History Main / OurGhostsAreDifferent

* ''Film/LakeMungo'': Alice's ghost is pretty standard with the exception that [[spoiler: she saw her own ghost before she died.]]

* ''Literature/GhostSquad'' follows a group of ghosts who band together for company. TheyFightCrime with the help of living friends who they communicate with via a homebrew word processor. Here, the ghosts are invisible but not intangible, stuck with Jacob Marley apparel, and can only exert a very small amount of physical force at the cost of great effort. A human being touching a ghost feels a slight chill while the ghost feels a cold and sharp pain. Ghosts themselves can interact physically with each other. While lacking psychic abilities, the ghosts are very good at reading facial and body language on account of lacking things like breathing to distract them. Lastly, the ghosts are prone to falling asleep for days at a time, especially after exerting the energy to physically manipulate things.

** One such example of this is "Grey Dengel", the scholarly aspect of Dengel Tymh that was haunting his Cehia Lair. It had no idea it wasn't alive until Eric came along and stirred him into awareness

* In ''WebOriginal/TheMonsterGirlEncyclopedia'', ghosts are spirits fuse with [[HornyDevils Succubi's]] demonic energy, so they are all pervert. At first, they can't interact with the world physically and will [[DemonicPossession possess humans]]. The victim will get his or her mind filled with obscene imaginary from possessing ghost. The ghost will get spirit energy by absorb it from a male host (or during female host's sex act), until it's enough to manifest herself in physical world, then she will engage in sex act directly.

** [[WordOfGod According to]] Creator/ButchHartman years after the show ended, all ghosts are in fact inhuman creatures of ectoplasm, with the ones with human appearances and backstories making those up to be more human. This is despite the fact that there's physical evidence that Desiree, Poindexter, and Hotep-Ra once had human lives.

* ''Fanfic/SayItThrice'': A lot of effort has gone into explaining how the residents of [[Film/{{Beetlejuice}} the Netherworld]] and [[WesternAnimation/DannyPhantom the Ghost Zone]] play by different rules - the former are dead souls who aren't made of ectoplasm, are mainly limited to haunts, and are governed by a tightly obstructive CelestialBureaucracy, whereas the latter may be dead people or different supernatural manifestations, are free-roaming and routinely intrude on the living world, and lack any real authority - even King Plague ruled only by virtue of sheer power. The Netherworld consider the Ghost Zone a dump for things that doesn't belong anywhere else (and actively pretend it doesn't exist, because it's annoying) while the residents of the Ghost Zone either don't know or don't care about the Netherworld.

* ''Webcomic/{{Unsounded}}'': Ghosts start out as clusters of memories cleansed from the souls of the dead by the setting's BackgroundMagicField, the Khert. Some are intense enough to absorb similar memories and slip from the Khert to the physical world, where they seek out things that resonate with their theme. The most common are smoke eels, when ghosts of pain and suffering form ephemeral bodies of dust or smoke; and haunted pymarics, when ghosts hide inside {{Magitek}} and co-opt it for their own use. Sette's TeamPet Boo is an unusually complex and precocious ghost that holed up in a pymaric spider and Timofey was a failed attempt by [[WellIntentionedExtremist Bastion]] at bringing his dead sister back to life by taking as many memories of and by her as possible and binding them together into a single ghost, practically creating an ArticifialHuman in the process.

* ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'': Hamlet's dad returns from Purgatory to demand revenge. And boy, [[KillEmAll does he get it]]. Hamlet considers the possibility that the ghost is a demon sent to tempt Hamlet as Protestant ideas go against ghosts and this is the first reason that he delays his revenge, in order to make sure that Claudius is guilty which becomes simultaneously known to the audience as well.

* VoluntaryShapeshifting: Ghosts can sometimes morph into morbidly, gruesomely horrific, grotesque (or amusing) shapes to terrify their haunts. If their emotions flare, this effect may [[PowerIncontience happen involuntarily]].

* Artifacts - there are magical gewgaws and doodads, HolyRelic items and that sort of thing lying around TheVerse that will allow one to contact ghosts. Or are ''[[ArtifactOfDoom possessed]]'' by ghosts.

