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The concept of a ghost recurs in many traditional belief systems around the world in the general sense that a person's disembodied soul or spirit survives death, and may in some way interact with the living or continue to exist in some other world, although specific beliefs vary greatly from one place and time to another. Descriptions of the apparition of ghosts also vary widely: the mode of manifestation can range from an invisible presence to translucent or wispy shapes, to realistic, life-like visions.

The belief in ghosts dates back to animism or ancestor worship in pre-literate cultures. Certain religious practices — funeral rites, exorcisms, and some practices of spiritualism and ritual magic — attempt to appease the spirits of the dead. In some cultures, ghosts are solitary essences which haunt particular locations, objects, or people with which they were associated in life. In other cultures the ghost has a more active and independent existence. Stories of phantom armies, ghost trains and phantom ships, and even ghost animals have also been recounted.

The deliberate attempt to contact the spirit of a deceased person is known as necromancy, or in spiritism as a séance. Beginning with 19th century spiritism, various attempts have been made to investigate ghosts through scientific methods, but such efforts are generally held to be pseudoscientific. In a 2006 National Science Foundation (NSF) report on a recent Gallup Poll survey of public opinion in the US, the NSF referred to belief in the existence of ghosts as a "pseudoscientific belief." A 2004 report by the NSF used somewhat similar language.

Ghosts are popular motifs in film, theatre, literature, and myth and legend, as are other paranormal entities. They often carry connotations of violence, suffering, disquiet, or penance.

Typology

Anthropological context

A notion of the transcendent, supernatural or numinous, usually involving entities like ghosts, demons or deities, is a cultural universal shared by all human cultures. In pre-literate folk religions, these beliefs are often summarized under animism and ancestor worship.

In many cultures malignant, restless ghosts are distinguished from the more benign spirits which are the subject of ancestor worship.

Ancestor worship typically involves rites intended to prevent revenants, vengeful spirits of the dead, imagined as starving and envious of the living. Strategies for preventing revenants may either include sacrifice, i.e. the provision of the dead with food and drink in order to pacify them, or the magical banishment of the deceased, preventing them from returning by force. Ritual feeding of the dead is performed in traditions like the Chinese Ghost Festival or the Western All Souls' Day. Magical banishment of the dead is present in many of the world's burial customs. The bodies found in many tumuli (kurgan) had been ritually bound before burial, and the custom of binding the dead persists, for example, in rural Anatolia.

Nineteenth-century anthropologist James Frazer stated in his classic work, The Golden Bough, that souls were seen as the creature within that animated the body.

Ghosts and the afterlife

Although the human soul was sometimes symbolically or literally depicted in ancient cultures as a bird or other animal, it was widely held that the soul was an exact reproduction of the body in every feature, even down to clothing the person wore. This is depicted in artwork from various ancient cultures, including such works as the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which shows deceased people in the afterlife appearing much as they did before death, including the style of dress.

Common attributes

Another widespread belief concerning ghosts is that they were composed of a misty, airy, or subtle material. Anthropologists speculate that this may also stem from early beliefs that ghosts were the person within the person (the person's spirit), most noticeable in ancient cultures as a person's breath, which upon exhaling in colder climates appears visibly as a white mist. This belief may have also fostered the metaphorical meaning of "breath" in certain languages, such as the Latin spiritus and the Greek pneuma, which by analogy became extended to mean the soul. In the Bible, God is depicted as animating Adam with a breath.

In many traditional accounts, ghosts were often thought to be deceased people looking for vengeance, or imprisoned on earth for bad things they did during life. The appearance of a ghost has often been regarded as an omen or portent of death. Seeing one's own ghostly double or "fetch" is a related omen of death.

White ladies were reported to appear in many rural areas, and supposed to have died tragically or suffered trauma in life. White Lady legends are found around the world. Common to many of them is the theme of losing or being betrayed by a husband or fiancé. They are often associated with an individual family line, as a harbinger of death. When one of these ghosts is seen it indicates that someone in the family is going to die, similar to a banshee.

Legends of ghost ships have existed since the 18th century; most notable of these is the Flying Dutchman. This theme has been used in literature in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge.

