAY.com. “So, human beings have had experiences with spirits — and we can be neutral on whether some of those are genuine spirits, or whether they are explained more normally. But irrespective of that, people have had experiences because it’s a big part of being human.”

Whether those experiences are related to more earthly things like a near-death experience, loss of a loved one, or occur in an altered state such as a dream, deep relaxation or are chemically induced, in trying to understand them, they can change our perception or beliefs.

From there, those beliefs can lead to other experiences, including seeing ghosts. Bottom line? If you think there are ghosts, then you’re more inclined to think you’ve seen one.

“There’s a whole hierarchy of different types of ghost experiences,” Simmonds-Moore says, “and some of them are much more easy to explain using normal psychology than others.”

That said, Simmonds-Moore says that there are incidences in which people have paranormal encounters and inexplicably gain “access to information that they didn’t have access to” prior to those encounters. And those are somewhat less easy to explain.

Examples include things like people traveling to a location they’ve never been to, yet they “seem to know things what they shouldn’t know,” including events that occurred there or what a person they’ve never met was wearing, and other unexplainable circumstances.

“It doesn’t mean that it’s the media idea of a ghost, that there’s something persisting and haunting. It could be that it’s information that is tied to a place ,and some people who are in these different states are more able to notice that information and have access to than others,” she says.

According to Simmonds-Moore, some people believe they’ve had encounters with deceased loved ones, which is understandable given feelings of bereavement and loss, she says.

“But sometimes they might know that somebody’s going to pass before they do, or they might an encounter with an apparition, and they don’t know that the person has actually passed away and they see the apparition at the point of death and dying,” she says.

More than that, they might know how the person died even before the information has been relayed.

“I think that there are probably some extremely strong cases that are very rare, where you can’t always apply the normal explanation,” Simmonds-Moore says. “But the fact that they occur at all is interesting.”

So does all of this information make the case that ghosts are real?

“I think it’s probably more like information that has aspects of somebody’s life that might persist, and then other people might be able to access that field of consciousness," Simmonds-Moore says.

Whether they exist in the traditional sense or not, Simmonds-Moore says that there are many, very rare experiences that are difficult to explain.

In those cases, normal explanations don't necessarily fit.

"This implies that there are some experiences that are more intriguing, so there is a big question mark for those."

Let's say ghosts are real: What do ghosts want?

When it’s a loved one visiting us, Coffey says there are a variety of reasons to explain why they’ve come.

“Sometimes it’s because they love us and they want us to understand that death is not the end, that death doesn’t end relationships — it just alters them, changes them. Sometimes it’s because we call them up and they can choose whether or not they’re going to interact with us. But many times, they’ll willingly come through and bridge that gap where our two realms connect,” he says.

Ghosts, however, have a different agenda, says Dillard.

“Wherever there’s strong emotional energy, they’re attracted to it because they need a source of energy,” she says. “And sometimes ghosts will want to be known, they’ll want to be recognized, because they want our emotional reaction.”

Even if that reaction is stress or fear, Dillard says ghosts don’t mind because one way or another, they’re receiving the attention or emotional energy they’re seeking. “They sometimes want help, too. They’ll want someone to see them, know them, know there’s something here and tell them where to go.”

In rare cases, Dillard says certain ghosts, like poltergeists, have a darker purpose and, unlike lost souls seeking direction, they gravitate toward negative energy.

For instance, places with a lot of history or where bad things or traumas have occurred can attract these negative spirits.

“They invoke an incredible amount of fear in people for good reason. If you’ve got something flying across the room, it could hurt you. And they don’t tend to react or respond to us in any other way than invoking fear in a negative, powerful way,” she explains.

Even more rare are demonic spirits like the one portrayed in the horror movie “The Exorcist.” But according to Dillard, they do exist. “They will happen,” she says. “There’s documented cases of things.”

What to do if you think you have a ghost?

While some people are convinced that ghosts, spirits, poltergeists or other otherworldly apparitions are real, there are, of course, skeptics.

“In my line of work, I get that all the time,” says Dillard. “I just tell people that it’s fine. With things like this, we can only really believe if we’ve experienced them.

"We can believe it’s possible, we can believe that maybe someone else may believe it. But, normally, we become true believers when we’ve had some form of experience.”

According to Coffey, he’s seen far too much to not believe there’s more than meets the eye.

“How can there be so many stories about ghosts and spirits and paranormal things and just the realm of the weird for there not to be something there? I mean, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

He also dismisses the idea that only certain places on earth are “haunted.”

“I think every place is haunted. ‘Haunted’ is not a bad word. It’s just the presence of paranormal or spiritual activity,” he says.

“There can be the 'mom-and-pop' garden variety, non-malicious, non-malevolent haunting. Absolutely. A lot of people have died throughout history. There are a lot of dead people out there. So, ‘haunted?’ You’ve probably got spirits floating in this space right here. Most places have spirit activity,” Coffey explains.

For the average person, however, a ghost encounter, whether benign or not, can be pretty unsettling, if not downright scary.

If you believe it’s happening to you, Dillard suggests firmly, but kindly, telling them to leave.

“You can send a thought message, you can send a verbal message,” she says. “And that is: ‘You don’t belong here. You’re no longer in the physical world, and there’s a better place for you.’”

And in most cases, she says that it’s enough.

When it’s not, then it might be time to enlist the help of an expert.

“If you have a malicious or malevolent haunting, that’s when you have to call in the troops and get the help you need in trying to expel it,” says Coffey. “Get in touch with a reputable paranormal team that’s going to give you some good, sound advice on how to handle what’s going on in your house.”

Find out more fascinating facts

• Are witches real? Here's what to know
• Are werewolves real? The facts behind the myth
• Are vampires real? What to know about the undead

Sarah Lemire is a lifestyle reporter at TODAY.com with more than a decade of experience writing across an array of channels including home, health, holidays, personal finance, shopping, food, fashion, travel and weddings. An avid traveler, foodie, helicopter parent and couch film critic, Sarah is originally from Minneapolis and has spent the last two decades unsuccessfully trying to figure out the difference between a hoagie and a sub.

Are ghosts real?

One difficulty in scientifically evaluating is ghost are real is the surprisingly wide variety of phenomena attributed to ghosts.

The science and logic of ghosts

Why do people believe in ghosts, additional resources.

If you believe in ghosts, you're not alone. Cultures all around the world believe in spirits that survive death to live in another realm. In fact, ghosts are among the most widely believed of paranormal phenomenon: Millions of people are interested in ghosts, and thousands read ghost stories on Reddit every day. It's more than mere entertainment; A 2019 Ipsos poll found that 46% of Americans  say they truly believe in ghosts. (The nation is discerning in its undead beliefs; only 7% of respondents said they believe in vampires ).

The idea that the dead remain with us in spirit is an ancient one, appearing in countless stories, from the Bible to "Macbeth." It even spawned a folklore genre: ghost stories. Belief in ghosts is part of a larger web of related paranormal beliefs, including near-death experience, life after death, and spirit communication. The belief offers many people comfort — who doesn't want to believe that our beloved but deceased family members aren't looking out for us, or with us in our times of need? 

People have tried to (or claimed to) communicate with spirits for ages; in Victorian England, for example, it was fashionable for upper-crust ladies to hold séances in their parlors after tea and crumpets with friends. Ghost clubs dedicated to searching for ghostly evidence formed at prestigious universities, including Cambridge and Oxford, and in 1882 the most prominent organization, the Society for Psychical Research, was established. A woman named Eleanor Sidgwick was an investigator (and later president) of that group, and could be considered the original female ghostbuster. In America during the late 1800s, many psychic mediums claimed to speak to the dead — but were later exposed as frauds by skeptical investigators such as Harry Houdini. 

Related: 10 Ghost stories that will haunt you for life

It wasn't until recently that ghost hunting became a widespread interest around the world. Much of this is due to the hit Syfy cable TV series "Ghost Hunters," which aired 230 episodes and found no good evidence for ghosts. 

The show spawned dozens of spinoffs and imitators, and it's not hard to see why the show is so popular: the premise is that anyone can look for ghosts. The two original stars were ordinary guys (plumbers, in fact) who decided to look for evidence of spirits. Their message: You don't need to be an egghead scientist, or even have any training in science or investigation. All you need is some free time, a dark place, and maybe a few gadgets from an electronics store. If you look long enough any unexplained light or noise might be evidence of ghosts.

That vague criteria for ghostly happenings is part of the reason why myths about the afterlife are more alive than ever.

One difficulty in scientifically evaluating ghosts is that a surprisingly wide variety of phenomena are attributed to ghosts, from a door closing on its own, to missing keys, to a cold area in a hallway, to a vision of a dead relative. 

When sociologists Dennis and Michele Waskul interviewed ghost experiencers for their 2016 book " Ghostly Encounters: The Hauntings of Everyday Life " (Temple University Press ) they found that "many participants were not sure that they had encountered a ghost and remained uncertain that such phenomena were even possible, simply because they did not see something that approximated the conventional image of a 'ghost.' Instead, many of our respondents were simply convinced that they had experienced something uncanny — something inexplicable, extraordinary, mysterious, or eerie." 

Thus, many people who go on record as claiming to have had a ghostly experience didn't necessarily see anything that most people would recognize as a classic "ghost," and in fact they may have had completely different experiences whose only common factor is that it could not be readily explained. 

Personal experience is one thing, but scientific evidence is another matter. Part of the difficulty in investigating ghosts is that there is not one universally agreed-upon definition of what a ghost is. Some believe that they are spirits of the dead who for whatever reason get "lost" on their way to The Other Side; others claim that ghosts are instead telepathic entities projected into the world from our minds.

Still others create their own special categories for different types of ghosts, such as poltergeists, residual hauntings, intelligent spirits and shadow people. Of course, it's all made up, like speculating on the different races of fairies or dragons : there are as many types of ghosts as you want there to be.

There are many contradictions inherent in ideas about ghosts. For example, are ghosts material or not? Either they can move through solid objects without disturbing them, or they can slam doors shut and throw objects across the room. According to logic and the laws of physics, it's one or the other. If ghosts are human souls, why do they appear clothed and with (presumably soulless) inanimate objects like hats, canes, and dresses — not to mention the many reports of ghost trains, cars and carriages?

If ghosts are the spirits of those whose deaths were unavenged, why are there unsolved murders, since ghosts are said to communicate with psychic mediums, and should be able to identify their killers for the police? The questions go on and on — just about any claim about ghosts raises logical reasons to doubt it.

Ghost hunters use many creative (and dubious) methods to detect the spirits' presences, often including psychics. Virtually all ghost hunters claim to be scientific, and most give that appearance because they use high-tech scientific equipment such as Geiger counters, Electromagnetic Field (EMF) detectors, ion detectors, infrared cameras and sensitive microphones. Yet none of this equipment has ever been shown to actually detect ghosts. For centuries, people believed that flames turned blue in the presence of ghosts. Today, few people accept that bit of lore, but it's likely that many of the signs taken as evidence by today's ghost hunters will be seen as just as wrong and antiquated centuries from now. 

Other researchers claim that the reason ghosts haven't been proven to exist is that we simply don't have the right technology to find or detect the spirit world. But this, too, can't be correct: Either ghosts exist and appear in our ordinary physical world (and can therefore be detected and recorded in photographs, film, video and audio recordings), or they don't. If ghosts exist and can be scientifically detected or recorded, then we should find hard evidence of that — yet we don't. If ghosts exist but cannot be scientifically detected or recorded, then all the photos, videos, audio and other recordings claimed to be evidence of ghosts cannot be ghosts. With so many basic contradictory theories — and so little science brought to bear on the topic — it's not surprising that despite the efforts of thousands of ghost hunters on television and elsewhere for decades, not a single piece of hard evidence of ghosts has been found.

And, of course, with the recent development of "ghost apps" for smartphones, it's easier than ever to create seemingly spooky images and share them on social media, making separating fact from fiction even more difficult for ghost researchers. 

Most people who believe in ghosts do so because of some personal experience; they grew up in a home where the existence of (friendly) spirits was taken for granted, for example, or they had some unnerving experience on a ghost tour or local haunt. However, many people believe that support for the existence of ghosts can be found in no less a hard science than modern physics. It is widely claimed that Albert Einstein suggested a scientific basis for the reality of ghosts, based on the First Law of Thermodynamics : If energy cannot be created or destroyed but only change form, what happens to our body's energy when we die? Could that somehow be manifested as a ghost?

It seems like a reasonable assumption — until you dig into the basic physics. The answer is very simple, and not at all mysterious. After a person dies, the energy in his or her body goes where all organisms' energy goes after death: into the environment. The energy is released in the form of heat, and the body is transferred into the animals that eat us (i.e., wild animals if we are left unburied, or worms and bacteria if we are interred), and the plants that absorb us. There is no bodily "energy" that survives death to be detected with popular ghost-hunting devices.

Related: Top 10 most famous ghosts

While amateur ghost hunters like to imagine themselves on the cutting edge of ghost research, they are really engaging in what folklorists call ostension or legend tripping. It's basically a form of playacting in which people "act out" a legend, often involving ghosts or supernatural elements. In his book " Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults: Legends We Live " (University Press of Mississippi, 2003) folklorist Bill Ellis points out that ghost hunters themselves often take the search seriously and "venture out to challenge supernatural beings, confront them in consciously dramatized form, then return to safety. ... The stated purpose of such activities is not entertainment but a sincere effort to test and define boundaries of the 'real' world."

If ghosts are real, and are some sort of as-yet-unknown energy or entity, then their existence will (like all other scientific discoveries) be discovered and verified by scientists through controlled experiments — not by weekend ghost hunters wandering around abandoned, supposedly haunted houses in the dark late at night with cameras and flashlights.

In the end (and despite mountains of ambiguous photos, sounds, and videos) the evidence for ghosts is no better today than it was a century ago. There are two possible reasons for the failure of ghost hunters to find good evidence. The first is that ghosts don't exist, and that reports of ghosts can be explained by psychology, misperceptions, mistakes and hoaxes . The second option is that ghosts do exist, but that ghost hunters do not possess the scientific tools or mindset to uncover any meaningful evidence. 

But ultimately, ghost hunting is not about the evidence at all (if it was, the search would have been abandoned long ago). Instead, it's about having fun with friends and family members, telling stories, and the enjoyment of pretending to search the edge of the unknown. After all, everyone loves a good ghost story.

• The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry promotes scientific inquiry, critical investigation and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims.
• Experiments suggest that children can distinguish fantasy from reality , but are tempted to believe in the existence of imaginary creatures, according to an article published in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology.

This article was updated on June 18, 2021 by Live Science senior writer Brandon Specktor. 

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How to Live With a Ghost

Many Americans believe that their home is inhabited by ghosts, a conviction that researchers attribute to the rise of paranormal-related media, a decline in religious beliefs and the pandemic.

By Anna Kodé

Listen to This Article

Open this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.

On a routine afternoon, Shane Booth, a photography professor living in Benson, N.C., was folding laundry in his bedroom, when he was startled by a loud, crashing noise. He stepped out to find a shattered front window and his dog sitting outside it. He was confused, how could his dog have jumped through the window with enough force to break it?

After cleaning up the glass, Mr. Booth came back to his room, where all of the clothes he had just folded were scattered and strewn about, he said. “That’s when I thought, this is actually really scary now,” said Mr. Booth, 45.

In an interview, Mr. Booth described several other inexplicable, eerie encounters that have led him to believe that his century-old house is haunted. Pictures that he’d hung on the wall he’d later discover placed perfectly on the floor with no broken frames to indicate a fall. He noticed vases moved to different locations, had momentary sightings of a ghost (an old man), and heard bellowing laughter when no one else was in the house. “There’s so many little things that sporadically happen that you just can’t explain,” he said.

