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May '17last reply
Jun '17- 14
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In America, ghosts are usually a spirit who is stuck in our world and can't move on to the afterlife (be it Heaven or Hell). So if someone was murdered in their house, their ghost would stay in the house. Ghosts usually get upset if you enter their home or disturb their grave or interact with anything they are closely tied to.
Tho sometimes, people will depict ghosts simply as those who have died and decide to come and visit our world.
In Christianity, it is highly encouraged not to interact with ghosts. However, in some Neo-Pagan religions, like Wicca, people are more open to the concept of interacting with the dead. They say that the best time to interact with the dead is on Samhain (or Halloween) due to it being the time when the boundaries between worlds are the easiest to cross.
I'm American Indian, Our idea of Ghosts is they're just out there and if you run into one you hang out and talk. Our stories also have them interacting in dreams but the just is you listen to them the same way your supposed to listen to your grandparents. It's all about respect.
I make a comic about ghosts called Heroes of Thantopolis,2 but it won't help answer your question since it's specifically about ghosts who DONT have strong cultural or religious ties - all the ghosts/people that do ended up in the appropriate afterlife.
I'm Jewish, so from a Jewish perspective... ghosts aren't really seen that much in the Torah. Individual Jews might believe in a kind of pleasant afterlife, and might think of their relatives as "watching over them" but Heaven and Hell is more of a Christian belief. I think most instances of ghosts and spirits in Jewish literature are either satirical or allegorical.
what nickrowler said, & yea in christianity we're not supposed to interact with ghosts cuz they're actually demons that deceive people, especially at seances & there's other stuff but i haven't really done too much study into it lately.
I'm quite accustomed to the idea of ghosts being created by a traumatic death. Murderers, and the murdered, for example, are attributed to haunting a place. If you're not into horror movies, reenactment shows, while silly, can do a good job of building up ghost and demon lore if you watch enough of them. You pick up a lot of trends, and its all based on real life events. This is just based around what I've absorbed over time, but its probably affected most by Christianity.
I think typically a ghost that could serve as a protagonist would just be called a ghost or spirit. Poltergeists, and up are generally not "people" anymore/at all.
I don't remember what culture the idea came from, but I do recall reading of ghosts being attached to a particular object, the way same way they might haunt a house. So, say someone dies wearing their wedding ring. That wedding ring gets sold or passed down through the family.. where it goes, the ghost goes. Useful if you want your ghost to be mobile!
Iron and salt are useful for protection from ghosts. You've probably heard of salt circles!
Buzzfeed's Unsolved Supernatural Mysteries series is a fun way to explore some haunted locations and hear some interesting stories. And personally, I find Paranormal Activity a good example of the way a haunting slowly escalates- it's nice because the movie is aces in atmosphere, but over all not too scary (I'm a pansy). It's not necessarily about ghosts, buuut I still think if you're delving into that stuff, it could be useful and inspiring. Though of course, not everything involving ghosts has to be horror!
there's a saying that if you don't go somewhere like other places instead you go home after the funeral that you let the ghost followed you home
I'm from the UAE and we have a few from my culture, they don't have anything to do with religion it's just cultural Djin folklore. I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for though but I hope it helps.
Baba Darya/Bu Darya - Which means father of the sea, he's a jin charactarised by being an old man and having a long white beard, he lures children to swim deeper in the ocean and then drowns them. This was probably told to scare children so that they don't swim too far or deep in the sea, or spend too long there.
(If you'd like more details on this let me know)
There's an interesting overlap of ghosts in Ireland and ghosts in Louisiana. I'm Irish-American, raised in Louisiana, and the folklore can be interestingly similar some times. For ghosts, it typically revolves around family matters. In Ireland, a ghost might be a Bean Sidhe, or Banshee, which is a woman who is an ancestor of someone who's about to die, coming and crying out in sadness over their impending doom. There's a vaguely similar story in Louisiana, of ghosts that are dead relatives and ancestors of someone who's been cursed, who try to ward off the evil eye and warn the person that someone's out to get them.
In Mexico we got El Charro negro, which is a handsome man who makes women follow him, if they ride on his horse they end up travelling to hell as he fools women, but if the girl asks to walk with him and not ride the horse he will simply take them to their homes and disappear with the first ray of sunlight.
in Indonesia ghosts and mythical creatures are deeply embedded in the culture, and they are truly feared. I fear the Kuntilanak the most. Believed to be the spirit of a pregnant woman, Kuntilanak has long black hair which hangs down and a long white robe. She thrives on evil and death, and she can transform into a beautiful woman to try to lure men to their deaths. She can often be heard laughing loudly while hiding behind trees or buildings, waiting for her next victim. The funny thing, if you hear her laugh from afar means that she is near, and vice versa.
Thought not that well known in other places than Iceland we have a type of ghost called the Útbornir (not really sure what the English translation would be, the "Outborn/foundling" I guess would be close).
In viking times (8th century to the mid-11th century) when a child was born that was unwanted (either by a slave or out of marriage) and it needed to be kept a secret it sadly met a grim fate. The mother would bring the child into the frozen wastes of Iceland and abandon it there leaving it to freeze to death.
Legends say that a child left to die this way would be filled with hatred for its mother and would rise as a vengeful creature known as the Útbornir that would skulk the night searching for its parents who left it to die. People who traveled around the frozen wastes of Iceland at night would say they they could hear a faint cry surround them and see a creature as large as an adult skulk around them who resembled a bloated decaying corpse of a infant. It has been said if the Útburðir ever caught you then either you would never be seen again or days later someone would find your corpse ripped to shreds.
Interesting! There's actually a similar mythical creature in the Philippines, but it's called Mantianak. It is believed to be the vengeful spirit of a pregnant woman who died late in her pregnancy. They are said to attack men, or in some versions, anyone who isn't wearing a skirt, and would rip out their penis and testicles. There is also the Tiyanak (which was said to have been based on the Chaneque from Mexican folklore), who is believed to be the vengeful spirit of a stillborn child or an aborted fetus. They are said to disguise themselves as normal infants but once they are picked up, they attack their victim and eat them. Unlike the Mantianak, they aren't picky.
Writing about the Outborn/foundling reminded me of another old undead folklore story from Iceland. It's not about a ghost but its close enough 
The story was about a necromancer who was trying to resurrect a dead body by preforming a dark and unholy ritual. Two rituals actually, one to bring the body back from the dead and another to control him. In the second ritual the necromancer needed to recite an ancient Icelandic text out loud so the zombie could clearly hear it. After the necromancer preformed the first ritual the zombie tried to stand up so the necromancer ordered the two hired strongmen he brought with him to hold down the zombie while he was preparing the second ritual. The necromancer finished the second ritual but the zombie seemed to only get angrier and more violent, confused the necromancer tried to do the ritual again and again but the zombie would not listen to him. The strongmen grew more and more tired and lost their grip on the zombie, who stood up and tore them apart. The zombie pulled the necromancer down and started eating him alive and in his final moments he noticed the zombies headstone and realized his mistake. The corpse he revived was of a foreigner.
20 days later
The pontianak definitely from my part of the world. Witch, vampire and lich all rolled into one with a touch of Giselle for that tragedy! Erm, the The pontianak are said to be the spirits of women who died while pregnant. This is despite the fact that the earliest recordings of pontianaks in Malay lore describe the ghost as originating from a stillborn child.A pontianak kills her victims by digging into their stomach with her sharp fingernails and devouring their body organs. @TheKawaiiGarden , I loved the story! It has wicked humour! 0w0