Headscratchers / Ghosts (US)

• In "The Traveling Agent," Jay loses Pete at the store. This is explained as Jay not being able to see or hear Pete, so Jay didn't realize they were no longer together. Knowing this was possible, why wasn't Sam to one who took Pete to the store?
  • Cuz there would be no episode if it was that easy!
• In "The Silent Partner," Trevor invests Isaac's $10,000 with a brokerage firm and quickly increases that amount to $187,000. Trevor would know that Sam and Jay have been financially strapped since they took over Woodstone Manor. Why did Trevor not offer to do for them what he did for Isaac?
  • Trevor has mentioned owning stock in Blockbuster, Enron, and other closed/bankrupt businesses. He also recommended that they get advice from Bernie Madoff. In addition, he (along with Pete and Flower) fell for the Nigerian Prince scam. If he had offered to make them money, based on that track record alone, Sam and Jay would be right to not accept any financial advice from him.
• In "The Owl," all the ghosts are accounted for except Flower. Later, in "Halloween 3: The Guest Who Wouldn't Leave," it turns out Flower wasn't sucked off, but trapped in a well. So which ghost ascended?
  • Holes Are Bad reveals that it was Ralph, one of the basement ghosts.
• How were the ghosts unaware of the vault Elias was trapped in? Thorfinn, Sass and Isaac would have been in the mansion during the construction of the vault, as well as its secret passageway.
  • Holes Are Bad reveals that Thor, Sass, and Isaac were trapped in some hole away from that area while it was being bulilt. With the other ghosts, they probably just never went to that area up to the vault's introduction.
• In "Man of Your Dreams," Alberta is standing in front of a full length mirror admiring her reflection. Can a Living also see a ghost reflection?
  • Given that Trevor sometimes leaves messages for Jay by writing on condensation in mirrors, but Jay never seems able to see him, it’s very doubtful.
• Why did no one know where Trevor's body was until a customer hooked Trevor's skull in the lake? It seems highly unlikely none of the ghosts followed Trevor's friends to see where they dumped the body, so why didn't Trevor know about this, and later why weren't Sam and Jay made aware of it?
  • Trevor, understandably, was traumatized by the dying and was being eased into the after-life by other ghosts; Sass have lost interest while the boys were carrying the body out of the house. Or, they might have dumped the body outside the ghost boundaries, and it eventually floated to the bridge.
• Why do some of the ghosts have powers that allow them to interact with the real world to some degree, but the other ghosts don't?
  • Why do the ghosts sit on chairs, but run through walls? No one can tell.
  • Most likely some just haven't figured out their powers yet.
• Why is Trevor so worried about being attracted to an 18-year-old teenager? He's dead so it's not like the cops can arrest him for pedophilia.
  • He’s not interested in Stephanie, she’s the one interested in him citing that they were born the same year (1969) so they are technically the same age however Stephanie was killed while she was an teenager towards the end of her high school experience while Trevor made it to his early 30s before dying. Trevor has only showed interest in women who are around his age range physically such as Sam.
  • Also the fear of the cops isn't the only reason for people to be uninterested in underage people, some people would find her immaturity off putting, and for all Trevor puts up a playboy image he has been constantly shown to be a decent guy at heart.
  • Because it's still morally wrong even if you can't get in trouble for it

• Why wouldn't anyone even mention Stephanie until her episode and how can she stay asleep throughout the entire year?
  • The ghosts are long lived and apathetic about some things. They don't bring things up unless it occurs to them to mention it. They live more in the moment than consider the future (as that future is a bleak endless existence of staying here) and as Stephanie was expected to keep on sleeping for a few more years, as teenage ghosts are expected to do, the others figured they had time to mention her to Sam.

• In the episode where Jay is forced to cook squab because Hetty said it while inhabiting him, would it have been that big of a deal if he said "just kidding. I'm really cooking my more traditional meal."
  • If the party planner Hetty had said that to had rejected the idea then maybe they could have, but since he loved the idea and wanted the squab Jay really couldn't have gone back on it without looking unreasonable for not delivering on what the customer wanted.
  • The simplest solution would have been to say, quite realistically, that they don't currently have any squab in the house but would be more than happy to prepare it once they get the ingredients. But then, there would be no episode.

• In the second season premiere, why did Jay think the delivery guy would be Pete and how would Jay know exactly what Pete would have looked like?
  • He was probably going by a description Samantha presumably gave him at some point before then, but even that wouldn't explain why he didn't notice the guy he was hugging didn't have an arrow in his neck. That oversight can be chalked up to how desperate he was to see ghost after the accident.
  • Also, it was the bump on the head, not the technically dead time, that gave Sam her ability. His injury wasn't the right type.