Many Americans believe that their home is inhabited by someone or something that isn’t a living being. An October study from the Utah-based home security company Vivint found that nearly half of the thousand surveyed homeowners believed that their house was haunted. Another survey of 1,000 people by Real Estate Witch, an education platform for home buyers and sellers, found similar results, with 44 percent of respondents saying that they’ve lived in a haunted house.

Researchers attribute increasing belief in the supernatural to the rise of paranormal-related media, a decline in religious affiliation and the pandemic. With so many people believing that they live with ghosts, a new question arises: How does one live with ghosts? Are there ways to become comfortable with it, or certain actions to keep away from so as not to disturb it?

Mr. Booth’s house was originally built as a Baptist church in 1891, he learned through some digging online. The religious ties made him think that maybe the unearthly happenings could be because he was gay, and the spirits weren’t welcoming of that. However frightening those experiences may get at times, Mr. Booth has made a sort of peace with it.

“I love this house. I’ve made it my space, and I don’t want to let anything kick me out,” Mr. Booth said. “When things happen, I talk to it and say, ‘Hey, calm it down.’”

Unexpected Housemates

While cohabiting with a spirit could be a fearful experience, some people enjoy it or, at the least, have learned how to live with it.

“I’m not opposed to a little bit of weird,” said Brandy Fleischer, 28, who lives in a house that was originally built in the 1800s in Genoa City, Wis. Ms. Fleischer said that she believes the house is haunted, and that one of the ghosts is named Henry. This, she figured out by placing a pendulum above a board with letters on it and asking the spirit to spell its name, she explained. “He likes to play pranks. He’ll move shoes around,” she said.

Ms. Fleischer wasn’t always so comfortable with the phantoms, though. “The very first time I walked in the door, it felt like I was walking into a party that I wasn’t invited to. It felt like everyone was looking at me,” she said, “but I couldn’t see them.”

She compared living with ghosts to having roommates — these just happen to be ones she didn’t ask for. Ms. Fleischer has been able to get a sense of what to avoid in order to coexist harmoniously with Henry. In particular, when people in the house are squabbling, it bothers him, she said. “He’s slammed a drawer to interrupt an argument,” she said.

Some people believe that ghosts can follow them from one house to another.

Lisa Asbury has lived in her home in Dunlap, Ill., for three years now. But the paranormal activity she’s observed began in her old home in 2018, following the death of her husband’s grandfather, and is identical to what she’s been experiencing now, she said. Ms. Asbury, 43, said that she’s seen objects fly off shelves, lights flash in multiple rooms and fan blades start turning suddenly. “I hear my name being called when I’m alone, phantom footsteps, our dogs barking while staring at nothing,” she added.

But nothing has felt aggressive, Ms. Asbury said. Just attention-seeking. “I believe our spirits to be family,” she said. “I get the feeling that we have different family members visit at different times.”

And though it was unsettling for a while, she’s figured out how to live within the ghostly milieu. “Usually if something occurs, we will acknowledge it out loud or just say hi to the spirit,” Ms. Asbury said.

Haunted Houses For Sale

For sellers, paranormal murmurings could also be a helpful marketing point. Earlier this year, the three-bedroom Rhode Island house that inspired the “The Conjuring” horror movie sold above asking price for $1.525 million . In 2021, a Massachusetts property that was the site of the infamous Borden family murders sold for $1.875 million without any open houses or showings. Dozens of Airbnb listings advertise phantasmal experiences as well, such as a “ second-floor haunted oasis ” or a “ Phantoms Lair .”

“Embracing a home’s haunted history may be a scary good seller strategy in the race to go viral,” said Amanda Pendleton, Zillow’s home trends expert. “Unique homes captured the imagination of Zillow surfers during the pandemic — the more unusual a listing, the more page views it can generate.”

Sharon Hill, the author of the 2017 book “Scientifical Americans: The Culture of Amateur Paranormal Researchers,” added that “many are no longer fearful of ghosts because we’ve been so habituated to them by the media.”

Haunted houses can also be “a way to connect to the past or a sense of enchantment in the everyday world,” Ms. Hill said. “We have a sense of wanting to find out for ourselves and be able to feel like we can reach beyond death. To know that ghosts exist would be very comforting to some people.”

Still, most sellers and agents are wary of taking that strategy. Of the over 760,000 properties on Zillow in the last two weeks, only two listings had descriptions that implied the home could be haunted, according to data provided by Zillow. One property is a six-bedroom hotel in Wisconsin where the description boasts that it was recently the subject of a Minnesota ghost hunter group’s investigation . The other , a rundown three-bedroom in Texas built in 1910, reads, “If your dream has been to host a Haunted Air BNB look no further. Owner has had ghost hunters to the house twice overnight.”

Most states don’t mention paranormal activity in real estate disclosure laws, but New York and New Jersey have explicit requirements surrounding it. In New Jersey, sellers, if asked, must disclose known information about any potential poltergeists. In New York, a court can rescind a sale if the seller has bolstered the reputation of the home being haunted and takes advantage of a buyer’s ignorance of that notoriety.

‘Searching for Meaning’

There are generational differences in who believes in ghosts. In the Vivint survey, 65 percent of Gen Zers (defined as people born between 1997 and 2012) who participated in the survey thought their home was haunted, while 35 percent of baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) surveyed thought the same.

“With so much conversation on TikTok about true crime, podcasts about haunted things and crime documentaries, we thought that could be spreading this trend among younger people,” said Maddie Weirman, one of the researchers of the Vivint survey.

Gen Z “might be searching for meaning in new places,” Ms. Hill said. “If the modern world they live in isn’t providing food for the soul, if capitalism is a system that drains us of personal enlightenment, it’s not hard to figure out that younger people will search elsewhere for that and find the idea of an alternate world — of ghosts, aliens, cryptids, et cetera — to be enticing to explore.”

The pandemic also played a role in society’s relationship with houses and ghosts.

The salience of death in our culture increased, igniting a desire for evidence of an afterlife for some people. “Think of all the sudden, and often not-sufficiently-ritually-mourned deaths during Covid. Many times people lost loved ones with no last contact, no funeral,” said Tok Thompson, a folklorist and professor of anthropology at the University of Southern California.

Quarantine and remote work meant more time at home, which meant more time to notice strange sounds or movements. Some paranormal investigators reported increased calls concerning hauntings.

“People weren’t normally around all the time to notice the normal noises of a house as it heats up from the sun during the day and then cools in the afternoon. With everyone inside, there was even less noise outside to drown out the typical sounds,” Ms. Hill, the author, said.

Many experts also attribute a decline in religious belief to fostering a belief in the paranormal. A 2021 Pew Research Center survey found that nearly 30 percent of Americans were religiously unaffiliated, 10 percentage points higher than a decade ago.

After all, the same comfort or understanding that religion can bring people can also be found in paranormal beliefs.

Karla Olivares, a financial consultant living in San Antonio, Texas, said that growing up in a house she believed was haunted has made her more accepting of the unexplainable happenings that have occurred in other places she’s lived or visited.

“When I feel something now, I acknowledge it. It’s also made me become more spiritual myself,” Ms. Olivares, 27, said. “Now, I feel that it’s all around me, and I won’t get surprised if I feel something again.”

Audio produced by Kate Winslett .

Anna Kodé is a reporter for the Real Estate section of The Times. She writes about design trends, housing issues and the relationship between identity and home. More about Anna Kodé

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Why do we see ghosts?

Current science can’t prove their existence, but these seven mental and environmental factors might.

By Jake Bittle | Published Oct 6, 2020 10:00 AM EDT

Are ghouls real? That depends. Current science can’t prove that there are spirits walking through walls or screaming below floorboards. Our spooky sightings, however, have certainly felt real. Humans have been spotting specters for as long as we’ve been around, and to some degree we can explain why. These seven mental and physical factors can account for almost any creepy occurrence—including some famous ones ripe for debunking—and help to make sense of our perpetual urge to sleep with the night light on.

You want to believe

“I know that ghosts have wandered on earth.” So says the tormented hero Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, and he’s not alone: Even for the most grounded among us, there’s something irresistible about haunted houses and vengeful spirits. Sometimes, hoping for a spectral sighting (or, like Heathcliff, dreading one) is enough for us to conjure a wraith.

Thanks to campfire tales and multimillion-dollar horror flicks, spooky notions can infiltrate our subconscious even without any real-life supernatural encounters. Nearly half of Americans think ghosts are real, according to market research company YouGov (bloodsucking vampires scored a measly 13 percent). That preconception primes our minds to run wild whenever we hear a creaky floorboard or feel a sudden chill.

“Believers are a lot more likely to report anomalous sensations, and they’re also more likely to conclude that those sensations indicate a ghostly presence,” says Chris French, head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London as well as a self-described “wet blanket” skeptic.

We have such a tendency because the human mind is highly suggestible, French says. We’ve evolved to take cues from the outside world to escape threats like an animal chasing us, so a well-placed hint can make us see things that aren’t there. In the 1990s, psychologists at the University of Illinois at Springfield gave the same tour of the century-old and long-closed Lincoln Square Theater to two groups of people, telling only one cohort that they were investigating a haunting; sure enough, the visitors who were informed of the excursion’s specifics were far more likely to report intense emotions and strange occurrences. This mental quirk is so powerful that it can deceive us even in real time: In another study, conducted by Goldsmiths’ French, participants were much more likely to report witnessing a key bending of its own accord if someone standing next to them mentioned they had seen the eerie incident happen too.

Our preconceptions can also cause us to find supernatural evidence in garbled noise or blurred images. French says this phenomenon, called pareidolia, can explain many supposed recordings of phantom voices. If a ghost hunter or psychic instructs you to listen for a certain phrase, then your brain (which loves identifying patterns) tries as hard as it can to create those exact words from various bits of random sound.

You’d rather not risk it

It’s easy to disregard the notion of paranormal activity in broad daylight, but everything changes when you head into a dark basement. Unfamiliar and threatening environments kick our survival instincts up a notch.

“If you’re walking in the woods and you see movement, you can make two errors,” says Michiel van Elk, a professor of social psychology at Leiden University. “You can either think it’s nothing, and it could be a potential predator, or you can think there’s a predator, and there’s nothing.” Psychologists suspect humans evolved a cognitive bias toward the latter mistake for good reason: Our ancestors had to keep a constant lookout for stealthy hazards like leopards and snakes, and folks with a “better safe than sorry” attitude were more likely to survive and reproduce. But, van Elk says, this propensity can cause us to sense the presence of another even when we’re alone. That’s why a snapping twig can activate the fight-or-flight reflexes that make us scream.

Ghost tours capitalize on this hereditary paranoia by forcing the mind to wrestle with ambiguity. A good haunted mansion doesn’t shove a spirit right in your face, but encourages you to wonder if you might have just seen one out of the corner of your eye. The uncertainty itself drives up the fear factor. Even quirks of architecture can trigger this primitive terror: In 1975, British geographer Jay Appleton found that, when it comes to our habitats, humans tend to think of places as safe when they offer two things: prospect (a clear view of the outside world) and refuge (the opportunity to hide from danger). A poorly lit old house gives us neither of those two accommodations, blocking our ability to see what’s around the corner and providing plenty of shadows in which malicious entities could lurk.

You need a little company

The apparitions in movies like The Grudge and The Amityville Horror will stop at nothing to chase down their human victims, but ghosts aren’t innately terrifying. Research suggests that the brain may summon spirits as a means of coping with trauma, especially the pain of losing a loved one. Just as most amputees report what’s known as “phantom limb,” the feeling that their detached appendage is still there, surviving spouses frequently report seeing or sensing their departed partner. One 1971 survey in the British Medical Journal found that close to half the widows in Wales and England had seen their mates postmortem. These vivid encounters, which psychologists call “after-death communication,” have long been among the most common kinds of paranormal experience, affecting skeptics and believers alike.

Experts think that such specters help us deal with painful or confusing events. A 2011 analysis published in the journal Death Studies looked at hundreds of incidents of supposed interaction with the deceased. The paper concluded that some occurrences provided “instantaneous relief from painful grief symptoms,” while others strengthened preexisting religious views.

Death isn’t the only trigger for a friendly ghost encounter either. Studies suggest kids who are bullied or exposed to dangerous situations are more likely to have paranormal fantasies, a trend psychologists also found in adults with a history of childhood trauma.

There’s also evidence that sightings have other mental benefits. In a 1995 survey in The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research , 91 percent of participants said their encounter had at least one upside, such as a sense of connection to others. So if you do see a shroud down the hallway, you might not want to run.

Your brain is unwell

Ghostly occurrences can be the result of larger problems in our gray matter. For some, hearing voices or experiencing a vision can be an early indicator of medical conditions such as schizophrenia. Some evidence even suggests that people with underlying brain disorders tend to have paranormal confrontations that are more intense and negative than the average brush with the beyond.

Even in those without mental illness, temporary changes in brain activity can lead to run-ins with wraiths. People who experiment with psychoactive drugs like LSD and magic mushrooms frequently report spiritual fantasies. Furthermore, psychiatrists have deemed many visions the result of sleep paralysis, a poorly understood condition in which the afflicted wake up and find themselves unable to move. Scientists have yet to pinpoint the roots of this phenomenon, but some think it occurs when the brain crosses wires between conscious awareness and the dream-filled REM stage of slumber. This mixup is almost always accompanied by a sensation of entrapment, floating, or detachment from one’s body—and in many cases sleepers see an accompanying demon or hag. According to a 2018 survey in the International Journal of Applied and Basic Medical Research , at least 8 percent of the general population and around 30 percent of people with psychiatric illnesses have reported having one of these nighttime episodes at some point in their lives. Many cultures even have a specific name for the ghoulish occurrence. In Cambodia, for instance, the freakish event is called “the ghost that pushes you down”; in Nigeria, meanwhile, locals have another name for it: “the devil on your back.”

You’re getting some bad vibrations

Sometimes people experience an otherworldly encounter simply because something in their environment is making a strange noise that sends their bodies into disarray.

In the early 1980s, British engineer Vic Tandy was working in the research lab of a medical supply company when a strange feeling came over him. All at once he felt frigid and overwhelmed with a sense of impending doom. As he paced around the room to calm down, he suddenly sensed an ethereal presence. Moments later, he was sure he saw a gray apparition in his peripheral view. When he whirled around, the specter was gone.

Tandy’s colleagues had warned him the facility might be haunted, but the engineer was a skeptic by nature, so he scoured the place for an explanation. The culprit turned out to be a fan that hummed at a rate of 18.9 Hz. Though we can’t sense their quivering, our eyeballs vibrate at a very similar frequency. The sound threw Tandy’s vision for a loop and caused him to see a vague spook. The rogue fan may also have triggered his momentary panic, as studies suggest that certain noises can cause a person’s organs to shake, which makes them hyperventilate.

Waveforms that dwell around this acoustic sweet spot and below are known as infrasound. Though they’re inaudible to human ears, whose range bottoms out at 20 Hz, the interval creates some fairly insidious side effects. In fact, after Tandy published his findings in 1998 in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research , 18.9 Hz got a reputation as the “fear frequency.”

Most of us don’t regularly carry around audio gauges, so it’s hard to know how many hauntings might be explained by a buzzing fan or a rumbling fridge. For Tandy, the fright left him more curious than ever about ghosts. “When it comes to supernatural phenomena,” he told a reporter some years later, “I’m sitting on a fence.”

You’re in the wrong place at the wrong time

Situational quirks can easily manipulate our senses into seeing what’s not there. Consider the rural town of Anson, Texas, where locals long believed that if you drove out to the crossroads nearest the local cemetery and flashed your headlights, a mysterious flicker would bounce back at you. Legend held that the blink came from the lantern of an ill-fated mother searching for her son. In 2011, a group of skeptics armed with iPhones and Google Maps confirmed a less evocative explanation: Cars coming around a bend on a nearby highway cast the eerie beams of light.

