Ghosts: Needy Ghosts

Readers, here’s a bit from my book, About Ghosts: A Useful Handbook. Enjoy some reflections about needy ghosts below: 

Needy Ghosts

Like people, ghosts can be needy.

In Okinawa, it is customary on Obon holidays (the lunar New Year celebrations) to go to the family tombs and place offerings of food, drink, and money there, so that the departed have what they need.  Of course, people only leave play money, so maybe appearances are what counts on the Other Side.  (It is generally believed that if people don’t appease the ghosts in this way, they’ll be very sorry).

Similarly, the tombs of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt were well-equipped with things for use on the Other Side, from gold chariots to the organs of the deceased, which were preserved in jars for future use.  Also, the remains of many slaves: it’s hard to get good help.

Many ghosts seem velcro’d to the land of the living.  They can’t detach.  Like people, they become attached: to places, people, mindsets or things.  These are the kind of entity portrayed as repetitively wandering about a place, as if lost.  They may not know they’re dead.  They may be obsessed with some issue which has ceased to matter, but which ties them to a place and certainly prevents them from moving on.  (They resemble the living in that way).

The behavior of these needy ghosts, could be described as obsessed and compulsive.  They repeat themselves, doing the same things, unable to break out of prisons of their own making.  Whether anger or frustration or loss ties them to a spot, there they remain.

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To learn more about real ghosts, please see About Ghosts: A Useful Handbook.  For some great ghost stories, please see Death Be Not Loud, Rest In Fleece, and Sepia Seepage.  To learn about ghosts in modern fiction, please see Infectious Ghosts. And so much more, at: Jan’s Amazon Page