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[[folder: Main/Our Ghosts Are Different ]]


* Why is it that in almost any work in which ghosts exist, people are surprised to encounter said ghosts. If a significant number of the deceased come back as ghosts, shouldn't they just be an accepted fact of life?
** That would depend on the statistics involved. If, say, only one in ten million dead came back us ghosts, it wouldn't be very likely that it has happened to anyone you know.
** But the usual qualifier for becoming a ghost is having UnfinishedBusiness. If everyone who had unfinished business when they died became a ghost, there would be a heck of a lot of ghosts floating around.
** Maybe it's a matter of stubbornness and the importance of the UnfinishedBusiness. If your unfinished business was, say, mowing the lawn, that probably wouldn't be enough to turn you into a ghost. Even if it was something important, maybe after death, material things seem less important, so it's only people who are really, ''really'' fixated on an issue that remain as ghosts.
** Because they don't really believe ghosts exist. There have been numerous accounts of ghosts, but you'd still be shocked if one suddenly appeared to you.
*Why is it that non-flying ghosts are intangible to everything except the floor? Doesn't seem like there would be a difference.
** Really any supernatural being that has intangibility, but not flight, as a power does this. See Main/RequiredSecondaryPowers. It's probably by choice though. The ghost doesn't want to fall through the floor, so s/he doesn't, or it's psychological in that they don't think they should fall through, so they don't. Or they do have flight, and the footsteps are mimed (i.e. they don't actually touch the floor, but they make the movement a living human does).
** If they are intanglible, gravity can't affect them, and [[YourMindMakesItReal falling through the floor does not occur to them]].
*** If they weren't affected by gravity but couldn't fly, then the Earth would move around the sun without them and they'd be floating in space.
*** Maybe that's why there are so few of them around. [[FateWorseThanDeath Chilling thought.]]
** Ghosts are shadows of their living selves. They cannot manipulate objects, nor are they affected by objects around them, but they can mime the things they did in life. So if they walked through a doorway in the past, they can pass through the door now, even though that door is closed. They can walk right through objects like furniture placed across their path, or walls that have been newly erected, if those things weren't there when they were alive. They can even walk up stairways that have been demolished.
* In a setting where ghosts are former humans and visible to everyone, why do they make no attempt to continue their old lives? For example, why doesn't the spirit of a dead college student continue taking classes until graduation? After all, just because you're separated from your physical body doesn't mean that you shouldn't be treated as a person. Is there some sort of Prime Directive that all ghosts instinctively follow?
** They don't need (and cannot have) anything they can buy, they often can become/always are invisible, they can't do all that much anyway etc. etc. Besides, there's usually UnfinishedBusiness to take care of.
* If you [[DropDeadGorgeous die naked]] in a universe with JacobMarleyApparel, is your ghost stuck being nude for eternity?
** Yes. ''{{Stardust}}'' provides a prime example of this.
** As does ''{{Ghost Town}}''.
* Why are all ghosts encountered in fiction from fairly recent history? That is, usually no earlier than one or two hundred years ago -- maybe TheMiddleAges at the most. Why aren't there ghosts of people from the Stone Age floating around? I mean, you're stuck as a ghost for eternity, right?
** EverythingFades. Alternately, we're back to UnfinishedBusiness. If you haven't got it sorted out after five or six centuries of haunting, chances are you never will. Might as well just give up and go to your eternal rest.
** Not all, ''TheSixthSense'' has WeirdnessCensor built into every ghost, so they very often don't notice or ''care'' that their unfinished business can't be done. See the ghosts from two centuries ago hanging in the school.
* That ghosts do a very poor job pursuing their GhostlyGoals, and [[PoorCommunicationKills can never just tell their "helpers" what's up.]]
** GhostAmnesia?
*** Maybe they don't know themselves? Often in fiction, a ghost is created from the memory of a traumatic death. I mean, people suffer amnesia from experiencing horrifying events (physical abuse, natural disaster, murder, car crash etc..), and if you died of it, you'd want to be pretty far away from that incident in your head as well. If their unfinished business was connected to their death, little wonder they can't explain it outright. The poor things go mad.
* How does JacobMarleyApparel work if two people die wearing the same clothes (at different times), like a crown or [[UrbanLegend a pair of poisoned boots]], what does that say for the clothes? That the clothes are a result of YourMindMakesItReal (which works for the clothing but usually not for the more sudden causes of death), or that clothing has regenerating souls?

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