A far more troubling circumstantial peculiarity is the notion that mold and other pollutants—often found in old buildings—can mess with people’s minds. Over the past few years, environmental engineering students at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York, have been searching supposedly haunted structures across the Empire State for evidence of funky microbes; while it’s too early to draw conclusions, the places they’ve visited seem to have higher spore counts than your average inhabited building. Believers often cite the smell of rotting food (which fungi and mildew gather on) as a solid indicator of a phantom visit, and there’s some evidence that microscopic growths can trigger anxiety, depression, or even psychosis. Some historians believe that rye bread contaminated with ergot fungus (the same microbe from which LSD is derived) may have triggered the presumed possessions that led to the Salem witch trials of the late 1600s. Further, a dermatologist and known fungal expert at Guy’s Hospital in London has theorized that moldering books could induce enough mental weirdness to have inspired some of literature’s best works.

The same way scientists can potentially identify natural agents to explain “the devil’s magic,” known geologic phenomena may influence seemingly ghostly happenings. For example, some out-there theorists say that more sightings happen on days when Earth’s geomagnetic activity takes a sudden plunge. Disturbances in the planet’s magnetosphere, which are usually caused by anomalous outer-space events like solar flares, might mess with the inner workings of the brain, scrambling our perceptions in strange ways. So far, the evidence supporting this hypothesis is pretty thin.

Your mind is playing tricks on itself

In recent years, neurologists have identified potential bases for the feeling that someone or something is haunting us.

Research suggests seizures in the temporal lobe—the area of your noggin that processes visual memory and spoken language—might trigger ghost sightings. Electrical disturbances in this brain area could make us feel connected to otherworldly realms. Patients who have a history of such problems are more likely to report paranormal beliefs; furthermore, supernatural experiences tend to cluster between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m., which some studies suggest is when these seizures occur most often.

Gray matter researchers have also spotted similar activity in controlled laboratory settings. A 2016 case study by doctors at a Jerusalem hospital described a patient who had a spontaneous religious experience as physicians stimulated his temporal lobe while treating him for epilepsy. And a 2008 paper published in the International Journal of Yoga found that people with supposed telepathic powers exhibited unusual activity in a section of the lobe called the right parahippocampal gyrus—one of a pair of regions that handle memory—when they tried to complete a mind-reading task.

Other sections of our headspace can also fall victim to phantom confusion. In a 2014 study, Swiss neuroscientists blindfolded a group of participants, then hooked up their hands to a machine that tracked finger movement. When the subjects moved their arms, a robotic appendage behind them simultaneously touched their backs in the same fashion. But when investigators delayed the mimicking movements of the animatronic device by just a few milliseconds, several people reported sensing an intelligent presence behind them, as if a spirit were poking them in the back. The researchers think the stalled movements wreak havoc on how the brain times incoming signals in the frontoparietal cortex, which controls inbound sensory and motor cues. Later imaging on folks who reported sensing paranormal shadows in the past found many had lesions in that exact area of gray matter, affecting its normal functioning.

This “feeling of a presence” phenomenon has more general implications for the hard-to-study field of the paranormal too. If a tiny movement delay is enough to conjure up spirits, perhaps our brains are predisposed at some deep level to imagine ghosts are walking among us. We might grow up, but those feelings never go away.

This story appears in the Fall 2020, Mystery issue of Popular Science .

Correction: The story previously stated that the Salem Witch Trials took place in the late 1800s. It’s been changed to reflect that the real date was the late 1600s.

Jake Bittle is a freelance reporter based in Brooklyn, New York, who covers climate change, housing, and politics. He’s been writing and fact-checking for Popular Science since 2018.

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Are Ghosts Real? Here's What Science Has To Say About It

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Ghosts. They're the content of almost every horror show and novel ever created, ranging from lost souls who did not know they were dead or did not know how to cross over to the next life. Or they could be vengeful spirits of those who have died a horrible death and wishes for justice.

Do You Believe in Ghosts?

There are tons of stories about them, with many saying they have seen or felt ghosts. But until now, the debate is still going on: are ghosts real?

In a poll by  LiveScience , the result shows that 43% of Americans believe that ghosts exist.

Perhaps one of the "proofs" that ghosts exist in real life is the numerous photos of these spirits caught on camera.

In a  BBC  report, one example was a 12-year-old girl's photo taken from an iPhone. Based on the report, the image was captured in February 2015 at the Hampton Court Palace in London, showing a photo of the girl's cousin and a figure of a tall, grey, and cloaked lady that apparently was not present when the photo was taken.

Read Also:  New Research Reveals That Our Brains are Wired to See Faces Everywhere, Here's Why

Countless "Images" of the Dead

Before the image was taken, numerous images have been taken that were seemingly capturing the unseen, even before cameras were accessible to everyone.

For example, the infamous photo of Mary Todd Lincoln is apparently photobombed by the "ghost" of her husband, the former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, which was taken by American amateur photographer William Mumler.

Mumler became quite famous for his knack of capturing ghostly apparitions.

Now, this was taken during the early days of camera technology in the 19th century. Nevertheless, you also have to remember that this was the time when photographers were experimenting with new effects and that soon enough, they knew it could be of profit.

Apparently, Mumler was using the double exposure technique, allowing him to "take photos" of his dead relatives and of old Abe.

Among the first ones to investigate these spirits in photos was an English priest and medium named William Stainton Moses.

"By 1875, he had examined over 600 alleged spirit photographs. His view was that there were probably no more than a dozen that might pass muster as something [supernatural]," Alan Murdie said, the chairman of Ghost Club, which is believed to be the first paranormal investigation and research group in the world that was founded in 1862.

Caught on Camera

With more modern cameras, tricking people that they have caught ghosts on images is relatively easier, especially with editing apps.

However, that may not be the case always with video cameras, especially with raw CCTV tapes, such as the case of one hotel in Wales wherein a ghost was apparently caught on camera via CCTV, according to a report by the  Daily Mail .

What Does Science Say?

With all of that, what does science have to say about these spirits?

"If ghosts, though, exist in this realm enough to interact with it (push over a cup, walk down the stairs), and also exist across planes of being, then why would we even assume we have the tools necessary to behold their existence fully?" Richard Milner writes for the  Grunge .

Nevertheless, ghost investigators often use electromagnetic field (EMF), Geiger fields, and ion counters, sensitive microphones, and infrared cameras to find ghosts with the notion that these spirits are a kind of energy that persists even after death.

As of now, however, there really is no scientific way to confirm the existence of ghosts.

Many of the people who believe in ghosts haven't exactly seen any ghostly apparitions, and that they have only reported strange and uncanny happenings. After all, humans are subject to varying degrees of apophenia or the tendency to create patterns where they don't exist.

Hearing, seeing, or feeling "ghosts" are also most likely the cause of hallucinations, either auditory or visual.

Sabrina Stierwalt, an astrophysicist from Occidental College and host of Everyday Einstein podcast, has also  shared possible scientific reasons  why some people would feel terrified, including being exposed to low-frequency sounds, inhaling molds or carbon monoxide, which would cause you to feel anxious and terrified and uncomfortable.

Read Also: The Mystery of the 'Lost Colony' Has Been Answered; What Really Happened to Them?

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The science of ghosts, here’s what may explain why some people see, hear or feel a spooky presence.

People love scary, spooky stories of spectral phantoms. While there’s no science to support the existence of ghosts, research does provide plenty of explanations for why we might genuinely sense a supernatural presence.

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By Kathryn Hulick

October 31, 2019 at 5:45 am

A shadowy figure rushed through the door. “It had a skeletal body, surrounded by a white, blurry aura,” recalls Dom. The figure hovered and didn’t seem to have a face. Dom, who prefers to use only his first name, had been fast asleep. Just 15 at the time, he panicked and closed his eyes. “I only saw it for a second,” he recalls. Now, he’s a young adult who lives in the United Kingdom. But he still remembers the experience vividly.

Was the figure a ghost? In the mythology of the United States and many other Western cultures, a ghost or spirit is a dead person who interacts with the living world. In stories, a ghost may whisper or groan, cause things to move or fall, mess with electronics — even appear as a shadowy, blurry or see-through figure.

Ghost stories are lots of fun, especially on Halloween. But some people believe that ghosts are real. Chapman University in Orange, Calif., runs a yearly survey that asks people in the United States about their beliefs in the paranormal. In 2018, 58 percent of those polled agreed with the statement, “Places can be haunted by spirits.” And almost one in five people from the United States said in another survey, conducted by the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C., that they’ve seen or been in the presence of a ghost.

On ghost-hunting TV shows, people use scientific equipment to attempt to record or measure spirit activity. And numerous creepy photos and videos make it seem like ghosts exist. However, none of these offer good evidence of ghosts. Some are hoaxes, created to fool people. The rest only prove that equipment sometimes can capture noise, images or other signals that people don’t expect. Ghosts are the least likely of many possible explanations.

Not only are ghosts supposed to be able to do things that science says are impossible, such as turn invisible or pass through walls, but also scientists using reliable research methods have found zero evidence that ghosts exist. What scientists have discovered, though, are lots of reasons why people might feel they have had ghostly encounters.

What their data show is that you can’t always trust your eyes, ears or brain.

‘Dreaming with your eyes open’

Dom began having unusual experiences when he was eight or nine. He would wake up unable to move. He researched what was happening to him. And he learned that science had a name for it: sleep paralysis. This condition leaves someone feeling awake but paralyzed, or frozen in place. He can’t move or speak or breathe deeply. He may also see, hear or feel figures or creatures that aren’t really there. This is called a hallucination (Huh-LU-sih-NA-shun).

Sometimes, Dom hallucinated that creatures were walking or sitting on him. Other times, he heard screaming. He only saw something that one time, as a teenager.

Sleep paralysis happens when the brain messes up the process of falling asleep or waking. Usually, you only start dreaming after you’re fully asleep. And you stop dreaming before you waken.

Sleep paralysis “is like dreaming with your eyes open,” explains Baland Jalal. A neuroscientist, he studies sleep paralysis at the University of Cambridge in England. He says this is why it happens: Our most vivid, lifelike dreams happen during a certain stage of sleep. It’s called rapid eye movement, or REM, sleep. In this stage, your eyes dart around under their closed lids. Though your eyes move, the rest of your body can’t. It’s paralyzed. Most likely, that’s to prevent people from acting out their dreams. (That could get dangerous! Imagine flailing your arms and legs as you play dream basketball, only to whack your knuckles on the wall and tumble to the floor.)

Your brain usually turns this paralysis off before you wake up. But in sleep paralysis, you wake up while it’s still happening.

Faces in the clouds

You don’t have to experience sleep paralysis to sense things that aren’t there. Have you ever felt your phone buzz, then checked to find there was no message? Have you heard someone calling your name when no one was there? Have you ever seen a face or figure in a dark shadow?

These misperceptions also count as hallucinations, says David Smailes. He’s a psychologist in England at Northumbria University in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He thinks that just about everyone has such experiences. Most of us just ignore them. But some may turn to ghosts as the explanation.

We’re used to our senses giving us accurate information about the world. So when experiencing a hallucination, our first instinct is usually to believe it. If you see or feel the presence of a loved one who died — and trust your perceptions — then “it has to be a ghost,” says Smailes. That’s easier to believe than the idea that your brain is lying to you.

The brain has a tough job. Information from the world bombards you as a mixed-up jumble of signals. The eyes take in color. The ears take in sounds. The skin senses pressure. The brain works to make sense of this mess. This is called bottom-up processing. And the brain is very good at it. It’s so good that it sometimes finds meaning in meaningless things. This is known as pareidolia (Pear-eye-DOH-lee-ah). You experience it whenever you stare at clouds and see rabbits, ships or faces. Or gaze at the moon and see a face.

The brain also does top-down processing. It adds information to your perception of the world. Most of the time, there is way too much stuff coming in through the senses. Paying attention to all of it would overwhelm you. So your brain picks out the most important parts. And then it fills in the rest. “The vast majority of perception is the brain filling in the gaps,” explains Smailes.

What you see right now isn’t what’s actually out there in the world. It’s a picture your brain painted for you based on signals captured by your eyes. The same goes for your other senses. Most of the time, this picture is accurate. But sometimes, the brain adds things that aren’t there.

For example, when you mishear the lyrics in a song, your brain filled in a meaning that wasn’t there. (And it will most likely continue to mishear those words even after you learn the right ones.)

This is very similar to what happens when so-called ghost hunters capture sounds that they say are ghosts speaking. (They call this electronic voice phenomenon, or EVP.) The recording is probably just random noise. If you listen to it without knowing what was supposedly said, you probably won’t hear words. But when you know what the words are supposed to be, you might now find that you can discern them easily.

Your brain may also add faces to images of random noise. Research has shown that patients who experience visual hallucinations are more likely than normal to experience pareidolia — see faces in random shapes, for instance.

In one 2018 study, Smailes’ team tested whether this might also be true for healthy people. They recruited 82 volunteers. First, the researchers asked a series of questions about how often these volunteers had hallucination-like experiences. For example, “Do you ever see things other people cannot?” and “Do you ever think that everyday things look abnormal to you?”

Next, the participants looked at 60 images of black and white noise. For a very brief moment, another image would flash in the center of the noise. Twelve of these images were faces that were easy to see. Another 24 were hard-to-see faces. And 24 more images showed no faces at all — just more noise. The volunteers had to report whether a face was present or absent in each flash. In a separate test, the researchers showed the same volunteers a series of 36 images. Two-thirds of them contained a face pareidolia. The remaining 12 did not.

Participants who had initially reported more hallucination-like experiences were also more likely to report faces in the flashes of random noise. They were also better at identifying those images that contained face pareidolia.

In the next few years, Smailes plans to study situations in which people might be more likely to see faces in randomness.

When people sense ghosts, he points out, “They’re often alone, in the dark and scared.” If it’s dark, your brain can’t get much visual information from the world. It has to create more of your reality for you. In this type of situation, Smailes says, the brain may be more likely to impose its own creations onto reality.

Did you see the gorilla?

The brain’s picture of reality sometimes includes things that aren’t there. But it can also completely miss things that are there. This is called inattentional blindness. Want to know how it works? Watch the video before you keep reading.

The video shows people in white and black shirts passing a basketball. Count how many times the people in white shirts pass the ball. How many did you see?

Partway through the video, a person in a gorilla suit walks through the players. Did you see it? About half of all viewers who count passes while watching the video miss the gorilla completely.

If you too missed the gorilla, you experienced inattentional blindness. You were likely in a state called absorption. That’s when you are so focused on a task that you tune out everything else.

“Memory does not work like a video camera,” says Christopher French. He is a psychologist in England at Goldsmiths University of London. You only remember things you’re paying attention to. Some people are more likely to become absorbed than others. And these people also report higher levels of paranormal beliefs, he says, including beliefs in ghosts.

How could these things be related? Some strange experiences that people blame on ghosts involve unexplained sounds or movements. A window may seem to open all by itself. But what if someone opened it and you just didn’t notice because you were so absorbed in something else? That’s a lot more likely than a ghost, French says.

In one 2014 study, French and his colleagues found that people with higher levels of paranormal beliefs and higher tendencies to get absorbed are also more likely to experience inattentional blindness. They also tend to have a more limited working memory. That’s how much information you can hold in your memory at once.

If you have trouble keeping lots of information in your memory or paying attention to more than one thing at once, then you risk missing sensory cues from the environment around you. And you might blame any misperceptions that result on a ghost.