Locale

A place where ghosts are reported is described as haunted, and often seen as being inhabited by spirits of deceased who may have been former residents or were familiar with the property. Supernatural activity inside homes is said to be mainly associated with violent or tragic events in the building's past such as murder, accidental death, or suicide — sometimes in the recent or ancient past. Amongst many cultures and religions it is believed that the essence of a being such as the 'soul' continues to exist. Some philosophical and religious views argue that the 'spirits' of those who have died have not 'passed over' and are trapped inside the property where their memories and energy are strong.

Ghosts in different cultures

Ghosts feature in many different cultures around the world, often with different characteristics. This section describes a sample.

Australian Aborigines

There are many Aboriginal groups in Australia, with diverse beliefs, but the concept of the Dreaming is found in different forms throughout the land. An essential part of the belief is that every person exists eternally in the Dreaming. This eternal part existed before the life of the individual begins, and continues to exist when the life of the individual ends. Both before and after life, it is believed that this spirit-child exists in the Dreaming and is only initiated into life by being born through a mother. The spirit of the child is culturally understood to enter the developing fetus during the fifth month of pregnancy.. When the mother felt the child move in the womb for the first time, it was thought that this was the work of the spirit of the land in which the mother then stood. Upon birth, the child is considered to be a special custodian of that part of his country and is taught the stories and songlines of that place.

Aztecs

After death the soul of the Aztec went to one of three places: Tlalocan, Mictlan, and the sun. The Aztec idea of the afterlife for fallen warriors and women who died in childbirth was that their souls would be transformed into hummingbirds that would follow the sun on its journey through the sky. Souls of people who died from less glorious causes would go to Mictlan - place of the dead. Those who drowned would go to Tlalocan. The Cihuateteo, spirits of human women who died in childbirth, were not benevolent. On five specified days of the Aztec calendar they descended to earth and haunted crossroads, hoping to steal children whom they had not been able to have themselves.

Bengal

The Hindu Garuda Purana discusses ghosts. Ghosts in Bengali culture are a recurrent motives both in fairy tales and in modern day Bengali literature as well, references to ghosts may be often found. It is believed that the spirits of those who cannot find peace in the afterlife or die unnatural deaths remain on Earth. The common word for ghosts in Bengali is bhut (ভূত)

China

King Hsuan (827-783 BC) according to Chinese legend executed his minister, Tu Po, on false charges even after being warned that Tu Po's ghost would seek revenge. Three years later, according to historical chronicles, Tu Po's ghost shot and killed Hsuan with a bow and arrow before an assembly of feudal lords. The Chinese philosopher, Mo Tzu (470-391 BC), is quoted as having commented:

"If from antiquity to the present, and since the beginning of man, there are men who have seen the bodies of ghosts and spirits and heard their voices, how can we say that they do not exist? If none have heard them and none have seen them, then how can we say they do? But those who deny the existence of the spirits say: "Many in the world have heard and seen something of ghosts and spirits. Since they vary in testimony, who are to be accepted as really having heard and seen them?" Mo Tzu said: As we are to rely on what many have jointly seen and what many have jointly heard, the case of Tu Po is to be accepted."

Ancestor worship is central to Chinese folk religion. Other than the Qingming and Chongyang festivals, descendants should pay tributes to ancestors during the Zhongyuanjie, more commonly known as the Ghost Festival. Traditionally, other than the tombstones or urn-covers, descendants are expected to install altar (神台) in their homes to which they would pay homage regularly in the day, with joss sticks and tea. The ancestors, parents or grandparents, are worshiped or venerated as if they are still living. {{citation}}: Empty citation (help)

Egypt

There was widespread belief in ghosts in ancient Egyptian culture in the sense of the continued existence of the soul and spirit after death, with the ability to assist or harm the living, and the possibility of a second death. Over a period of more than 2,500 years, Egyptian beliefs about the nature of the afterlife evolved constantly. Many of these beliefs were recorded in inscriptions, papyrus scrolls and tomb paintings. The Egyptian Book of the Dead compiles some of the beliefs from different periods of ancient Egyptian history. In modern times, the fanciful concept of a mummy coming back to life and wreaking vengeance when disturbed has spawned a whole genre of horror stories and movies.

