(I think i might be)
"a ghost hmm well...In traditional belief and
fiction, a
ghost is the
soul or
spirit of a deceased person or animal that can appear, in visible form or other manifestation, to the living. Descriptions of the
apparition of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to realistic, lifelike visions. The deliberate attempt to contact the spirit of a deceased person is known as
necromancy, or in
spiritism as a
séance.The belief in manifestations of the spirits of the dead is widespread, dating back to
animism or
ancestor worship in pre-literate cultures. Certain religious practices—funeral rites,
exorcisms, and some practices of
spiritualism and
ritual magic—are specifically designed to appease the spirits of the dead. Ghosts are generally described as solitary essences that haunt particular
locations, objects, or people they were associated with in life, though stories of phantom armies,
ghost trains,
phantom ships, and even ghost
animals have also been recounted.The English word
ghost continues
Old English gást, from a hypothetical
Common Germanic *gaistaz. It is common to
West Germanic, but lacking in North and East Germanic (the equivalent word in
Gothic is
ahma,
Old Norse has
andim.,
önd f.). The pre-Germanic form was
*ghoisdo-s, apparently from a root denoting "fury, anger" reflected in Old Norse
geisa "to rage". The Germanic word is recorded as masculine only, but likely continues a neuter
s-stem. The original meaning of the Germanic word would thus have been an animating principle of the
mind, in particular capable of excitation and fury (compare
óðr). In
Germanic paganism, "
Germanic Mercury", and the later
Odin, was at the same time the
conductor of the dead and the "lord of fury" leading the
Wild Hunt.
Besides denoting the human spirit or soul, both of the living and the deceased, the Old English word is used as a synonym of Latin
spiritus also in the meaning of "breath" or "blast" from the earliest attestations (9th century). It could also denote any good or evil spirit, i.e. angels and demons; the
Anglo-Saxon gospel refers to the
demonic possession of Matthew 12:43 as
se unclæna gast. Also from the Old English period, the word could denote the spirit of God, viz. the "
Holy Ghost". The now prevailing sense of "the soul of a deceased person, spoken of as appearing in a visible form" only emerges in
Middle English (14th century). The modern noun does, however, retain a wider field of application, extending on one hand to "soul", "spirit", "
vital principle", "
mind" or "
psyche", the seat of feeling, thought and moral judgement; on the other hand used figuratively of any shadowy outline, fuzzy or unsubstantial image, in optics, photography and cinematography especially a flare, secondary image or spurious signal.
[4]
The synonym
spook is a
Dutch loanword, akin to
Low German spôk (of uncertain etymology); it entered the English language via the
United States in the 19th century.
[5][6][7][8] Alternative words in modern usage include
spectre (from Latin
spectrum), the Scottish
wraith (of obscure origin),
phantom (via French ultimately from Greek
phantasma, compare
fantasy) and
apparition. The term
shade in
classical mythology translates Greek σκιά,
[9] or Latin
umbra,
[10] in reference to the notion of spirits in the
Greek underworld. "Haint" is a synonym for ghost used in regional English of the southern United States,
[11] and the "haint tale" is a common feature of southern oral and literary tradition.
[12] The term
poltergeist is a German word, literally a "noisy ghost", for a spirit said to manifest itself by invisibly moving and influencing objects.
[13]
Wraith is a
Scots word for "ghost", "spectre" or "apparition". It came to be used in Scottish Romanticist literature, and acquired the more general or figurative sense of "portent" or "
omen". In 18th- to 19th-century Scottish literature, it was also applied to aquatic spirits. The word has no commonly accepted etymology; the
OED notes "of obscure origin" only. An association with the verb
writhe was the etymology favored by
J. R. R. Tolkien.
[14] Tolkien's use of the word in the naming of the creatures known as the
Ringwraiths has influenced later usage in fantasy literature.
Bogey[15] or
bogy/bogie is a term for a ghost, and appears in Scottish poet
John Mayne's
Hallowe'en in 1780.
[16][17]
A revenant is a deceased person returning from the dead to haunt the living, either as a disembodied ghost or alternatively as an animated ("undead") corpse. Also related is the concept of a fetch, the visible ghost or spirit of a person yet alive.While deceased ancestors are universally regarded as venerable, and often imagined as having a continued presence in some sort of afterlife, the spirit of a deceased person which remains present in the material world (viz. a ghost) is regarded as an unnatural or undesirable state of affairs and the idea of ghosts or revenants is associated with a reaction of fear. This is universally the case in pre-modern folk cultures, but fear of ghost also remains an integral aspect of the modern ghost story, Gothic horror and other horror fiction dealing with the supernatural. and thats just putting it simply...." he smiled his dark hobbies showing through, (info from wikipedia)