The power of critical thinking

Anyone may experience sleep paralysis, hallucinations, pareidolia or inattentional blindness. But not everyone turns to ghosts or other supernatural beings as a way to explain these experiences. Even as a child, Dom never thought he had come face to face with a real ghost. He went online and asked questions about what might have happened. He used critical thinking. And he got the answers he needed. When an episode happens now, he uses a technique that Jalal developed. Dom doesn’t try to stop the episode. He just focuses on his breathing, tries to relax as much as possible and waits for it to pass. He says, “I deal with it far better. I just sleep and enjoy sleeping.”

Robyn Andrews is a psychology student at the University of South Wales in Treforest. She wondered if people with stronger critical-thinking skills might be less likely to believe in the paranormal. So she and her mentor, psychologist Philip Tyson, recruited 687 students for a study about their paranormal beliefs. The students majored in a wide range of different fields. Each was asked how strongly he or she agreed with statements such as, “It is possible to communicate with the dead.” Or “Your mind or soul can leave your body and travel.” The research team also looked at the students’ grades on a recent assignment.

Students with higher grades tended to have lower levels of paranormal beliefs, this study found. And students in the physical sciences, engineering or math tended not to believe as strongly as those studying the arts. This trend also has been seen in research by others.

This study did not actually assess the students’ ability to think critically. “That’s something we would look into as a future study,” says Andrews. However, previous research has shown that science students tend to have stronger critical-thinking skills than art students. That’s probably because you need to think critically in order to conduct scientific experiments. And thinking critically can help you scout out likely causes for an unusual experience without involving ghosts (or aliens, or Bigfoot).

Even among science students and working scientists, though, paranormal beliefs persist. Andrews and Tyson think that’s a problem. If you can’t judge whether a ghost story or spooky experience is real or not, you may also get fooled by advertisements, bogus medical cures or fake news, says Tyson. It’s important for everyone to learn how to question information and seek reasonable, realistic explanations.

So if someone tells you a ghost story this Halloween, enjoy it. But remain skeptical. Think about other possible explanations for what was described. Remember that your mind may fool you into experiencing spooky things.

Wait, what’s that behind you? (Boo!)

Kathryn Hulick has been a regular contributor to Science News for Students since 2013. She’s covered everything from laser “photography” and acne to video games, robotics and forensics. This piece — her 43rd story for us — was inspired by her book: Strange But True: 10 of the world’s greatest mysteries explained. (Quarto, October 1, 2019, 128 pages).

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Five Scientific Explanations for Spooky Sensations

What feels like a supernatural presence might actually be vibrations outside of humans’ conscious perception

Andrea Michelson

​ ‘Tis the season to celebrate the supernatural, whether that means visiting a haunted house or donning a spooky costume. But while some might scare themselves silly in the name of Halloween fun, 42 percent of Americans believe ghosts are for real, according to a 2013 Harris Poll . The belief in ghosts dates back to at least ancient Mesopotamian times, and it seems to have lodged itself in the collective psyche. But in many cases, science can explain what might seem like a message from beyond. Here are five scientific explanations for encounters with the supernatural.

The “Fear Frequency”

Just below the range of human hearing, infrasound can cause some strange sensations. Humans can’t hear sound below 20 hertz, but some people subconsciously respond to lower frequencies with feelings of fear or dread, reports Jennifer Ouellette for Gizmodo . In one account from 1998, engineer Vic Tandy of Coventry University spent a night in a lab believed to be haunted. He and his colleagues experienced anxiety and distress, felt cold shivers down their spines, and Tandy even reported seeing a dark blob out of the corner of his eye. It turned out that there was a silent fan creating sound waves at around 19 hertz, the exact frequency that can cause the human eyeball to vibrate and “see” optical illusions. “When we finally switched it off, it was as if a huge weight was lifted,” Tandy told Chris Arnot for the Guardian .

Unusual Electromagnetic Fields

Electromagnetic field (EMF) meters are commonly used to identify electrical problems. They’re also a staple of the ghost-hunter’s toolbox, reports Erika W. Smith for Refinery29 . Neuroscientist Michael Persinger thinks normal variation in electromagnetic fields could be a possible explanation for supposed hauntings. He tested this theory in the 1980s by having people wear helmets that delivered weak magnetic stimulation. Eighty percent of his test subjects said they felt “an unexplained presence in the room” when they wore the helmets. What’s more, famous spooky spots like Hampton Court Palace have been found to have unusual electromagnetic fields, reports Neil Dagnall for the Conversation .

Carbon Monoxide Poisoning

On a Halloween episode of This American Life , host Ira Glass and toxicologist Albert Donnay unearth an old ghost story published in the American Journal of Ophthalmology in 1921. As recounted by “Mrs. H,” her family moved into an old house and began experiencing what seemed like paranormal activity—the sound of footsteps, strange voices and even feeling like they were held down in their beds by an unseen person. Meanwhile, the houseplants were dying, and Mrs. H’s children felt weak and suffered from headaches. A quick investigation revealed that a faulty furnace was filling the house with carbon monoxide fumes. Carbon monoxide poisoning can cause hallucinations and sickness, explaining all of their symptoms. After the furnace was repaired, the “hauntings” stopped.

Sleep Paralysis

The most common explanation for a ghost sighting is sleep paralysis, sleep specialist Priyanka Yadav tells NBC News ’s Diane Mapes. The body is naturally paralyzed during REM sleep, but the feeling of paralysis can cause terror if experienced while awake. Sometimes, the body and brain get their wires crossed, and a person can experience a few seconds to a couple minutes of waking paralysis, which is often accompanied by hallucinations. Yadav says the hallucinations can involve anything from spiders to ghosts and are usually characterized by a feeling of dread. When someone reports a “haunting” that happened right around bedtime or after waking in the middle of the night—and that they were so scared, they couldn’t move—it’s enough for Yadav to diagnose a case of sleep paralysis.

The Power of Suggestion

Social psychology might have an explanation for reported hauntings that the natural sciences can’t resolve. Refinery29 reports that one study found the power of suggestion to be strong enough to make people believe they witnessed a supernatural event. Participants watched a video of a purported psychic supposedly bending a key with his mind. The people who were exposed to positive social influence—meaning that an actor in the group said they saw the key bend—were more likely to report they saw the key bend, too. Participants who were in a room with naysayers and skeptics were more likely to doubt the validity of the trick, but just one person’s confident assertion that they believed the psychokinesis was enough to make others believe it as well.

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Andrea Michelson is a former digital intern with Smithsonian magazine. 

How Real Are Ghosts, Aliens, and Spirits?

Are there rational explanations for the strange things we see and sense.

Posted September 16, 2018

Updated May 31, 2020

One patient in a psychiatric hospital, a black woman, always covered her face with white makeup because she believed she was an angel. She also missed her late husband terribly. From time to time she claimed she could still see him. “I can feel him — you know, like he’s still around. One morning I woke up and I saw him — standing by the wardrobe — a ghost.”

History thought ghosts were real

Throughout history, ghosts were accepted as a given. Shakespeare and his contemporary dramatists featured them liberally. Macbeth reacts to Banquo’s ghost, and the ghost of Hamlet’s father sets in motion the action of that play. As culture became more scientifically minded, seeing ghosts came to be considered more of a psychological phenomenon. Readers took the three ghosts in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol , for instance, as figments of Scrooge’s imagination rather than actual disembodied spirits.

But just because something is psychological doesn’t mean it isn’t real to the person who experiences it. Scrooge’s encounters change him profoundly. The grieving widow above wanted to feel her husband’s touch again, hear his footfalls and the sound of his voice. She even wanted to have sex with him again. Her unconscious mind wasn’t about to recognize death as an obstacle to her wishes.

Imagination is more powerful than people realize

For centuries hallucinations such as seeing ghosts were used as proof of madness, an objective marker of mental abnormality. But what people typically think of as objective reality is in fact a compromise. A one-to-one correspondence between outer reality and inner brain events does not exist. Outside stimuli impinge on sense receptors, and the brain then interprets the results. This makes reality subjective through and through.

Each eye has a blind spot located about 18 degrees off to either side if one is staring straight ahead. Normally the eyes are also in continuous but imperceptible motion (ocular jitter) so that the light receptors in the retina experience continual boundary changes between light and dark. The retina’s detection of light boundaries and changes in contrast are among the earliest elements in a series of events that build in complexity to create the sensation we call seeing.

The eye is not a camera

Unlike a camera that indiscriminately records everything in its field of view, the retina is highly selective in what it passes on to the brain downstream. Compared to the sharp acuity of central vision provided by the fovea (20/20), peripheral vision is quite poor (20/400). We should see a shaky, blurry world of dissolving edges and missing parts. Instead, we see a panoramic scene that seems stable and in focus wherever we look. We see this picture because an enormous amount of unconscious editing took place before visual information even enters our awareness. The brain fills in gaps. It compensates for head and body movement. It makes educated guesses about what we’re looking at, and its editing is highly biased by expectations, history, context, and desires.

About 5 percent of adults experience occasional hallucinations but never seek medical attention . They go about their business and accept their hallucinations as a matter of fact. In elderly individuals who suffer some loss of vision, highly detailed, unemotional visual hallucinations are common enough that the phenomenon goes by the name of Charles Bonnet syndrome. Affected individuals see people or animals that they readily acknowledge aren’t there. Similarly, about a third of Americans claim to have seen angels, a proportion that may seem high but is consistent with the fact that a third of children have imaginary friends.

There is no reason why factors of bias , expectation, and desire should not play a similar role in individuals who claim to see ghosts, aliens or other strange entities. Critics are quick the dismiss the experience itself, when what it really at issue is that person’s interpretation of the experience. An individual may misinterpret the meaning of an unusual experience that is more often than not imbued with emotion , but that doesn’t make it any less real.

Send queries to [email protected] or to the links below to request a free copy of "Your Brain on Screens."

Frank Tallis, 2018. The Incurable Romantic and Other Tales of Madness and Desire. New York: Basic Books

Richard E. Cytowic, MD, MFA , professor of neurology at George Washington University, is known for returning synesthesia to mainstream science. Wednesday Is Indigo Blue , with David Eagleman, won the Montaigne Medal.

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Are Ghosts Real? We Got to the Bottom of the Age-Old Question

Are these spooky specters fact or fiction?

Believers Gonna Believe

If you are reading this article, there is a good chance that you already believe in visitors from the other side, as nearly half of Americans believe in ghosts , according to a recent poll. And unlike questioning if vampires or werewolves are real, questioning whether or not ghosts or spirits exist draws on a lot of people’s personal experience with unexplained phenomena over centuries. But what are we actually talking about when we talk about ghosts? While there are many different types of experiences from floating shoes to glowing orbs, these are the most common spirits people say they have experienced.

Plain ol’ Dead People: This is your classic dead person with unfinished business. Typically they don’t know they are dead and are on a mission to figure out how or why they are dead (ex. the movie Ghost ), or, like Jacob Marley, make up for wrong-doings in their lifetime. Sometimes these ghosts, like those in Harry Potter , are around forever, while some manage to transition to the beyond through good works or an enlightenment of some kind.

“Psychic Residue”: This is a person but usually an event that permeates a space but does not affect or interact with the people around them. An example might be that a death, horrible accident, or event occurred in a particular home or place and it is “haunted” by that specific event and the people who were a part of it.

Crisis Apparition: This is something that happens very soon after a person’s death, and the ghost is aware of its own death. They are usually coming to a loved one to bring a message, closure, or comfort.

Sounds plausible right? Well, with so many movies , reality tv shows, campfire stories , and a whole tourist industry behind it, ghosts have not only become a normal part of popular culture, but a lucrative business as a well. So it’s often hard to tell fact from fiction nowadays. Where can we find explanations for all the spooky goings on? Can science help?

What’s Science Got To Do With It?

While science can neither confirm nor deny the existence of ghosts, it can speak to a lot of the key psychological and physical factors that could be affecting you when you have an experience with something that is ghost-like or things to watch for when you get hooked on your next ghost hunting reality show. Some have suggested that the next time you see ghost-watchers with their electro-magnetic devices, roaming around suburban homes trying to find evidences of ghostly “energy,” rather than calling the priest for an exorcist, you might want to call an electrician. Those readings they pick up on a lot of the shows you see are evidence that the electrical wiring in the home needs work.

Some may tell you, “It’s all in your head.” But there may be some truth to that statement when it comes to believing in ghosts and the experiences surrounding them. Going back to our girl with her haunted reno, here are a few of the psychological explanations for what may be happening in her house:

Avoiding Scary Situations: The dark basement, the scary part of the yard, or forest behind our house. We all have places or situations that make us feel a little fearful or wary. Being in a big new house with unknown nooks and crannies and sounds is bound to make anyone of us uneasy. So it’s easier for us to put the weight of our fears on the idea of a place being haunted and maybe avoid someplace altogether rather than face what scares us.

Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Sometimes we are just in the room at the exact moment the wind blows over something in our house and it produces a loud crash and another thing in our house that was unstable happens to crash at the same time. You could blame this on a naughty specter or it could be that you happened to just be in an incredible place at a very unique moment.

Feeling Alone: Taking on the renovations of a big house alone can make anyone feel overwhelmed and lonely, but add onto that the fact that you may be in a new town and that it may be rural. Loneliness can account for our minds filling with lots of anxiety and fear and with that, every sound and creak and light change is amplified and could be the sign of something ghostly. When really, maybe, you just need to invite a trusted and safe friend over for a porch hang.

Sound and Vibrations: Some houses have high-pitched sounds and vibrations that are almost undetectable but can do damage on our psyches. Find yourself strangely irritable and sensitive even thought you’ve already eaten and exercised and taken time for self-care ? That strange “vibe” you sense in your space could just be the sound or vibration in your environment that needs to be shut off or changed.

Fungus-umongus: In older homes, it’s a common problem to find mold growing in places you never thought possible. Nooks and crannies can have all types of spores, and living with undetected mold in your home has been known to cause all kinds of health problems as well as in some cases of messing with people’s minds. That hallucination you see could very well be your house’s mold haunting you!

Ultimately though, when it comes down to it, even if the rationalizations make sense, sometimes you just want to believe. It helps you feel like you’re living on the edge or living in a world that has more layers to it than just the one you see in front of you. So wherever you land on this issue…let’s hope that only ghost you meet this Halloween season is the good kind…like Casper. Oh, and our Reno-girl—well, she would rather face her fears than give up her built-ins, so she’s staying for the long-haul. Ghost or not.

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What is a ghosts weakness?

Better to Ask A Ghost. But any way every soul has his own weakness so the ghost has. if some one love too much to money it was his weakness during the life so it will become his weakness also after becoming a ghost.But most of the time it is greed , greif,unfulfilment of life's mission and so on.

It is believed that an object, or representative of the object, over one thousand years old can weaken any ghost.

Add your answer:

Do ghosts have a shadow?

NO. Ghosts do not have shadow.

Can ghosts breath?

Do ghosts exist?

What would the world be like if there was no ghosts?

There is no ghosts in the world.

Do ghost sleep?

It depends, there are two types of ghosts, spirits and deadly ghosts, spirits, yes, deadly ghosts, no.

Is there ghosts at the howard school?

There are many ghosts at the howard school

What is Ghosts weakness?

if you read scripts of the bible

What are ghosts hobbies?

There are two main ghosts hobbies:Ghost ResearchGhost HuntingI research ghost and paranormal activities. According to research there is such thing as ghost weakness. So if you want to you may choose to help me in my research team.

Do ghosts have feelings?

Ghosts can not have feelings as there are no ghosts in the world.

Are black people's ghost black?

black people's ghosts are actually a chocolaty shade of brown, often indistinguishable from normal black people. but as everyone knows the black ghosts have a weakness to salt, so if you ever see a black person, throw salt in their face and if they react violently then you know that they are actually a ghost

What is a hypothesis about ghosts?

The leading scientific hypothesis about ghosts is "Ghosts do not exist."

Are there ghosts in Purcellville Virginia?