Europe

Belief in Ghosts in European folklore is characterized by the recurring fear of "returning" or revenant deceased which may harm the living. This includes the Scandinavian gjenganger, the Romanian strigoi, the Serbian vampir, the Greek vrykolakas, etc. English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish folklores are particularly notable for their numerous haunted locations. Ghosts are called by many different names, which often describe they way which they are thought to behave. The beliefs date back to antiquity, and are described in Greek and Roman literature. During the middle ages, belief in ghosts was widespread. As European culture became more sophisticated during the Renaissance and in later periods, a more romantic view of ghosts emerged.

Japan

Yūrei (幽霊) are figures in Japanese folklore, analogous to Western legends of ghosts. The name consists of two kanji, 幽 (yū), meaning "faint" or "dim" and 霊 (rei), meaning "soul" or "spirit." Like their Western counterparts, they are thought to be spirits kept from a peaceful afterlife. See also Yokai, Obake.

Khoikhoi

The Khoikhoi considered that the individual survived death, and their ghost were at some times mischievous or malicious. The ghosts however could not usually travel far from the place where they had died, being in a sense attached to the body or its grave. To avoid problems, the community would move away from this place, leaving the hut, clothes and tools behind so the ghost would not follow them.

Khoisan

Attempts to understand the beliefs of Khoisan conserning ghosts may be futile, due to the highly individualistic nature of their thought about all things concerned with the supernatural. The word //gauwa is used among the !Kung people to mean both dream and spirit as well as ghost.

Malay culture

To a Malay, the word hantu is more often taken to mean demons or undead beings than the spirit of a dead person. Ghosts in Malay culture are believed to be active only at night time, but especially during a full moon. An old Malay belief is that a person's ghost haunts their grave for seven days before departing to the underworld. Ghosts may also return and take possession of a living person, causing madness. Ghosts may torment the living, causing illness and misfortune. One way to evade such a ghost is for all the victims to formally change their name, so that when the ghost returns it will not recognize them. Another is to tempt the ghost with a meal. When the ghost turns into an animal such as a chicken so that it can eat, it may be killed and destroyed.

Mesopotamia

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

Middle East

The Hebrew Torah and the Bible contain few references to ghosts, associating spiritism with forbidden occult activities cf. Deuteronomy 18:11. The most notable reference is in the First Book of Samuel (I Samuel 28:7-19 KJV), in which a disguised King Saul has the Witch of Endor summon the spirit of Samuel. In the New Testament, Jesus has to persuade the Disciples that he is not a ghost following the resurrection, Luke 24:37-39 (note that some versions of the Bible, such as the KJV and NKJV, use the term "spirit"). In a similar vein, Jesus' followers at first believe him to be a ghost (spirit) when they see him walking on water.

Haunted houses are featured in the 9th century Arabian Nights (such as the tale of Ali the Cairene and the Haunted House in Baghdad).

Navajo

In Navajo religious belief, a chindi (Navajo "ch'íįdii") is the ghost left behind after a person dies, believed to leave the body with the deceased's last breath. It is everything that was bad about the person; the "residue that man has been unable to bring into universal harmony". Traditional Navajo believe that contact with a chindi can cause illness ("ghost sickness") and death. Chindi are believed to linger around the deceased's bones or possessions, so possessions are often destroyed after death and contact with bodies is avoided. After death the deceased's name is never spoken, for fear that the chindi will hear and come and make one ill.

Traditional Navajo practise is to allow death to occur outdoors, to allow the chindi to disperse. If a person dies in a house or hogan, that building is believed to be inhabited by the chindi and is abandoned.Traditional Navajo beliefs include many references to the power of ghosts to cause mischief or sickness among their relatives. A building in which someone has died cannot be reoccupied for this reason, and an opening must be made in the wall through which the ghost can escape. It is also believed that a chindi can be used to cause harm upon someone else. Navajo witches, followers of the Corpse-poison Way—’áńt’įįzhį, are believed to infect others with chindi sickness by planting a piece of a corpse, such as a bead or powder made from a corpse bone, in a person's body.

