The bedsheet ghost – that common visual representation of ghosts in Western popular culture. And what better illustration for one than a Scooby Doo villain – Phantom from “Hassle in the Castle”, Season 1 episode 3 “Scooby Doo, Where Are You?” (fair use)

(2) GHOSTS

Ghosts – shades, shadows, apparitions, haunts, phantoms or phantasms, poltergeists, spectres, spooks and wraiths – the stuff of folklore, as belief in ancestral spirits or spirits of the dead is nearly universal in world folklore or mythology.

And ghost stories or hauntings are nearly universal as the default plot or premise in horror. Even when the plot of horror fiction does not involve an actual ghost, it tends to involve haunted house or place in one way or another – giving rise to the so-called haunted house problem so that the plot can occur, or why don’t they just leave? (Usually the answer is some variant that they can’t).

The only reason ghosts aren’t in the top spot is because they are a subset, albeit a large one, of my top spot entry of the underworld.

Note their incorporeal nature, which distinguishes them from my next entry for the hungry, corporeal dead.

Not all ghosts are equal. There’s nice or benign ghosts – something you might expect for your own ancestral or familial spirits. And some ghosts are just a**holes. I guess being dead can do that to you. Japanese ghosts – those stringy-haired ghost girls – are particularly nasty, attacking people for no particular reason other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And then you have the weirder, otherwordly “ghosts”, that aren’t even people but things – haunted houses or locations (which are ghostly entities of themselves, apart from any individual ghosts that may be hanging around), ghost ships, ghost trains, and phantom vehicles.