There is no such thing as ghosts, so no, there are no ghosts in Purcellville, Virginia.

Are there ghosts in bhangarh?

NO Ghosts do not exist.

Are ghosts haunting?

Ghosts do not exist.

Can the ghosts attack you?

No, ghosts are harmless.

Was the ghosts really killed from the movie thirteen ghosts?

In the movie Thir13en Ghosts, the ghosts are released from the house and their bonds at the end of the movie.

Top Categories

The Different Types Of Ghosts That Could Be Haunting You

Types Of Ghosts :

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bm0Rg60lcjM/?tagged=poltergeist

Type:   The Poltergeist

Description:  Poltergeists are ‘noisy ghosts.’ They have the ability to manipulate the physical environment. They can open windows and drawers. They can move chairs and push books off shelves. They can turn on bathtubs and turn off lights. They can slam doors and even start fires.

Poltergeist activity usually starts off mildly, causing occurrences that people mistake as coincidences. However, as time passes, the activity will intensify. Sometimes the poltergeist will leave on its own, but other times it will end with deadly consequences.

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Type: The Interactive Personality

Description:  These are the most common ghosts. They are loved ones who are returning to bring you comfort or to convey important information they believe you should know. These ghosts can emit a scent like perfume or cigarette smoke in order to help you sense their presence. They can also make noises and might even speak to you.

Interactive personalities retain the same personality that they had when they were alive and can still experience emotions. These ghosts are friendly and return because they know you need to see them again, they know you need their help.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Dghostbust_official (@dghostbust_official)

Description:  Orbs are the most common type of photographic evidence to support the existence of ghosts. They are either blue or white translucent balls of light that appear hovering over the ground in pictures.

Orbs are the soul of a human or animal that is traveling from one place to another. They appear as circles because they shape makes it easier for them to get around. However, the longer they exist in our world, the easier they can transform into a full-bodies apparition.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bm09Hx_nFGV/?tagged=mist

Type: Funnel Ghosts

Description:  These ghosts are loved ones returning to visit. They most frequently appear in old historical buildings or inside of private homes where they once lived.

Funnel Ghosts cause cold spots and when they are visibly seen they look like a swirling funnel. They can also be caught in photographs as a spiral of light.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BiSM7ZkHtU8/?tagged=ectomist

Types: Ectoplasm / Ecto-Mist

Description:  These ghosts appear several feet off the ground. They take the shape of a swirling mass of mist in either white, grey, or black. They can move quickly, but they can also choose to remain in place and orbit. They appear outdoors, in graveyards, in battlefields, and at historical sites.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by 𝕮𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖘 𝕸𝖈𝕱𝖆𝖉𝖉𝖊𝖓 (@liquidbrainwaves)

Type: Demonic Possessed Human Entity

Description:  When an evil spirit infiltrates a living person, it controls their conscious energy. Since they are inhabiting a physical body, these ghosts have a greater strength than the rest. They can move objects, hurt people, and kill as they please. They are as dangerous as demons.

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Type: Demons

Description: These are powerful, supernatural beings. They can invade homes, attach themselves to objects, and inflict mental and physical torture. These ghosts can morph into any shape. However, they are most commonly witnessed as black masses standing in doorways.

It is common for multiple demons to exist in the same location, because of energies that are blocking them from crossing over. These ghosts should never be challenged because they are capable of killing.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BmSPdL7HAUu/?tagged=shadowpeople

Type: Shadow People

Description: You can spot these ghosts out of the corner of your eye, but as soon as you turn to look at them, they will usually vanish.

If you happen to see them face-to-face, you will notice an extremely dark void. A silhouette of a person. They could be wearing a hood or a cloak. Soon after you spot them, they can retreat into corners, through walls, into closets, and into televisions. They could even fade into the darkness of night.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by @world_photographer_01

Type: Crowd Demon

Description:  These ghosts are attracted to crowds. They only show up in locations that are occupied by large groups of people. When they are photographed, they take the form of distorted shapes.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by 𓂅yegane𓂀 (@aqua_._soul)

Type: Animal Ghosts

Description: Although they can appear as full-body apparitions, animal ghosts are commonly heard rather than seen. They might scratch on the doors or on walls, make scraping sounds against the floor, whine, or bark.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by wakeupdave (@wakeupdave)

Type: Inanimate Ghosts

Description: These ghosts are embodied by objects rather than people. They can take the form of ships, cars, trains, or even lamps. These ghosts create residual hauntings, which means there is no interaction between you and the ghost.

What you are seeing is only a playback of events that have already occurred. The event is imprinted in the area because of its significance. You are not in any danger, because you are not actually witnessing a ghost, you are only witnessing leftover energy.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Andrew Munn (@andrew.r.munn)

Type: Doppelgänger 

Description: These ghosts can project themselves in multiple places at once so that there are multiple beings that look exactly the same. They can even mimic the look of someone who is still living, which is why you might swear you have seen a loved one when they were in a completely different location.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Hamlet (@ham.sol0)

Type: Lemur

Description: These are angry ghosts who wander. They are associated with darkness, doom, and misfortune. The reason they are so malevolent is because they had their life cut short and did not have a proper burial. They might not have had family to mourn them, either.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by THE PARANORMAL DETECTIVES (@theparanormaldetectives)

Type: Artificial ghosts

Description: These ghosts are created from storytellers. When a group of people get together and put a name to a ghost, their spiritual energies can manifest that ghost into creation. This is the rarest type of ghost.

Ghost Encounters:

Eva Gutowski

The mystery starts when Eva sees a car outside with the headlights and taillights flashing without the engine running or the car alarm going off — and no one in the car. Then her cat starts behaving strangely. In certain parts of the house, it would make a creepy gurgling sound, which made Eva wonder whether there was a ghost in the house. But as time went by, it got even stranger.

Connor Franta

Shortly after Connor Franta moved into his new house, weird things started happening. Windows opened on their own (two nights in a row in two separate areas). Then, a voice activated device called Google Home went off in the middle of the night while he was sound asleep.

Gabbie Hanna

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw5mQOIH4ag

Gabbie believes in ghosts. She has a history of being haunted. That is why she was freaked out when she watched back a video of her and a friend (with the same name) and heard a strange voice whisper Gabbie in the background.

Colleen Ballinger 

When Colleen invites a psychic medium to talk to ghosts in her home, the camera loses focus, which suggests paranormal activity. Then the psychic tries to get in touch with a family member who passed away and presents information that causes tears.

Shane Dawson

Shane Dawson is known for his conspiracy theories. Lately, he has been visiting haunted sights like The Stanley Hotel, which Stephen King based the Shining off. When he visits The Queen Mary, a haunted ghost ship, he hears a mysterious tapping coming from the closet. He also takes pictures that are filled with strange orbs, which could be the soul of a dead human or animal.

Tana Mongeau

January Nelson

January Nelson is a writer, editor, and dreamer. She writes about astrology, games, love, relationships, and entertainment. January graduated with an English and Literature degree from Columbia University.

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“It’s easier to dismiss ghosts in the daylight.” — Patricia Briggs

Types of Ghosts – The Ultimate Guide

When it comes to hauntings, paranormal events, and general discussion about spirits and ghosts, they are often talked about as if they are the same thing.

However, there are actually many different types of ghosts with a variety of characteristics that make each and every one of them different. 

At one point or another, we’ve all had a moment where we thought we saw something in the middle of the night or out of the corner of our eye. Maybe you’ve felt a cold spot on a hot day or heard some odd thumping sounds in an empty place. 

While you might not be scared of what’s going on, you might be curious as to what you saw, heard, or felt. 

In this guide, we will go over the different types of ghosts, how to spot them, and all of the additional information we know about them so far.

What Is A Ghost?

Before we dive into the different types of ghosts, we should probably get a decent understanding of what a ghost is and what it isn’t. 

There are a few different types and different paranormal entities that a ghost can be confused with.

According to Hans Holzer, the late professor of Parapsychology, “Ghosts are similar to psychotic human beings, incapable of reasoning for themselves.” 

Contrary to popular belief and the way ghosts are depicted in movies, books, and folklore, ghosts actually aren’t there to cause you any harm. 

If you feel something brush your arm, hear a bump in the night, or see a figure in the corner of your eye, it’s usually the ghost trying to communicate.

Sometimes, moving furniture or standing in your doorway is the only way they can communicate. 

What Can Ghosts Do?

Ghosts have various abilities. In the paranormal community, they believe it depends on their strength.

There’s some discussion that the different ghosts are simply from different stages of development in the afterlife. For this theory, their strengths depend on that stage.

Certain ghosts can speak, make sounds, change the temperature, and even physically move things and touch people. 

Ghosts are typically thought of as being very dark and unable to reason. This is understandable, but not always accurate. 

Usually, a ghost will behave the same way they did when they were alive. If they were kind, they will still be kind. If they were mean, you probably don’t want them in your home. 

Their Death & Unfinished Business 

Ghosts are almost always tied to the place they died. They’re also usually tied to any events or people who were involved.

Typically, ghosts have died tragically or abruptly. Many of them can be in denial that they’ve passed. 

Ghosts almost always have unfinished business that they need to take care of. This unfinished business is usually quite innocent. It can be used as a way to avoid the fact that they died. 

Ghosts are often considered the caretakers of the afterlife. They commonly stick around to make sure their families, friends, homes, and belongings are being taken care of. 

However, there’s always the other end of the spectrum where that unfinished business can become very dark and sinister.

This can mean the person died an extremely violent or unexpected death. That type of ghost is almost always a problem. 

What Are The Different Types Of Ghosts?

In this section, we’re going to go through the 7 most popular different types of ghosts. We’ll explain everything you need to know about them. 

Poltergeists

A poltergeist is a type of ghost that the majority of people wouldn’t like to encounter. They’re the most common type of ghost portrayed in movies and books. 

Poltergeist means “noisy ghost” because they present themselves by making a ton of noise. This can be in the form of banging on the walls or moving furniture at night.

Poltergeists love to make their presence known, yet do so in a subtle manner. They sometimes start by banging on walls, which can lead up to pinching, hitting, and tripping. 

Poltergeists have been written off as natural phenomena such as water under the house, psychological issues, and even mass forms of energy that the person being haunted is unknowingly controlling. 

Whatever the case, poltergeists might start off as a harmless ghost, but they can become very problematic over time.

What To Do If You Have A Poltergeist Problem 

If you suspect you might have a poltergeist problem, you should never reach out or try to communicate with them. Please don’t try to catch them on video either. 

The best thing you can do is start implementing preventative methods like cleansing and blessing your home. If all that fails, reach out to a professional to get rid of the ghost completely. 

Fortunately, unlike an Orb, a poltergeist is a fairly rare type of ghost. We don’t hear about them very often.

However, they’re arguably one of the most feared ghosts. This might be because of the movies, books, and television shows made about them. 

While they might be the rarest type of ghost to encounter, poltergeists are certainly the most exploited by media. Often these depictions are inaccurate and over-dramatized.

Don’t get us wrong, a poltergeist definitely isn’t something you want to deal with it. We’re just saying they’re commonly made out to be way worse than they actually are.

Orbs are arguably one of the most common ghosts around. They’re seen in photographs and videos as a white or blue ball of light that’s relatively transparent. 

The orbs are usually suspended or hovering over the ground. However, an orb can be seen with the naked eye. This is an incredible experience. 

Seeing An Orb On Camera

Seeing an orb with the naked eye means that the orb is creating its own light source.

Therefore, it can’t just be a fleck of dust on the lens, a camera malfunction, or a reflection of light—these are all common explanations used to take the paranormal away from orbs. 

Orbs move quickly, making it almost impossible for them to be caught on video. However, it has happened. In certain videos, you will see a light move quickly and swiftly across the screen. 

The best way to capture an orb is with a regular camera. They’ve been documented countless times on both digital and film cameras.

From what we know, orbs appear to be the soul of a human or animal that has died. After their death, they travel around or move from place to place. 

Orbs don’t appear to be evil. They’ve never been associated with hauntings. From what we know so far, they can’t touch you, speak to you, move things, change temperature, or reach out in any way. 

If you do get lucky enough to see an orb, don’t panic! It could easily just be the old neighborhood dog taking himself for an evening walk!

Funnel Ghosts

Funnel ghosts are associated with cold spots. If you’ve ever entered a home or an old building and you start to feel a chill, you might have encountered a funnel ghost. This could even happen if you walk into a cold spot on a really warm day. 

Just like an orb, there’s really no reason to worry if you think you’re in a cold spot. They aren’t considered evil ghosts at all.

Funnel ghosts are said to be loved ones or previous homeowners coming back to visit their old stomping grounds.

They’re always found in homes or older buildings, rarely outside. These ghosts can sometimes take the shape of a swirling funnel of light, hence their name. 

Funnel ghosts have the most similarities to an Orb or Ecto-mist. This makes experts wonder if these types of ghosts are just stages of the afterlife. 

Using Cold To Find Ghosts 

A funnel ghost is a little harder to spot. A cold spot is the only true way to identify one unless you are lucky enough to spot the funnel. 

Cold spots have quickly become one of the surefire ways to find a ghost. In every single movie, book, and television show about ghost and hauntings, the first thing people say when they enter a room is how cold it is. 

Additionally, outside of EMF readers , one of the most common ghost hunting tools around is a thermal imager to detect cold spots.

Even though cold spots have become a common way to find ghosts, there’s actually very little information about funnel ghosts in general. 

This lack of information plays well into the theory that it’s a stage of development. If an orb is the first stage and a funnel ghost is the second, it makes sense that there isn’t much information about them.

Interactive Personality 

Outside of an Orb, the Interactive Personality is one of the most commonly spotted type of ghost. An Interactive Personality is a person who has passed away, sometimes you might even know them. 

Usually, this ghost will come around to comfort or warn a loved one. It’s actually quite easy for this type of ghost to do because they’re the most easily spotted.

Interactive personalities can speak, make noises, touch you, and even show themselves completely. 

According to the paranormal community, they will look and speak exactly how you remember them. These abilities alone make the Interactive Personality the most interesting type of ghost by far! 

Poltergeists can touch you and make noise, but there isn’t another type of ghost that can speak to you. Unless, of course, we consider demonic possession, but who wants to have a conversation with a demon?

Interactive Personality As The Final Development Stage 

There’s speculation in the paranormal community about whether or not an Interactive Personality is the final stage of ghost’s development. This theory could make sense because they’re the most similar to their human form in this stage.

They retain the same personality they had when they were alive and they even smell the same. If they smoked cigarettes, chewed minty gum, or wore a pungent perfume, chances are you’ll be able to smell them out.

Interactive Personalities might be one of the most inspiring types of ghosts. While they can be mean and grumpy just like any human being can be, they aren’t that dangerous. That is of course unless they really don’t like you. 

Thankfully, even if they don’t like you, they can’t haunt you, possess you, or truly hurt you, which is really comforting. 

Interactive Ghosts might be one of the greatest signs that the afterlife does exist, and that there is life after death. This makes them inspiring to many. 

Ectoplasm or Ecto-mist

Ectoplasm, which is also known as Ecto-mist, is another type of ghost. They’re seen as a really thick substance such as slime. 

These ghosts are seen when a medium is trying to manifest a ghost and then expels the substance from their body. 

The substance is described in various ways. Some claim that it is thick like slime, others say it looks like a bundle of thread. However, it is always described as being white, black, or grey. 

Once the medium expels this Ectoplasm from their body, the ghost will then place the gauze, slime, or cheesecloth over themselves to be seen by whoever is summoning them.

An interesting aspect of the Ectoplasm type of ghost is that they supposedly can move very fast, yet stay in one spot when the substance is put over them. 

Another interesting aspect of the Ectoplasm is that it should be clear or white when expelled from the medium’s body. Once it’s put on, the ghost will become dark and more visible to the naked eye.