Polynesia

There was widespread belief in ghosts in Polynesian culture, some of which persists today. After death, a person's ghost would normally travel to the sky world or the underworld, but some could stay on earth. In the many Polynesian legends, ghosts were often actively involved in the affairs of the living. Ghosts might also cause sickness or even invade the body of ordinary people, to be driven out through strong medicines.

Tibet

Ghosts are explicitly recognized in the Tibetan Buddhist religion, occupying a distinct but overlapping world to the human world, and feature in many traditional legends. When a human dies, after a period of uncertainty they may enter the ghost world. A hungry ghost has a tiny throat and huge stomach, and so can never be satisfied. Ghosts may be killed with a ritual dagger or caught in a spirit trap and burnt, thus releasing them to be reborn. Ghosts may also be exorcised, and an annual festival is held throughout Tibet for this purpose.

Some say that Dorje Shugden, the ghost of a powerful 17th-century monk, is a deity, but the Dalai Lama asserts that he is an evil spirit, which has caused a split in the Tibetan exile community.

United States

The National Science Foundation quotes Gallup Poll News Service as evidence of an "increasing belief in pseudoscience" in the USA, and a Gallup poll to the effect that belief in haunted houses, ghosts, communication with the dead, and witches had an especially steep increase over the 1990s. According to a 2005 Gallup poll, about 32% of Americans "believe in the existence of ghosts."

Yoruba

Among the Yoruba people it was traditionally thought that after the death of the body the ghost man went to the underworld after the prescribed funeral rites had been performed. In the underworld, each man would do what he had been accustomed to do in life. If the rites were omitted, the ghost would wander around the world cold, hungry and homeless. They would be vulnerable to capture by evil spirits who would throw the ghost into a sort of purgatory. When a child was born, they were thought to be a re-born ghost.

Zulu

The Zulus have been described as the great standing type of an animistic of ghost-worshipping race without a god. A small space is reserved in the back of each dwelling for ancestors, who may visit the living through dreams in which they comment on the actions of their descendents, in the form of a snake, or (very rarely) as a visible ghost if the death rituals have not been properly observed.

Western Spiritualism and Skeptics

Spiritualist movement

In 1848, the Fox sisters of Hydesville, New York claimed to have communication with the disembodied spirits of the dead and launched the Spiritualist movement, which claimed many adherents in the nineteenth century.

The rise of Spiritualism saw an increase in popular interest in the supernatural. Books on the supernatural were published for the growing middle class, such as 1852’s Mysteries, by Charles Elliott, which contains “sketches of spirits and spiritual things”, including accounts of the Salem witch trials, the Cock Lane Ghost, and the Rochester Rappings. The Night Side of Nature, by Catherine Crowe, published in 1853, provided definitions and accounts of wraiths, doppelgangers, apparitions and haunted houses. Spiritualist organizations were formed in America and Europe, such as the London Spiritualist Alliance, which published a newspaper called The Light, featuring articles such as “Evenings at Home in Spiritual Séance”, “Ghosts in Africa” and “Chronicles of Spirit Photography”, advertisements for "mesmerists” and patent medicines, and letters from readers about personal contact with ghosts. Mainstream newspapers treated stories of ghosts and haunting as they would any other news story. An account in the Chicago Daily Tribune in 1891, "sufficiently bloody to suit the most fastidious taste", tells of a house believed haunted by the ghosts of three murder victims seeking revenge against their killer’s son, who was eventually driven insane. Many families, “having no faith in ghosts”, thereafter moved into the house, but all soon moved out again.

The claims of spiritualists and others as to the reality of ghosts were investigated by the Society for Psychical Research, founded in London in 1882. The Society set up a Committee on Haunted Houses and a Literary Committee which looked at the literature on the subject. Apparitions of the recently deceased, at the moment of their death, to their friends and relations, were very commonly reported. One celebrated example was the strange appearance of Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon, walking through the drawing room of his family home in Eaton Square, London, looking straight ahead, without exchanging a word to anyone, in front of several guests at a party being given by his wife on 22 June 1893 whilst he was supposed to be in a ship of the Mediterranean Squadron, manoeuvering off the coast of Syria. Subsequently it was reported that he had gone down with his ship, the HMS Victoria, that very same night, after it had collided with the HMS Camperdown following an unexplained and bizarre order to turn the ship in the direction of the other vessel. Such crisis apparitions have received serious study by parapsychologists with various explanations given to account for them, including telepathy, as well as the traditional view that they represent disembodied spirits.