** Ghosts in ''The Dresden Files'' are described as fossils, imprints of a personality. The more emotionally charged the death, the stronger the ghost. For example, graveyards in the books are always filled with ghosts, but most of them are so weak that they are imperceptible to normal people. While if someone commits suicide, or dies while emotionally distressed their ghosts can take on physical forms and even heavily effect the material world. Ghosts don't disappear unless killed by magical means or the reason they are created (normally unfinished business) is fulfilled.
*** It's possible for a ghost to be created even if someone's death is very brief, i.e., they were revived via CPR after suffering a bout of clinical death. Also, powerful individuals like wizards can leave very powerful ghosts behind when they die. In ''Grave Peril'', [[spoiler: Harry takes advantage of this by passing unconscious so a ghost can kill him in his sleep, only to be revived by CPR, and thus creates a ghost ''of himself'' that he teams up with to beat the crap out of the hostile ghost that killed him. The ghost Harry disappears once this is accomplished, as the purpose that caused him to linger as a ghost has now been fulfilled.]]

* ''Webcomic/{{Unsounded}}'': Ghosts start out as clusters of memories cleansed from the souls of the dead by the setting's BackgroundMagicField, the Khert. Some are intense enough to absorb similar memories and slip from the Khert to the physical world, where they seek out things that resonate with their theme. The most common are smoke eels, when ghosts of pain and suffering form ephemeral bodies of dust or smoke; and haunted pymarics, when ghosts hide inside {{Magitek}} and co-opt it for their own use. Sette's TeamPet Boo is an unusually complex and precocious ghost that holed up in a pymaric spider.

# There's also the odd rare case of a ghost that was never a living human being. It may have spawned from something. It may be part of a broader species that's made of the same kind of "matter" as human ghosts. It may be an animal, or a GeniusLoci. It may be a synthetic ghost made by alchemy. In cartoon setting, a ghost child can be considered to be the son of a couple of "normal" ghosts, born after the two normal ghosts's death (this is mainly to have a young ghost spectators can identify to, without addressing the issue of a child's death). Or it may be some sort of... ''[[EldritchAbomination thing]]'' pretending to be a ghost to suit its purposes.

* DeathTouch: This is a ''very'' common ability for ghosts in stories written before the 20th century; it can still sometimes be seen in later works. The death may occur instantly, or the victims may linger for a time (rarely more than a matter of days), the better to gibber madly about the unutterable ''horror'' of what they saw (and in the process provide story significant clues). Variants include curses, life drains, and visual or acoustic ranged effects. Especially in 19th century works, death may come by BrainFever, or extreme [[SupernaturalFearInducer Fear]].

* VoluntaryShapeshifting: Ghosts can sometimes morph into morbidly, gruesomely horrific, grotesque (or amusing) shapes to terrify their haunts. If their emotions flare, this effect may happen involuntarily.
* WeatherManipulation: Some ghosts can create rain, thunder, lightning, high winds, even sleet or snow. In ''Film/TheGhostAndMrsMuir'', Mrs. Muir reveals that the Ghost can never fool her about his emotional state because the weather barometer always reveals his genuine mood.

* {{Ectoplasm}} - "He slimed me. I feel so funky."

* As they looked when they were alive, possibly being either a CuteGhostGirl or [[CuteGhostGirl Guy]]. Some variations have them appear to be in the prime of life even if they were quite elderly when they died.

* ''WebAnimation/{{Dreamscape}}'': The Possessor Ghost has a SinisterScythe and is the UltimateLifeForm created by an evil witch. [[spoiler:When Melinda becomes the appropriately-named Ghost Melinda by fusing with the above ghost, she has powers like invisibility, teleportation, and going through solid objects.]]
* ''Machinima/RedVsBlue'' may win the Our Ghosts Are Different competition, as it turns out that the characters who became ghosts after being killed [[spoiler:[[DoingInTheWizard are actually]] {{Artificial Intelligence}}s, and their ghostly apparitions are just [[ProjectedMan free-floating holograms]]]]. For the most part, they [[HauntedTechnology "possess" robot bodies]], so their ghost status doesn't matter much.

* ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/579474/chapters/1039890 Walking with a Ghost]]'' and its sequel ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/924693/chapters/1797107 Running with a Ghost]]'' change the nature of [[Series/BeingHumanUK Alex's]] ghostly status. As Hal drank her blood after her death before she manifested as a ghost, this inadvertently 'anchors' Alex to Hal, with the result that she is essentially 'real' to Hal to the extent that he can even have a sexual relationship with her or drink her blood, and Alex can even eat and change clothes so long as she doesn't teleport after prolonged time in Hal's presence. Hal notes that such bonds have occurred in the past, and becoming a vampire elder requires the vampire in question to drink from vampires who have formed such a bond to boost their own power.
* In the ''Series/{{Supernatural}}''/''Series/{{NCIS}}'' crossover "[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9018850/1/When-Worlds-Collide When Worlds Collide]]", Dean is visited by the spirit of deceased NCIS agent Paula Cassidy in a dream, who reveals that, contrary to what Zachariah implied, ghosts ''can'' come back to Earth from Heaven to just visit their loved ones if they wish (she speculates that Ash was so caught up in doing his own trick that he didn't realise this was an option). According to Paula, ghosts that manifest in this manner are unaffected by iron, although salt is still uncomfortable even if they can step over it if they want to, and can be seen by psychics in the real world and visit others in dreams (Paula notes that Dean's dead friends wouldn't do that to him because he wouldn't let them in out of a subconscious fear they'd reject him, whereas Paula got in by "wearing a bustier").

* [[CoveredInGunge Ectoplasm]] - "He slimed me. I feel so funky."

* ''WesternAnimation/TheRealGhostbusters'': Ghosts usually resemble living monsters more than ghosts; discussions of death were ''verboten'' in Saturday morning fare at the time. There are a few notable exceptions to this. "The Old College Spirit" featured ghosts who were deceased frat brothers who had failed to graduate. "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Ghost" had the ghost of a man trying to reconnect with his beloved niece so that he could say goodbye before departing. "The Man Who Never Reached Home" featured Simon Queg, a spirit forced to wander the Earth for his misdeeds in life, until he confronted his darker self. "Bustman's Holiday" had ghosts that were explicitly from a battle on the Scottish moors. And "The Bird of Kildarby" had a group of Irish ghosts who were haunting a relocated castle. "The Last Train to Oblivion" featured the ghost of Casey Jones. "Ghostfight at the OK Corral" featured Doc Holiday and the Earps.

* ''Toys/MonsterHigh'' has several types of monsters named after several types of ghosts but only one seemed to be an actual ghost, finally in the movie "Haunted" Spectra explains “There's another world—a Ghost World—where all the different types of ghosts come from. There are phantoms like Operetta, banshees like Scarah... even faceless ghosts like my old frind Kyomi Haunterly." all-in-all they have six types of ghosts

** Faceless ghosts as Kyomi, a traditional japanesse ghost

** And the ghosts of Past, Present and Future, the halll monitors of Haunted High

* ''Film/Ghost1990'': Sam Wheat is a ghost with JacobMarleyApparel who believed he'd been mugged but turned out to have been murdered, and so became an Avenge Me! type of ghost. He cannot leave his girl due to ThePowerOfLove, which also lets her hear him. He needs to learn PsychicPowers, and so seeks out a SpiritAdvisor in the form of another ghost. After learning them, he uses them to torment his murderer. With effort and training, Sam masters {{intangib|leMan}}ility. He's able to physically lift a penny to prove to Molly he's really there. Oda Mae is a [[PsychicPowers medium]] whom Sam tormented with bad singing until she agreed to help him. She's also possessed by him, once willingly and once not. He [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence Ascends to a Higher Plane of Existence]] at the end.

* ''Series/{{Ghosts}}'': Most people who die AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence, either immediately or some time later. The titular ghosts are the ones leftover who haven't done this, and it is a source of frustration to them that they don't know why. They are non-corporeal to the living, but solid to each other, and usually InvisibleToNormals. Additionally, they can sit/lie down on surfaces and require sleep.