If you witnessed something like that, there’d be no way to explain it. There are claims that the Ectoplasm can smell so bad you can barely stand to sit in the same room with it. 

The Ectoplasm is one of the most controversial types of ghosts because they’ve been seen, they’ve been photographed, and they appear to be very real. 

However, they’re still not an accepted form of a ghost in the world of science. This is because many have been proven to be hoaxed, made of gauze and other similar substances.

Demons are, without a doubt, the most sinister and evil type of ghost that we know of so far. 

Demons have been around for centuries. They are discussed in religion, literature, movies, video games, mythology, and folklore. 

The demon is the only type of ghost that is closely tied with religion. In any religion from any part of the world, the demon is discussed and feared. 

The Power Of Demons

This type of ghost is incredibly powerful, unpredictable, manipulative, and can destroy a person’s life in a matter of seconds. 

They not only cause you immense emotional and psychological harm, but they can also physically harm you.

Their ability to cause physical harm is the scariest part about them and makes them the most feared type of ghost. Unlike a poltergeist, demons don’t just flick, trip, and slap.

They are often seen as a dense black figure, but they do have the ability to shapeshift and turn into whatever shape they would like to be in. 

Differences In Demons Due To Religion  

Different religions and regions of folklore will have different ways of describing a demon. This could just be how they believe them to look, but it could also be the way they’ve been seen. 

After all, they can shapeshift or possess human beings. Therefore, it’s impossible to truly pinpoint what a demon looks like. 

Ironically, a demon has never actually been documented in photographs or video. This could also explain the lack of descriptions. 

Still, there’ve been enough exorcisms performed and enough videos of possessed human beings to convince us that we never want to be in the presence of one!

Demons aren’t here to protect you, warn you, or comfort you. They exist purely to torment and taunt. Demons love to haunt your house, your most prized possessions, and even you. 

If you suspect you have a demon, you must never try to contact it. Once you invite them in, they’re almost impossible to get rid of.

Never try to catch them on film, and definitely don’t go out and buy an Ouija board.

The worst-case scenario is demonic possession. From what we know, a demon is the only type of ghost that can possess a human being. They always require an exorcist to get rid of them. 

The demon and Poltergeists are the only truly evil forms of a ghost. They’re also the only ones that haven’t been considered a stage of development in the afterlife.

Shadow People

Shadow People, in our opinions, are one of the most interesting types of ghost. They’re the most seen, yet the most shrugged off. 

Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night to see a shadow somewhere in the room? We usually don’t let it bother us and go back to bed, thinking it was probably just a dream. 

What if you weren’t dreaming? It’s possible you might have actually seen what you thought you saw. This shadow figure would be called a Shadow Person. 

A Shadow Person is a type of ghost that is described as a shadow in the shape of a figure, person, or a mass. They’re often shaped like a human, but don’t have any human-like features such as hair or a nose. 

Ironically, those who encounter a Shadow Person always claim that it was looking at them. This can’t be true, because Shadow People don’t have eyes. 

Most people describe Shadow People as being menacing because they do scare people most of the time. There’s no way of knowing whether they’re trying to be menacing on purpose, or if they’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

The biggest argument about Shadow People (outside of whether they are truly real or not), is if they are an evil ghost, a kind ghost, or just a neutral ghost.

They can’t touch you or cause you physical harm, they don’t appear to be able to move furniture, and they definitely don’t look like anyone we used to know. 

They are fascinating purely because there isn’t much information about them. There’s no way to contact them, talk to them, or even really examine them. For all we know, they might just be shadows. 

Related Questions

Why isn’t a spirit considered a type of ghost.

Spirits and ghosts are often discussed interchangeably when they’re actually quite different. A spirit isn’t considered a type of ghost because of how they entered the afterlife. 

A spirit is a normal person who has died in a relatively normal way, so they go to the afterlife without any issues.

They’re able to reason, they aren’t in denial that they’ve died, and they probably didn’t die abruptly or in a tragic way. 

Ghosts, on the other hand, are the complete opposite. You don’t hear much about spirits haunting people, and there’s a reason for that.

They know they’ve died and they’re at peace with it. They don’t stick around to deal with unfinished business like ghosts do. 

What Type of Ghost is Most Documented?

The most commonly documented type of ghost is the Orb. While there is speculation that Ectoplasm and Poltergeists have been seen in photographs, nothing has been documented as much as an Orb. 

If you were to go through your photo book or watch an old home video right now, you’d likely see at least one orb. 

Can a Ghost Follow You From Place to Place?

In most cases, the answer is no. Ghosts are often tied to a specific place, usually where they died or the place that they lived before they died. 

Additionally, unless a ghost is trying to haunt you, there’s really no reason for them to follow you around. However, if you were to be followed, it would be by a Poltergeist or Demon. 

To learn more, play this video by Matthew Santoro.

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Ghosts , also called Spirits , are souls of deceased humans and animals that did not go with their reaper to their respective afterlife and are stuck on Earth . The word Ghost is a common term for a soul that did not move on to an afterlife after they perished. They typically reside in The Veil , but they can occasionally appear in the physical plane. Descriptions of the apparition of ghosts vary widely: the mode of manifestation can range from an invisible presence to translucent or wispy shapes, to realistic, life-like visions.

They are also one of the most recurring "monsters of the week" in the series, appearing in many episodes.

• 1 Characteristics
• 2 Appearance
• 3 Summoning
• 5.1 Common Powers
• 5.2 Rare Powers
• 6.1 Repellents
• 6.2 Putting a Ghost to Rest
• 7 Appearances
• 9 References

Characteristics

A Ghost is the spirit of a deceased person that, for some reason or another, was unable to pass on to the next life, or whose rest had been disturbed. Ghosts are neither good nor evil, as their behavior is ultimately dictated by who they were in life and how they died.

Normally, a Ghost will start out confused and disoriented before realizing they are dead. In some cases, the trauma of sudden death can be so great that a Ghost will think that they are still alive and continue in a routine from their lives, oblivious to the fact they are dead.

A reaper explained to Dean Winchester that the longer a ghost remains on earth the more dangerous and violent it becomes. Sam Winchester once explained to the ghost of a woman they helped that ghosts can become like injured animals - they become so angry and upset that all they can do is lash out at anyone who crosses their paths. Ghosts have skewed views of existence as Sam puts it, "ghosts only see what they want to see."

It's also been stated as a fact that ghosts are the most common type of paranormal activity that Hunters encounter and hunt on a daily basis.

Ghosts are often bound to an object or a place, normally the building they died/lived in or the area where they died, as such their movements are restricted, but this isn't universal, and some very powerful ghosts can move over larger distances, but unless they can move what they're bound to, they can never be totally free. They are also sometimes bound to their bodies unless their bodies have been put to rest.

Severely disfigured ghosts having been trapped in the veil for centuries.

A ghost encountered in Of Grave Importance , who had been active for eighty years, explained to Bobby that a ghost's power to interact with the physical world comes from two places. One is complete calm where the ghost has to "tell" an object what to do and the other from blind rage. The ghost also explained in more detail the degradation of a ghost into a violent spirit saying the longer a ghost remains on earth and depending on the ghost they lose more and more of themselves until they become little more than a wild animal. He also pointed out a worse case, where trapped spirits were little more than listless zombies; a state Bobby called "Ghost Alzheimer's".

An interesting attribute, is often ghosts bring more or other things from their lives, as well as their spirit. An object that is very closely linked to ghost during their life, or linked strongly to their death, are sometimes recreated for their ghosts. This is the reason why ghosts of cars and ships exist. A very minor example of this is, ghosts often wear the clothes they died in.  

While it was generally not known where ghosts go after their remains are burned, it was revealed that reapers still indeed take them to their final resting place. However, if a Reaper is influenced by an outside source, they may take the soul to the wrong place as seen in Taxi Driver .

According to the ghost of Kevin Tran , when Metatron enacted his spell Heaven was locked down, forcing all good spirits to remain stuck in the Veil . These ghosts are generally trapped in the places they died unless attached to an object that is taken away from there. This was remedied however when the angels returned to Heaven and Metatron was imprisoned.

A damned soul fleeing a corpse.

Normally ghosts appear in the form of the physical body which they had when they were still alive. These forms will often be pale compared to the bodies of the living. Sometimes the ghost's form will look as it did when they died, and will show physical effects of the way that they died. Ghosts are also able to appear in a smoke form, similar to demons. Their smoke form, however, is more of a transparent grey than black.

On rare occasions, it is possible to summon a spirit back to earth for any reason. However, this is a risky practice considering the unpredictable nature of ghosts. Ghosts summoned through black arts can turn violent if the summoner loses control of them, usually as a result of having their rest disturbed and being forced to do things against their will.

It can be possible to obtain information from a ghost if one has something or is able to do something that will please them. This is shown when Bobby summons Crowley 's human son, Gavin McLeod, in order to find information. Upon learning about Bobby's predicament and his father's involvement, the spirit was more than happy to tell Bobby anything in return for someone putting his dad in his place.

It is also possible to bind ghosts and control them, to do so, however, is very powerful black magic. Certain powerful beings can also naturally summon and control ghosts, the only known examples are the multicolored demon Samhain , and the Egyptian god of the dead Osiris . The demon Lilith was also able to raise the witnesses , but she could not control them.

It is possible, using a binding spell to bind a ghost to your will to wreak all sorts of havoc including murder. Breaking the spell is as simple as knocking over the altar that is part of it, but the ghost can remain summoned afterwards to do whatever it wants if it so chooses.

Using Howard 's fear-based magic , Dean was able to summon the ghost of his brother who came as a vengeful spirit to kill him. However, given the way he was summoned (using Howard's fear of him and drowning), it may have controlled that he was vengeful.

There are many different types of ghosts in the series, as they are created through different kind of deaths and situations they were in when alive. They include:

• Death Echos
• Death Omens
• Ghost Banshees (tie-in novels)
• Poltergeists
• Pontianaks (tie-in novels)
• Mylings   (mentioned only)
• The Last Calusa (ghost fusion, tie-in novels)
• The Shadow People (tie-in novels)
• Women in White

Powers and Abilities

Ghosts possess several powers, though it is speculated that some have not been revealed yet. The following is a brief list of powers displayed by ghosts so far. Not all ghosts have the same abilities, but many of them share similar powers. Often a ghost's power will have a link to how they died. These abilities make ghosts one of the most powerful beings in Supernatural .

Common Powers

• Electromagnetic Interference - All ghosts disrupt nearby electronics with their presence.
• Thermokinesis - Nearly all ghosts can lower or drop the surrounding temperature with their presence.
• Invisibility - Ghosts can remain invisible to the living, but they may appear as a blur or faint light. However, when they want, they can appear as they were in life though it takes a while to gain that level of strength. They appear in wispy, distorted, flickering forms.
• Telekinesis - They are able to move virtually anything with their minds if they have enough concentration on the objects. With practice, they can become stronger telekinetics, able to manipulate many simple objects at once. Very powerful ghosts are highly capable telekinetics, able to throw people like demons can.
• Teleportation - Ghosts can teleport (be able to move in the blink of an eye to other locations). They often display a flickering appearance when using this ability. They appear in wispy, distorted, flickering forms that allow them to move at great speed, as when they flicker, can end up either inches away each time they flicker or several feet or miles away. One powerful ghost could teleport while possessing someone but had also been active for over 500 years which may explain this as she had a great level of power.
• Super Strength - They are also much stronger than when they were as humans, being incorporeal and able to generate great amounts of force without discomfort. Many have demonstrated being strong enough to easily beat down, lift, toss, maul or mutilate the strongest humans, as well as overpowering some monsters. Vengeful, angry ghosts, have proven to be strong enough to fight with much higher beings, such as Higher-tier Demons , and even the head Leviathan . Their strength can be considered a manifestation of their will power. Up until Plush , ghosts could not be overpowered by humans, but as of this episode, a team of officers was able to overpower a ghost.
• Super Speed - After Death, many ghosts are able to move at incredible speeds, especially through teleportation. They appear in distorted, flickering forms that allow them to move at great speed, as when they flicker, can end up either inches away each time they flicker or several feet or miles away.
• Astral Perception - After death, ghosts can see beings that are naturally invisible like Reapers, Demons and other Ghosts.
• Intangibility - Without a body, these spirits are able to move without hindrance even if objects are in their way, as they can phase through them with ease. They are naturally intangible, as such they can phase through solid matter unfazed, however it requires them to get angry or alternatively very calm, to become tangible. They can phase their hands through people with intangibility and cause internal injuries or stop the heart.
• Environment Manipulation - Most ghosts have shown to have the ability to manipulate the elements like wind, fire, electricity, water, and dropping temperature. Affinity to fire or water is usually because of the manner of a person's death and the ghost's origin. Manipulating electricity and dropping temperature are the two common signs that indicate a ghost's presence. Ghost usually have a natural affinity to what killed them, such as if they drowned, some, if not all of their victims are drowned by either the ghost pulling them into water with ease and making it impossible or nearly impossible to get the victim out of the water, as seen with Peter Sweeney .
• Material Attachment - Ghosts could latch their essence to objects that have been very close to them in their life. Until these objects are destroyed, the ghost could continue to manifest itself and haunt. Other ghosts could relocate the objects, allowing them to move around and away from their original haunting location.

Rare Powers

• Ectoplasm Creation - Very angry ghosts, can create Ectoplasm, but it is generally beyond the anger range of most spirits, even most violent spirits.
• Possession - A rare ability, a ghost can possess humans like demons do, but only a really angry ghost could do it.
• Electrokinesis - A step up from Electronic Manipulation, rather than simply interfering with electronics, some stronger ghosts can generate electricity themselves, control and manipulate machinery, and even use electricity offensively.
• Photokinesis  - The only ghost able to produce and manipulate light was Father Thomas , enabling him to produce powerful yet calming light aura from his being similar how angels manifest without their vessels.
• Biokinesis - Some ghosts can inflict wounds like the ones they received on others. Stronger ghosts can create the wounds in the victims, without needing to have received the wounds themselves.
• Pyrokinesis - Some ghosts can manipulate and can control fire. Example of this is Mary Winchester when she was haunting the house she died in and could manifest in the form of fire and aimed her power at the poltergeist that attacked Sam.
• Biokinesis - Some ghost can infect people with sickness and disease. Some, such as the Buruburu , can infect people with a supernatural disease called ghost sickness, which is flu-like and causes extreme fear and anxiety, to the point of hallucinations and fatal heart attacks.
• Mental Influence - Angry, vengeful ghosts or spirits can sometimes manipulate peoples minds and drive them crazy and can then manipulate the people they drove crazy to do their will. This will change the person's personality and turn them violent and suicidal. As shown in the episodes Asylum , Houses of the Holy and Bedtime Stories .
• Hydrokinesis - Some Ghosts (Like ones that drowned, or whose deaths were linked to water) can, to an extent, manipulate or even create water. Such ghosts can cause any victim that goes into or near a body of water, sometimes even bathtubs, can be drowned.
• Reality Manipulation - Some angry, powerful ghosts can bend the rules of reality and affect people, such as giving them enhanced strength, endurance, and speed. Many ghosts are able to use this to always or almost always be able to find and kill their victim despite any preventative measure done by the person, essentially a curse done upon them. This can be countered if a ghost's weaknesses are used.
• Voice Mimicry - Some powerful ghosts can perfectly imitate others' voices.
• EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) - A rare ghost ability, where they can communicate through electronic devices, cassette records, cell phones etc.
• Soul Absorption - A powerful ghost, as seen in Of Grave Importance , can destroy other ghosts, absorbing their essence and thus increasing their own power.
• Shapeshifting - Some ghosts have displayed the ability to alter their form, shifting between what they looked like when they were alive, and a more disturbing and decayed version of themselves. After two years as a ghost, Kevin Tran was shown to have altered his outward appearance in his ghostly form. Fiona Duncan was also capable of changing her appearance from a more decayed one to how she looked in life.
• Flight - Ghosts such as Isabella are able to hover above the ground. After being expelled from the people he possessed, Chester Johnson could fly in the form of an indistinct brown cloud.
• Immunity - Very powerful ghosts such as Jacob Karns and Isabella are immune to holy ground.
• Soul Control - Rarely, ghosts can control the souls of those they have murdered such as Whitman Van Ness and Hugo Moriarty .
• Soul Channeling - Rarely, ghosts can draw power from the souls of those they have murdered such as Hugo Moriarty .
• Empathy  - Jo Harvelle could sense the guilt and "all kinds of crap" Dean carried. She reveals that, after death, spirits become empathic. [1]

They are also skilled at whatever they did during their lives.