Summoning or exorcising the shades of the departed is an item of belief and religious practice for spiritualists and practitioners of ritual magic. The Spiritism of the 19th century has exerted a lasting influence on the Western perception of ghosts. Spiritist séances together with pseudoscientific explanations like ectoplasm and spirit photography appeared to give a quality of scientific method to apparitions. Such approaches to the "paranormal" have become a familiar topos in Western popular culture. The Ghost Club, founded in London in 1862, was an early "ghost hunting" organization. Famous members of the club have included Charles Dickens, Sir William Crookes, Sir William Fletcher Barrett and Harry Price.

Scientific skepticism

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Joe Nickell of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, wrote that there was no credible scientific evidence that any location was inhabited by spirits of the dead. Limitations of human perception and ordinary physical explanations can account for ghost sightings; for example, air pressure changes in a home causing doors to slam, or lights from a passing car are reflected through a window at night. Pareidolia, an innate tendency to recognize patterns in random perceptions, is what some skeptics believe causes people to believe that they have seen ghosts. Reports of ghosts "seen out of the corner of the eye" may be accounted for by the sensitivity of human peripheral vision. According to Nickell, peripheral vision can easily mislead, especially late at night when the brain is tired and more likely to misinterpret sights and sounds."

Some researchers, such as Michael Persinger of Laurentian University, Canada, have speculated that changes in geomagnetic fields (created, e.g., by tectonic stresses in the Earth's crust or solar activity) could stimulate the brain's temporal lobes and produce many of the experiences associated with hauntings Sound is thought to be another cause of supposed sightings. Richard Lord and Richard Wiseman have concluded that infrasound can cause humans to experience bizarre feelings in a room, such as anxiety, extreme sorrow, a feeling of being watched, or even the chills. Carbon monoxide poisoning, which can cause changes in perception of the visual and auditory systems, was speculated upon as a possible explanation for haunted houses as early as 1921.

Depiction in the arts

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Ghosts are prominent in the popular cultures of various nations. The ghost story is ubiquitous across all cultures from oral folktales to works of literature.

English literature

Renaissance to Romanticism (1500 to 1840)

One of the more recognizable ghosts in English literature is the shade of Hamlet's murdered father in Shakespeare’s The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. In Hamlet, it is the ghost who demands that Prince Hamlet investigate his "murder most foul" and seek revenge upon his usurping uncle, King Claudius. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the murdered Banquo returns as a ghost to the dismay of the title character.

In English Renaissance theater, ghosts were often depicted in the garb of the living and even in armor, as with the ghost of Hamlet’s father. Armor, being out-of-date by the time of the Rennaissance, gave the stage ghost a sense of antiquity. But the sheeted ghost began to gain ground on stage in the 19th century because an armored ghost could not satisfactorily convey the requisite spookiness: it clanked and creaked, and had to be moved about by complicated pulley systems or elevators. These clanking ghosts being hoisted about the stage became objects of ridicule as they became clichéd stage elements. Ann Jones and Peter Stallybrass, in Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory, point out, “In fact, it is as laughter increasingly threatens the Ghost that he starts to be staged not in armor but in some form of 'spirit drapery'.” An interesting observation by Jones and Stallybrass is that

...at the historical point at which ghosts themselves become increasingly implausible, at least to an educated elite, to believe in them at all it seems to be necessary to assert their immateriality, their invisibility. The drapery of ghosts must now, indeed, be as spiritual as the ghosts themselves. This is a striking departure both from the ghosts of the Rennaissance stage and from the Greek and Roman theatrical ghosts upon which that stage drew. The most prominent feature of Rennaissance ghosts is precisely their gross materiality. They appear to us conspicuously clothed.

Ghosts figured prominently in traditional British ballads of the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly the “Border Ballads” of the turbulent border country between England and Scotland. Ballads of this type include The Unquiet Grave, The Wife of Usher's Well, and Sweet William's Ghost, which feature the recurring theme of returning dead lovers or children. In the ballad King Henry, a particularly ravenous ghost devours the king’s horse and hounds before forcing the king into bed. The king then awakens to find the ghost transformed into a beautiful woman.

One of the key early appearances by ghosts in a gothic tale was The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole in 1764.

Victorian/Edwardian (1840 to 1920)

The “classic” ghost story arose during the Victorian period, and included authors such as M. R. James, Sheridan Le Fanu, Violet Hunt, and Henry James. Classic ghost stories were influenced by the gothic fiction tradition, and contain elements of folklore and psychology. M. R. James summed up the essential elements of a ghost story as, “Malevolence and terror, the glare of evil faces, ‘the stony grin of unearthly malice', pursuing forms in darkness, and 'long-drawn, distant screams', are all in place, and so is a modicum of blood, shed with deliberation and carefully husbanded...”

Famous literary apparitions from this period are the ghosts of A Christmas Carol, in which Ebenezer Scrooge is helped to see the error of his ways by the ghost of his former colleague Jacob Marley, and the ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet to Come.

Oscar Wilde's comedy The Canterville Ghost has been adapted for film and television on several occasions. Henry James's The Turn of the Screw has also appeared in a number of adaptations, notably the film The Innocents and Benjamin Britten's opera The Turn of the Screw.

Modern Era (1920 to 1970)

Professional parapsychologists and “ghosts hunters”, such as Harry Price and Peter Underwood, published accounts of their experiences with ostensibly true ghost stories such as The Most Haunted House in England, and Ghosts of Borley.

Noël Coward's play Blithe Spirit, later made into a film, places a more humorous slant on the phenomenon of haunting of individuals and specific locations.

North American literature

Washington Irving's short story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820), based on an earlier German folktale, features a Headless Horseman. It has been adapted for film and television many times, most notably in Sleepy Hollow, a successful 1999 feature film.

Oscar Telgmann's opera Leo, the Royal Cadet (1885) includes Judge's Song about a ghost at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario.

In the United States during the years prior to and during the First World War, folklorists Olive Dame Campbell and Cecil Sharp collected ballads from the people of the Appalachian Mountains which included ghostly themes, such as The Wife of Usher's Well, The Suffolk Miracle, The Unquiet Grave, and The Cruel Ship's Carpenter. The theme of these ballads was often the return of a dead lover. These songs were variants of traditional British ballads handed down by generations of mountaineers descended from the people of the Anglo-Scottish border region.

Children’s benevolent ghost stories became popular, such as Casper the Friendly Ghost, created in the 1930s and appearing in comics, animated cartoons, and eventually a 1995 feature film.

Other literature

Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things is a 1904 collection of Japanese ghost stories collected by Lafcadio Hearn, and later made into a film.

Movies and TV

Bollywood

The subject of ghosts is popular in Bollywood movies.

Duvidha (1973) was directed by Mani Kaul and was critically acclaimed and won Best Film at the 1974 Filmfare Awards. The film is based on a story by Vijayadan Detha which relates a popular folktale from Rajasthan about merchant’s son whose relationship with his young bride is thwarted by his work and a ghost who falls in love with her, resulting in the ghost soon impersonating the husband.

Shodh (1981) directed by is based on the book Steaming Rice and a Ghost Story by Sunil Gangopadhyay. Surendra (Om Puri), having been exiled from his village in youth and established himself in the city, comes back to the news of his father's demise, reportedly at the hands of a phantom. He announces a prize for anyone who succeeds in showing him a ghost, which attracts the greed of the poor hungry peasants, resulting in the accusations of innocent people as haunted and even murders with the hope of producing a ghost.

Raaz (Hindi: राज़, Urdu: راز, translation: Secret) (2002) directed by Vikram Bhatt, is an unofficial Bollywood adaptation of the film What Lies Beneath. The film is based on the story of a couple who have moved to Ooty to save their failing marriage. However, what they find in their new home is more than they expected when a ghost starts haunting the place. Sanjana suddenly finds that her husband is part of the ghostly conspiracy, which she must fix in order to escape.