• Salt Water Soaked Ropes - Sam and Dean Winchester used a rope soaked in salt water to restrain, depower and prevent the vengeful spirit Dirk MacGregor, Jr. to leave a physical body while he was possessing a bus driver, even tho Sam and Dean seemed pretty confident that the rope would restrain Dirk for good, he was eventually able to free himself when enraged. [2]

Sam uses Iron to dissipate a spirit.

• Iron - Like salt, iron keeps spirits at bay. Some hunters use an iron crowbar or fire poker. Contact with it will dissipate a ghost for a couple of minutes. Touching iron to the skin of a person possessed by a ghost will break their possession as seen with Bobby Singer and Chester Johnson .
• Ghost Repelling Spell  - The Witch Mother was capable of expelling Eileen Leahy 's ghost from her presence by reciting the words, Umbra, abi .
• Cat's Eye Shells - Only seen in the first episode, John Winchester uses them to ward off ghosts.

Putting a Ghost to Rest

• Salting and Burning the Bones - The best and most common method to put a ghost to rest. Digging up a ghost's remains and salting and burning the bones, will help the spirit to cross over to the next life. When a ghost's bones are successfully salted and burned, it will go up in flames. This method is used for violent and vengeful spirits.

Spirit defeated.

• Destroying the Haunted Object - Salting and burning the object the ghost is using to stay active in the human world, will put a ghost to rest if there are no bones to burn, or if the objects they considered to be extensions or remains of the spirit.
• Resolving the ghost's issues - Helping a ghost to resolve its issues can put a ghost to rest. This method is rare but is used to help benevolent spirits find peace, as in the case of Molly McNamara . Sometimes, if a vengeful spirit is not too far gone, a loved one can reach them through this method as seen with Timmy's mother and Andrew Silver .
• Ghosts - If two ghosts fight each other, they will both destroy each other and will no longer exist. At least one ghost had the ability to destroy other ghosts and make himself stronger through their energy in the process. Francis Tumblety also displayed the ability to absorb other ghosts into himself as a form of torture and execution although he was interrupted the one known time he tried this.
• Holy Ground - Much like demons, most ghosts can't walk on holy ground, although unlike demons, rather than literally being unable to walk on it, ghosts can't or it will destroy them. Stronger ghosts, such as Jacob Karns and Father Thomas Gregory , are immune to this limitation though.
• Last Rites -The Last Rites performed by a priest over at least a willing ghost will send that ghost to rest.
• Overstraining - If a ghost is too weak, and/or overstretches its abilities, it can stop them for a while until they recover. Bobby described this like being out cold.
• God - God is capable of sending souls to the afterlife, as he did with Kevin Tran .
• Reapers - Reapers can encourage/coerce ghosts to go to the afterlife, as seen with Tessa and Jessica .
• Angels - While struggling with Lizzie Borden 's ghost, Castiel was physically able to knock her to the ground with a blow from Lizzie's own weapon, indicating that angels have some ability to harm ghosts. However, this appears to be limited as Castiel otherwise relies on rock salt rounds to fight.

Appearances

After Angels and Demons , Ghosts are the second most recurring creatures on the series having appeared at least 1-9 times in every season, and having appeared in a total of over 50 episodes so far.

• Pilot ( Constance Welch )
• Dead In The Water ( Peter Sweeney )
• Bloody Mary ( Mary Worthington / Bloody Mary )
• Hook Man ( Jacob Karns )
• Home ( Poltergeist , Mary Winchester )
• Asylum ( Sanford Ellicott )
• Route 666 ( Cyrus Dorian )
• Provenance ( Isaiah Merchant , Melanie Merchant )
• In My Time of Dying ( Dean Winchester )
• No Exit ( Henry H. Holmes )
• The Usual Suspects ( Claire Becker )
• Playthings ( Maggie Thompson , Rose Thompson )
• Houses of the Holy ( Thomas Gregory )
• Roadkill ( Molly McNamara , Jonah Greely )
• Hollywood Babylon (Various ghosts)
• Folsom Prison Blues ( Dolores Glockner )
• All Hell Breaks Loose - Part 2 ( John Winchester )
• Bedtime Stories ( Callie Garrison )
• Red Sky at Morning ( Ghost Ship , Sailor's Ghost , Sailor's Brother)
• Ghostfacers ( Freeman Daggett , Alan J. Corbett , Various Death Echos )
• Are You There, God? It's Me, Dean Winchester ( Victor Henriksen , Meg Masters , Ghost Twins , Ronald Reznick )
• Yellow Fever ( Luther Garland )
• It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester (Various Ghosts)
• After School Special ( Dirk MacGregor, Jr. )
• Death Takes A Holiday ( Cole Griffith )
• It's A Terrible Life ( P.T. Sandover )
• The Real Ghostbusters ( Ghost Orphans , Leticia Gore , Leticia's son)
• Swap Meat ( Maggie Briggs )
• Weekend at Bobby's ( Gavin MacLeod )
• Appointment In Samarra ( Dean Winchester , Unnamed Robber , Heart Attack Victim , Jolene , Hilary )
• Mannequin 3: The Reckoning ( Rose Brown )
• Defending Your Life ( Jo Harvelle )
• The Mentalists ( Kate Fox , Margaret Fox )
• Death's Door ( Lara Coggins )
• The Born-Again Identity ( Marin's Brother )
• Party On, Garth ( Bobby Singer )
• Of Grave Importance ( Bobby Singer , Annie Hawkins , Whitman Van Ness , Dexter O'Connell , Victoria Dodd , Haskel Crane , Various Others)
• The Girl With the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo ( Bobby Singer )
• There Will Be Blood ( Bobby Singer )
• Survival of the Fittest ( Bobby Singer )
• Southern Comfort ( Vance Collins )
• Bad Boys ( Timmy's mother )
• Captives ( Kevin Tran , Candy )
• Halt & Catch Fire ( Andrew Silver )
• Paint it Black ( Isabella )
• Plush ( Chester Johnson )
• All in the Family ( Kevin Tran )
• Alpha and Omega ( Waverly Hills Sanatorium ghosts)
• The Foundry ( Hugo Moriarty , Lucas Kellinger )
• Celebrating The Life Of Asa Fox (Unnamed Ghost, cameo only)
• Family Feud ( Fiona Duncan )
• Advanced Thanatology ( Avery Meadows , Evan , Shawn Raider )
• Good Intentions (mentioned only)
• Scoobynatural ( Ghost Kid )
• Mint Condition ( Jordan MacNeel )
• Lebanon ( John Wayne Gacy )
• Prophet and Loss ( Sarah )
• Moriah (several)
• Back and to the Future ( Hell Ghosts )
• Raising Hell ( Hell Ghosts )
• The Rupture ( Hell Ghosts )
• Golden Time ( Eileen Leahy , Jacinda )
• The Trap ( Eileen Leahy , flashback only)
• Roadkill ( Molly , Jonah Greely , Marion Greely )
• Home ( Mary Winchester )
• Ghost on the Highway ( Ghost Driver and Michael )
• Till Death Do Us Part ( Bloody Mary )
• Supernatural: John Winchester's Journal (non-canon, mentioned only)
• Bobby Singer's Guide to Hunting (non-canon, mentioned only)
• Supernatural: Nevermore ( Roxy Carmichael , non-canon)
• Supernatural: Bone Key (Roxy Carmichael mentioned only, non-canon)
• Supernatural: Devil's Gate (non-canon)
• Dean considers rats more terrifying than ghosts.
• Curiously enough, both species are only background characters unable to be interacted with.
• ↑ Defending Your Life
• ↑ After School Special
• 2 Dean Winchester
• 3 Jack Kline (Nephilim)

• Edit source
• View history

Ghost is a non-corporeal manifestation of a dead person (or, rarely, an animal or a vehicle). It is often thought to be a manifestation of the spirit or soul of a person which has remained on Earth after death. According to some beliefs, a ghost may be the personality of a person after their death, and not directly tied to the soul or spirit. Every culture in the world carries stories about ghosts, though they often disagree as to what ghosts are and whether they are just figments of imagination or a part of reality.

• 2 Characteristics
• 3 Appearance
• 5.1 Common Powers
• 5.2 Uncommon Powers
• 6 Weaknesses
• 7 External links
• 9 Known Ghosts from TV shows

Overview [ ]

Ghosts are commonly believed to be victims of accidents or murder and remain in the places they were killed, haunting those locations until they resolve whatever business keeps them bound to the mortal world. In many cases, a ghost may not even remember what business it has to complete and is forced to haunt its place of death forever. Ghosts cannot normally interact with the material world; they cannot be seen, heard and cannot touch anything. However, people with strong psychic ability may be able to sense the presence of ghosts and similar apparitions, and may be able to tap into this latent power and communicate with a ghost on some level. Some types of electronic equipment can detect ghosts as well, though usually the presence of ghosts interferes with the functions of machines. Certain animals (especially cats and dogs) are also said to be able to sense a ghost's presence.

Ghosts are often thought to appear as they did in life, though their ghostly form may appear transparent or deathly white. Some accounts of ghosts describe the spirits appearing fully material, but they appear to bare whatever injuries resulted in their deaths (eg. a ghost who had been killed by decapitation might have a scar on its neck or may even hold its head in its hands). Less serious depictions of ghosts in modern media describe them as appearing to be draped in white sheets and hang in the air.

Characteristics [ ]

A Ghost is the spirit of a deceased person that, for some reason or another, was unable to pass on to the next life, or whose rest had been disturbed. Ghosts are neither good nor evil, as their behavior is ultimately dictated by who they were in life and how they died.

Normally, a Ghost will start out confused and disoriented before realizing they are dead. In some cases, the trauma of sudden death can be so great that a Ghost will think that they are still alive and continue in a routine from their lives, oblivious to the fact they are dead.

A reaper explained that the longer a ghost remains on earth the more dangerous and violent it becomes. Once explained to the ghost of a woman they helped that ghosts can become like injured animals - they become so angry and upset that all they can do is lash out at anyone who crosses their paths. Ghosts have skewed views of existence as Sam puts it, "ghosts only see what they want to see."

It's also been stated as a fact that ghosts are the most common type of paranormal activity that Hunters encounter and hunt on a daily basis.

Ghosts are often bound to an object or a place, normally the building they died/lived in or the area where they died, as such their movements are restricted, but this isn't universal, and some very powerful ghosts can move over larger distances, but unless they can move what they're bound to, they can never be totally free. They are also sometimes bound to their bodies unless their bodies have been put to rest.

An interesting attribute, is often ghosts bring more or other things from their lives, as well as their spirit. An object that is very closely linked to ghost during their life, or linked strongly to their death, are sometimes recreated for their ghosts. This is the reason why ghosts of cars and ships exist. A very minor example of this is, ghosts often wear the clothes they died in.  

While it was generally not known where ghosts go after their remains are burned, it was revealed that reapers still indeed take them to their final resting place. However, if a Reaper is influenced by an outside source, they may take the soul to the wrong place.

Appearance [ ]

A damned soul fleeing a corpse.

Normally ghosts appear in the form of the physical body which they had when they were still alive. These forms will often be pale compared to the bodies of the living. Sometimes the ghost's form will look as it did when they died, and will show physical effects of the way that they died. Ghosts are also able to appear in a smoke form, similar to demons. Their smoke form, however, is more of a transparent grey than black.

There are many different types of ghosts, as they are created through different kind of deaths and situations they were in when alive. They include:

• Death Echos
• Death Omens
• Ghost Banshees
• Poltergeists
• The Last Calusa
• The Shadow People
• Women in White

Powers & Abilities [ ]

Ghosts possess several powers, though it is speculated that some have not been revealed yet. The following is a brief list of powers displayed by ghosts so far. Not all ghosts have the same abilities, but many of them share similar powers. Often a ghosts power will have a link to how they died. These abilities make ghosts one of the most powerful beings.

Common Powers [ ]

• Electromagnetic Interference - All ghosts disrupt nearby electronics with their presence.
• Thermokinesis - Nearly all ghosts can lower or drop the surrounding temperature with their presence.
• Invisibility - Ghosts can remain invisible to the living, but they may appear as a blur or faint light. However, when they want, they can appear as they were in life though it takes a while to gain that level of strength. They appear in wispy, distorted, flickering forms.
• Telekinesis - They are able to move virtually anything with their minds if they have enough concentration on the objects. With practice, they can become stronger telekinetics, able to manipulate many simple objects at once. Very powerful ghosts are highly capable telekinetics, able to throw people like demons can.
• Teleportation - Ghosts can teleport (be able to move in the blink of an eye to other locations). They often display a flickering appearance when using this ability. They appear in wispy, distorted, flickering forms that allow them to move at great speed, as when they flicker, can end up either inches away each time they flicker or several feet or miles away. One powerful ghost could teleport while possessing someone but had also been active for over 500 years which may explain this as she had a great level of power.
• Superhuman Strength - They are also much stronger than when they were as humans, being incorporeal and able to generate great amounts of force without discomfort. Many have demonstrated being strong enough to easily beat down, lift, toss, maul or mutilate the strongest humans, as well as overpowering some monsters. Vengeful, angry ghosts, have proven to be strong enough to fight with much higher beings, such as Higher-tier Demons, and even the head Leviathan. Their strength can be considered a manifestation of their will power.
• Superhuman Speed - After Death, many ghosts are able to move at incredible speeds, especially through teleportation. They appear in distorted, flickering forms that allow them to move at great speed, as when they flicker, can end up either inches away each time they flicker or several feet or miles away.
• Clairvoyance - After death, ghosts can see beings that are naturally invisible like Reapers, Demons and other Ghosts.
• Intangibility - Without a body, these spirits are able to move without hindrance even if objects are in their way, as they can phase through them with ease. They are naturally intangible, as such they can phase through solid matter unfazed, however it requires them to get angry or alternatively very calm, to become tangible. They can phase their hands through people with intangibility and cause internal injuries or stop the heart.
• Environment Manipulation - Most ghosts have shown to have the ability to manipulate the elements like wind, fire, electricity, water, and dropping temperature. Affinity to fire or water is usually because of the manner of a person's death and the ghost's origin. Manipulating electricity and dropping temperature are the two common signs that indicate a ghost's presence. Ghost usually have a natural affinity to what killed them, such as if they drowned, some, if not all of their victims are drowned by either the ghost pulling them into water with ease and making it impossible or nearly impossible to get the victim out of the water.
• Material Attachment - Ghosts could latch their essence to objects that have been very close to them in their life. Until these objects are destroyed, the ghost could continue to manifest itself and haunt. Other ghosts could relocate the objects, allowing them to move around and away from their original haunting location.