Bhoot (Hindi: भूत, English: Ghost) (2003) was directed by Ram Gopal Varma and starring Urmila Matondkar and Ajay Devgan. He and his wife take an apartment that turns out to have a horrifying past. A series of inexplicable experiences drive Swati to near madness. Bhoot was perceived to be different from a typical Bollywood movie as it did not contain songs.

Krishna Cottage (2004) starring Sohail Khan, Natassha, and Ishaa Koppikar is a horror story that includes ghosts, death, reincarnation, and love, revolving around a book "Kayi Unkahi Batein" (a few untold things) by Professor Siddharth Das (Rajendranath Zutshi)..

Chandramukhi (Tamil: சந்திரமுகி; Telugu: చంద్రముఖి; Hindi: चंद्रमुखी) (2005) is a horror, comedy and drama film directed by P. Vasu and produced by Ramkumar Ganesan. With a few deviations, it is a remake of the 2004 Kannada film Apthamitra. The soundtrack and background score for the film, which later became successful enough to be released as a separate album, was written by Vidyasagar. The film was distributed by Sivaji Productions. The film starred Rajinikanth in the lead role, making Chandramukhi his "come back" film after the controversy regarding his previous film Baba. The title role was played by Jyothika Saravanan while Prabhu Ganesan and Nayantara were also given lead roles. It was later dubbed into several languages, and became one of the highest grossing Tamil film ever.

Anjaane (2005) starred Manisha Koirala, Sanjay Kapoor, Tejasvini Kolhapure and Helen. The film was based on Alejandro Amenabar's ghost story The Others starring Nicole Kidman. The film was criticized for being a copycat of the American version and the acting of Koirala was described by reviewers as "uninterested" and "mechanical".

Paheli (Devanagari: पहेली, Nastaliq: پہیلی, Template:Lang-en) (2005) was directed by Amol Palekar and produced by Gauri Khan, Sanjiv Chawla and Shahrukh Khan, who also plays the male lead. It is based on the short story written by Vijayadan Detha and tells the story of a wife (Rani Mukerji) who is left by her husband (Shahrukh Khan) and visited by a ghost, disguised as her husband, who is in love with her and takes her husband's place.

In Hum Tum Aur Ghost, starring Arshad Warsi and Dia Mirza, the hero is charming fashion photographer whose life is marred by the fact that he hears voices that nobody else can hear, which disrupts his social life. He becomes aware of his special ability to connect with the souls that haven't crossed over, and sets out on a journey where he assists three souls, in the process learning much about himself.

Bhoothnath (Devanagari: भूतनाथ translation: "Lord of Ghosts") is directed by Vivek Sharma and produced by Ravi Chopra, an adaptation of the Oscar Wilde short-story The Canterville Ghost. The story is about the relationship between a deceased old man (played by Amitabh Bachchan) and a boy named Banku.

Western

With the advent of motion pictures and television, screen depictions of ghosts became common, and spanned a variety of genres; the works of Shakespeare, Dickens and Wilde have all been made into cinematic versions. Novel-length tales have been difficult to adapt to cinema, although that of The Haunting of Hill House to The Haunting in 1963 is an exception.

Sentimental depictions during this period were more popular in cinema than horror, and include the 1947 film The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, which was later adapted to television with a successful 1968-70 TV series. Genuine psychological horror films from this period include 1944's The Uninvited, and 1945's Dead of Night.

The 1970s saw screen depictions of ghosts diverge into distinct genres of the romantic and horror. A common theme in the romantic genre from this period is the ghost as a benign guide or messenger, often with unfinished business, such as 1989's Field of Dreams, the 1990 film Ghost, and the 1993 comedy Heart and Souls. In the horror genre, 1980's The Fog, and the A Nightmare on Elm Street series of films from the 1980s and 1990s are notable examples of the trend for the merging of ghost stories with scenes of physical violence.

Popularised in such films as the 1984 comedy Ghostbusters, ghost hunting became a hobby for many who formed ghost hunting societies to explore reportedly haunted places. The ghost hunting theme has been featured in reality television series, such as Ghost Hunters, Ghost Hunters International, Ghost Lab, Most Haunted, and A Haunting. It is also represented in children's television by such programs as The Ghost Hunter and Ghost Trackers. Ghost hunting also gave rise to multiple guidebooks to haunted locations, and ghost hunting “how-to” manuals.

The 1990s saw a return to classic “gothic” ghosts, whose dangers were more psychological than physical. Examples of films from this period include 1999’s The Sixth Sense, and 2001’s The Others.

East Asian

Asian cinema has been adept at producing horror films about ghosts, such as the 1998 Japanese film Ringu (remade in America as The Ring in 2002), and the Pang brothers' 2002 film The Eye.

See also

• Chinese ghosts
• Demonic possession
• Ghost hunting
• ghost money
• Ghosts in Malay culture
• Haunted house
• Hell bank note
• Intelligent haunting
• List of reportedly haunted locations
• Paranormal
• Poltergeist
• Residual haunting
• Shadow people
• Spirit possession

References

1. Hole, pp. 150-163
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4. ^ Science and Engineering Indicators 2006, National Science Board, National Science Foundation. In the section "Belief in Pseudoscience", they wrote:

   "Nevertheless, about three-fourths of Americans hold at least one pseudoscientific belief; i.e., they believed in at least 1 of the 10 survey items (similar to the percentage recorded in 2001)." Reference 29 lists the "10 survey items": "Those 10 items were extrasensory perception (ESP), that houses can be haunted, ghosts/that spirits of dead people can come back in certain places/situations, telepathy/communication between minds without using traditional senses, clairvoyance/the power of the mind to know the past and predict the future, astrology/that the position of the stars and planets can affect people's lives, that people can communicate mentally with someone who has died, witches, reincarnation/the rebirth of the soul in a new body after death, and channeling/allowing a "spirit-being" to temporarily assume control of a body."

5. ^ "Science and Technology: Public Attitudes and Understanding-Public Knowledge About S&T", Chapter 7 of Science and Engineering Indicators 2004, National Science Board, National Science Foundation
6. Donald Brown (1991) Human Universals. Philadelphia, Temple University Press (online summary).
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8. Richard Cavendish (1994) The World of Ghosts and the Supernatural. Waymark Publications, Basingstoke: 5
9. e.g. in graves of the Irish Bronze Age
10. "In the immediate aftermath of a death, the deceased is removed from the bed he died in and placed on the prepared floor, called a ‘comfort bed.’ His jaw is bound up and his feet tied together (usually at the big toes)."
11. "If a man lives and moves, it can only be because he has a little man or animal inside, who moves him. The animal inside the animal, the man inside the man, is the soul. And as the activity of an animal or man is explained by the presence of the soul, so the repose of sleep or death is explained by its absence; sleep or trance being the temporary, death being the permanent absence of the soul... " The Golden Bough, Project Gutenberg, accessed January 16, 2007
12. Hole, pp. 13-27
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32. Musella, David park (Sept-October 2005). "Gallup poll shows that Americans' belief in the paranormal persists". Skeptical Inquirer. Retrieved 2007-09-19. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
33. A. B. Ellis (2008). Yoruba-Speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa. BiblioBazaar, LLC. p. 106. ISBN 0554391430.
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42. Hole, pp. 21-22
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45. ^ Underwood, Peter (1978) "Dictionary of the Supernatural", Harrap Ltd., ISBN 0245527842, Page 144
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48. Weinstein, Larry (June 2001). "The Paranormal Visit". Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Retrieved 2010-02-12.

    "Once the idea of a ghost appears in a household . . . no longer is an object merely mislaid. . . . There gets to be a dynamic in a place where the idea that it's haunted takes on a life of its own. One-of-a-kind quirks that could never be repeated all become further evidence of the haunting."

49. Richard Wiseman, retrieved September 25, 2007
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60. Shodh at IMDb
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64. Krishna Cottage at IMDb
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Further reading

• Fairly, John & Welfare, Simon, Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers, Putnam: New York, 1985.
• Finucane, R. C., Appearances of the Dead: A Cultural History of Ghosts, Prometheus Books, 1984.
• Hole, Christina, Haunted England, Batsford: London, 1950. At Google Books
• Newman, Kim, ed, BFI Companion to Horror, Cassell: London, 1996.

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