Uncommon Powers [ ]

• Ectoplasm Creation - Very angry ghosts, can create Ectoplasm, but it is generally beyond the anger range of most spirits, even most violent spirits.
• Possession - A rare ability, a ghost can possess humans like demons do, but only a really angry ghost could do it.
• Electrokinesis - A step up from Electronic Manipulation, rather than simply interfering with electronics, some stronger ghosts can generate electricity themselves, control and manipulate machinery, and even use electricity offensively.
• Photokinesis  - The only ghost able to produce and manipulate light was Father Thomas, enabling him to produce powerful yet calming light aura from his being similar how angels manifest without their vessels.
• Biokinesis - Some ghosts can inflict wounds like the ones they received on others. Stronger ghosts can create the wounds in the victims, without needing to have received the wounds themselves. Some ghost can infect people with sickness and disease. Some, can infect people with a supernatural disease called ghost sickness, which is flu-like and causes extreme fear and anxiety, to the point of hallucinations and fatal heart attacks.
• Pyrokinesis - Some ghosts can manipulate and can control fire. Example of this is Mary Winchester when she was haunting the house she died in and could manifest in the form of fire and aimed her power at the poltergeist that attacked Sam.
• Mental Influence - Angry, vengeful ghosts or spirits can sometimes manipulate peoples minds and drive them crazy and can then manipulate the people they drove crazy to do their will. This will change the person's personality and turn them violent and suicidal.
• Hydrokinesis - Some Ghosts (Like ones that drowned, or whose deaths were linked to water) can, to an extent, manipulate or even create water. Such ghosts can cause any victim that goes into or near a body of water, sometimes even bathtubs, can be drowned.
• Reality Warping - Some angry, powerful ghosts can bend the rules of reality and affect people, such as giving them enhanced strength, endurance, and speed. Many ghosts are able to use this to always or almost always be able to find and kill their victim despite any preventative measure done by the person, essentially a curse done upon them. This can be countered if a ghost's weaknesses are used.
• Voice Mimicry - Some powerful ghosts can perfectly imitate others' voices.
• EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) - A rare ghost ability, where they can communicate through electronic devices, cassette records, cell phones etc.
• Soul Absorption - A powerful ghost, can destroy other ghosts, absorbing their essence and thus increasing their own power.
• Shapeshifting - Some ghosts have displayed the ability to alter their form, shifting between what they looked like when they were alive, and a more disturbing and decayed version of themselves.
• Flight - Ghosts can fly or hover off the ground.
• Immunity - Very powerful ghosts are immune to holy ground.
• Soul Control - Rarely, ghosts can control the souls of those they have murdered.
• Soul Channeling - Rarely, ghosts can draw power from the souls of those they have murdered.
• Empathy - Jo Harvelle could sense the guilt and "all kinds of crap" Dean carried. She reveals that, after death, spirits become empathic.

They are also skilled at whatever they did during their lives.

Weaknesses [ ]

• Salt Water - Items either wet or soaked with sodium can render Vengeful Spirits powerless when possessing a human.
• Salt Water Soaked Ropes - Ropes/Strings laced with salt can temporarily nullify and negate spirits ghostly abilities as long as they're attached to them.
• Salting and Burning The Bones - The best and most common method to put a ghost to rest. Digging up a ghost's remains and salting and burning the bones, will help the spirit to cross over to the next life. When a ghost's bones are successfully salted and burned, it will go up in flames. This method is used for violent and vengeful spirits.

Iron poker dissipates a ghost into mist.

• Iron - Like salt, iron keeps spirits at bay. Some hunters uses an iron crowbar or fire poker up physical contact against it which will dissipate a ghost for a couple of minutes. When touching the skin of a person possessed by a ghost it'll break their possession.
• Repelling Spell - The Witch Mother was capable of expelling Eileen Leahy's ghost from her presence by reciting the words, Umbra, ability.

A ghost spirit getting defeated.

• Destroying The Haunted Object - Salting and burning the object the ghost is using to stay active in the human world, will put a ghost to rest if there are no bones to burn, or if the objects they considered to be extensions or remains of the spirit.
• Cat's Eye Shells - Using the eyeball shells of a feline could ward off the ghosts.
• Resolving The Ghost's Issues - Helping a ghost to resolve its issues can put a ghost to rest. This method is rare but is used to help benevolent spirits find peace. Sometimes, if a vengeful spirit is not too far gone, a loved one can reach them through this method.
• Holy Ground - Much like demons, most ghosts can't walk on holy ground, although unlike demons, rather than literally being unable to walk on it, ghosts can't or it will destroy them. Stronger ghosts, are immune to this limitation though.
• Last Rites -The Last Rites performed by a priest over at least a willing ghost will send that ghost to rest.
• Overstraining - If a ghost is too weak, and/or overstretched its abilities, it can stop them for a while until they recover.
• Ghosts - If two ghosts fight each other, they will both destroy each other and will no longer exist. At least one ghost had the ability to destroy other ghosts and make himself stronger through their energy in the process.
• Deities - Deities are capable of sending souls to the afterlife.
• Reapers - Reapers can encourage ghosts to go to the afterlife.
• Angels - Angelic celestial beings can overpower all types of ghost entities even in the afterlife.

External links [ ]

• Ghosts from A Christmas Carol Wikia
• Ghosts from Ghostbusters Wikia
• Ghosts from Danny Phantom Wikia
• Ghosts from Wikipedia
• Ghost from Spongebob Wikia
• Ghost from TFWiki.net
• Ghost from Conservapedia
• Ghosts from Monsters Wikia
• Ghost Hauntings Wikia
• Ghosts Wikia
• Ghosts from The Nightmare Before Christmas Wikia
• Ghosts from Halloween Wikia
• Ghosts from Harry Potter Wikia
• Ghost Physiology from Powerlisting Wikia
• Ghost from Ultimate Pop Culture Wikia
• Ghosts from A Haunting Wikia
• List of Ghosts from The Haunting Wikia
• Monsters from Monster Fighters Wikia
• Ghost from Lego World Wikia
• Ghost from Lego Monster Fighters Wikia
• Monster Fighters from Lego Dimension Fanon Wikia
• Ghost from Lego Monster Fighters Wikia 2
• Ghosts from American Horror Story Wikia
• Ghost from Brickimedia
• Ghost from Brickipedia
• Ghosts from Spooky Kids Wikia
• The Funky Phantom from Hanna-Barbera Wikia
• Ghost from Halo Alpha Wikia
• Ghosts from Pac-Man & the Ghostly Adventures Wikia
• Ghosts from Pac-Man Wikia
• Ghost from The Mystery Kids Wikia
• Ghost from Daily Life With A Monster Girl Wikia
• Ghosts from Casper Wikia
• Ghosts from The Ghost & Molly McGee Wikia
• Ghost Kids from Coraline Wikia
• Ghosts from LAIKA Wikia

Gallery [ ]

Known Ghosts from TV shows [ ]

• 2 Werewolves
• 3 Skinwalkers

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‘Ghosts’ Cast: What the Stars of the CBS Sitcom Look Like in Real Life

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A haunting hoot! Ghosts is not the typical sitcom, but the transformations of the actors on the show are just part of the fun.

The CBS series, which premiered in October 2021, follows married couple Sam ( Rose McIver ) and Jay ( Utkarsh Ambudkar ) after they inherit a country estate. The pair plan to convert the historic home into a bed and breakfast, but their situation grows more complicated when Sam suffers a near-death experience in the house and suddenly acquires the ability to see the ghosts who live there .

The personalities of the spirits range from a Viking to a Prohibition-era singer to a flower child. Their knowledge (and costumes!) span centuries since they all died on the property and failed to move on to the afterlife over the years.

Joe Wiseman explained in October 2021 how he and fellow showrunner Joe Port crafted the ghost characters.

“The first thing we did was look at the macro and we thought of American archetypes and what kind of characters were from what period,” Wiseman told Entertainment Tonight at the time. “We sort of landed on the Northeast, where the Hudson Valley is and where the show is located, because we felt like that had American history baked into it.”

One character, in particular, dictated the background of the show’s entire ensemble, as the executive producers were set on including Thorfinn, played by Devan Chandler Long .

“One thing early on that we decided we wanted was a Viking,” Wiseman recalled. “And we just thought that would be a fun character to have. That sort of forced our hand a little bit in terms of location because we did a lot of research for all the characters. We wanted things to be historically accurate as much as possible because it’s just as easy to be accurate and funny as it is to make things up.”

Following “a lot of research about Vikings,” the creative team discovered that some sailed “down the coast from Canada and did exploratory missions inland,” Wiseman said. “So it rang true that one would be in the Hudson Valley.”

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The key to the show’s charm was to build a diverse cast of undead characters. “The fact that these people who never would have met in real life from all different kinds of people, from all different kinds of places, but also from different eras who literally weren’t even alive at the same time,” Port told the outlet. “It’s a very interesting world where, even though they’re very different, because they’re forced together, they become friends and learn a lot from each other.”

Scroll through the gallery below to see what the stars of Ghosts look like in real life:

Credit: Cliff Lipson/CBS

A haunting hoot! Ghosts is not the typical sitcom, but the transformations of the actors on the show are just part of the fun. The CBS series, which premiered in October 2021, follows married couple Sam ( Rose McIver ) and Jay ( Utkarsh Ambudkar ) after they inherit a country estate. The pair plan to convert the historic home into a bed and breakfast, but their situation grows more complicated when Sam suffers a near-death experience in the house and suddenly acquires the ability to see the ghosts who live there . The personalities of the spirits range from a Viking to a Prohibition-era singer to a flower child. Their knowledge (and costumes!) span centuries since they all died on the property and failed to move on to the afterlife over the years. Joe Wiseman explained in October 2021 how he and fellow showrunner Joe Port crafted the ghost characters. “The first thing we did was look at the macro and we thought of American archetypes and what kind of characters were from what period,” Wiseman told Entertainment Tonight at the time. “We sort of landed on the Northeast, where the Hudson Valley is and where the show is located, because we felt like that had American history baked into it.” [sendtonews type="float" key="LW00Gz1ZhL-2839793-14453"] One character, in particular, dictated the background of the show’s entire ensemble, as the executive producers were set on including Thorfinn, played by Devan Chandler Long . “One thing early on that we decided we wanted was a Viking,” Wiseman recalled. “And we just thought that would be a fun character to have. That sort of forced our hand a little bit in terms of location because we did a lot of research for all the characters. We wanted things to be historically accurate as much as possible because it’s just as easy to be accurate and funny as it is to make things up.” Following “a lot of research about Vikings,” the creative team discovered that some sailed “down the coast from Canada and did exploratory missions inland,” Wiseman said. “So it rang true that one would be in the Hudson Valley.” The key to the show’s charm was to build a diverse cast of undead characters. “The fact that these people who never would have met in real life from all different kinds of people, from all different kinds of places, but also from different eras who literally weren’t even alive at the same time,” Port told the outlet. “It’s a very interesting world where, even though they’re very different, because they’re forced together, they become friends and learn a lot from each other.” Scroll through the gallery below to see what the stars of Ghosts look like in real life:

Credit: CBS; Shutterstock

Rebecca Wisocky (Hetty)

The actress plays one of the former owners of Woodstone Manor and an ancestor of Sam’s. The family gained their fortune as robber barons. Outside of Ghosts , Wisocky is best known for her stint on Devious Maids from 2013 to 2016. 

Brandon Scott Jones (Isaac)

Isaac is a Revolutionary War soldier who continues to struggle with his sexuality in the centuries after his death. His portrayer is a comedian who previously appeared in Isn’t It Romantic , The Other Two and The Good Place . 

Richie Moriarty (Pete)

Moriarty plays an ‘80s-era scoutmaster who is an eternal optimist despite being killed by a kid who accidentally shot him in the neck with an arrow. Prior to landing his role on Ghosts , the comedian guest-starred on What We Do in the Shadows , Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt , The Last O.G. and Search Party .

Credit: CBS; Courtesy of Danielle Pinnock/Instagram

Danielle Pinnock (Alberta)

Pinnock is a scene-stealer as sassy 1920s-era jazz singer Alberta. Fans may recognize the comedian from Young Sheldon , A Black Lady Sketch Show , This Is Us and Get Shorty .

Credit: CBS; Courtesy of Devan Chandler Long/Instagram

Devan Chandler Long (Thorfinn)

Thorfinn is a brute Viking on the series, but his portrayer has shown his range since he began acting in 2011, landing recurring roles on Doom Patrol , The Rookie , Runaways and Bosch .  

Sheila Carrasco (Flower)

Before embodying hippie Flower, Carrasco appeared on Jane the Virgin , The Good Place , Life in Pieces and The Odd Couple .

Credit: CBS; Courtesy of Roman Zaragoza/Instagram

Roman Zaragoza (Sasappis)

Zaragoza, who plays a Native American with a gift for storytelling, started acting at a young age. He is a Disney Channel alum who guest-starred on Austin & Ally from 2014 to 2015. For the past 10 years, he has worked with Native Voices at the Autry, the only Native American Equity theatre company in the United States.

Credit: CBS; Courtesy of Asher Grodman/Instagram

Asher Grodman (Trevor)

The actor portrays a ‘90s-era finance bro on the sitcom. He has guest-starred on Chicago Med , Succession and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and also works as an acting teacher. 

Ghosts airs on CBS Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET. 

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Jim Cramer's top 10 things to watch in the stock market Tuesday

My top 10 things to watch Tuesday, Oct. 3

• 10-year Treasury yield hits 16-year high near 4.75%. 20-year yield takes out 5% as I have been saying it would since 3.75%. I have been predicting this piece of paper would cross the fed funds rate as the de-inversion process in the bond market continues. It's almost there. The central bank's current interest rate target range is 5.25% to 5.5%.
• Bond prices, which move inversely to yields, continue to crumble. Yields up often means stocks down and that's where we're headed at the open for the Dow , the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq . Despite a three-session decline, oil just jumped more than 28% in the third quarter. And, the dollar index has been riding an 11-week winning streak.
• With bond yields, oil and the dollar rising all at once this year, we explored how each of these headwinds impacts stocks . Will utilities, which kind of act like bonds with high dividend yields, continue to give up the ghost on price? By far been the worst-performing sector in the S&P 500 this year, down more than 20%.  Will the consumer products take out the October lows?
• Macy's outgoing CEO Jeff Gennette and incoming chief Tony Spring on "Mad Money" on Tuesday evening. Macy's (M) has an annual dividend yield of 5.7%. Now, it's all about refinancing. Spring brings his experience running the company's high-end Bloomingdale's chain to the top job.
• KeyBanc raises price target on Club name Nvidia (NVDA) to $750 per share from $670. Keeps overweight (buy) rating. I love Nvidia but the analysts are being too aggressive.
• JPMorgan says buy Amazon (AMZN) into weakness. AWS cloud unit is accelerating. Piper cuts price target on Alphabet 's (GOOGL). Microsoft (MSFT) gets with Domino's Pizza (DPZ) to work on AI-driven ordering and store operations. Separately, all three Club names are fighting with the government. We explored how they are pushing back against antitrust allegations.
• Wells Fargo raises the stakes ahead of Thursday's after-the-bell earnings from Mexican beer powerhouse Constellation Brands (STZ). Raising price target on the stock to $285 per share from $280. Wedbush goes to $300 on STZ. Both firms keep their buy-equivalent ratings.
• Club name Apple (AAPL) starts requiring new apps to show proof of a Chinese government licence before release on its China App Store. Reuters says it began last Friday . Meanwhile, BofA says App Store revenue grew nearly 9% in Apple's fiscal fourth quarter.
• The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Club holding Meta Platforms (META) is floating an ad-free version of Instagram and Facebook in Europe. The proposal is meant to appease EU regulators.
• New layoffs at General Motors (GM) and Club name Ford (F) as the UAW just expanded its strike against them. The Wall Street Journal says more than 6,000 workers the Detroit's Big 3 automakers, including Chrysler-parent Stellantis (STLA), are laid off due to the walkouts.

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