• Did Jay and Sam actually fall through the floor? If so, wouldn't that be game over?
  • It was only a 1 story fall, possibly less than that so really not that big of a drop. While even safe things can turn deadly under the wrong circumstances, seemingly dangerous thing can also be brushed off fairly regularly under the right ones. the start of season 2 also makes it clear that it wasn't completely with out consequence, as they did need to be seen by a doctor, take time to recover, pay even more for the repairs and got a bad review from the people who witnessed the accident, damaging the B&B's reputation right out of the gate.

• If Sam and the crew find Todd so disturbingly creepy, why don't they at least softly call him out to see if he's aware of how wrong some of his excesses in curiosity are?
  • He is a paying guest. One does not insult a customer if they are few and far between and the pair needed funds to stay in the house.
    • As the guy who runs the newspaper pointed “People who are interested in dead people are called Historian” when Sam tries to tell him that Todd is an stalker. However since his focus is only Alberta (who has been dead for a century) unfortunately they cannot alert law enforcement to how disturbing Todd is as an individual since he never stalked an “living”.

• Both Trevor and Flower died with recreational drugs in their system, for Trevor it was explicitly the cause of his death, but Trevor is completely sober in death while Flower keeps phasing in and out of being high and its explained as being because she was high when she died, so why does that effect Flower and not Trevor?
  • Other than Rule of Funny, I'm not sure but it could be that that Trevor died from being drowned in a lake by his friends (who were too out of it to measure whether he was truly dead) and the drugs were out of his system by then.
    • Then why is Trevor's ghost in Woodstone Manor and not in/near a lake?
    • The lake is still on the property. He could have easily swam out as a ghost.
    • Except that we see his ghost in the house and the other ghosts escort him to another room so they can give him a ghost orientation. He died in the house, his body was dumped in the lake.
  • Or they have affected him and are affecting him but in a more subdued fashion, as he is almost always smiling and enjoying the moment.
  • It's very unclear what Trevor took, he randomly grabbed two pills from the drug drawer and died shortly thereafter. Whatever they were, in combination or separately, simply had a different effect than the drugs that Flower regularly took.
  • Flower didn’t die from the drugs, she was mauled by a bear while in the middle of a high. Trevor died from the drugs when they caused his hear to stop, so the effect on his mind was over.
  • It's very likely that Flower's permanent state of being high and her ghost powers are due to her being in a constant drugged out state rather than just because she was high when she died. As we see in some of her other flashbacks, she was pretty tripped out most of the time (including during the bank robbery). Additionally, LSD and/or psylocybin (which is what Flower is implied to have been on) and speed or some sort of uppers (which is what Trevor was likely to have taken, if it caused a heart attack) are completely different types of drugs
  • It's likely Hetty was also high on cocaine when she died and, in fact, could've also died of a drug-induced heart attack, seeing as she has no permanent injuries on her body like Flower, Stephanie, and Crash do.
    • Episode 8 of Season 3 clears up how Hetty died. She may have consumed cocaine the day she died, but there was no evidence that she was high at the time. Drug use was not the cause of death and there are clear indications on her body of how she died. Keep in mind that she is practically covered from head to toe in her dress, so the reveal of how she died and how no one can tell makes sense.

• Where did Nigel's fife player get his fife from?
  • He died with it on his body.

• How did the producer in "Idiot Deaths" even know that Flower got eaten by a bear? There were no eye witnesses.
  • When her body was found, it would have the mark from the bear attack.
  • Yes there was an eye witness, Ira. She was walking with Ira from the music festival when they happened upon the bear. Ira ran away screaming in the scene that showed Flower's death. He even tried to tell her to not hug the bear before she was killed. They had the over-dramatic actor play him at the end.
    • Plus Ira included Bear Safety tips when he opened his store “Daisy” which’s heavily implied to be an successful national wide franchise and Sam did an article on Flower who was linked to being Ira’s girlfriend. Also the show covers deaths that are so notable. They don’t cover deaths that they have to do intensive research on as the producer who interacted with Sam and Jay showed little interest on looking into the person that each episode was covering.
• How did the "Dumb Deaths" TV show episode work? It looked like they were only mapping out one scene and shooting three minutes of footage.
  • "Dumb Deaths" is basically a hit-piece show. Each of the deaths boils down to "Look how stupidly these people died!" You don't need to show a lot to get the point across.

  • We don't see everything they were doing over the two days. We don't know how much they show or how long each segment in the show is. It could be the show is a half hour long and they divide their 23-minutes of run time into three 7 minute segments.

• In the first couple episodes, were the Ghosts on the side of convincing Sam's husband that her wife wasn't hallucinating? Because they could convince him in a minute if they wanted, if they bothered to use their powers effectively. It's true that they wanted to drive Sam out, but they seemed to struggle with establishing that they were real to her. Sam thinking the ghosts were a hallucination for her entire stay there wouldn't have been good for them either.
  • Not sure on this one but a couple of things come to mind. 1) None of the ghost had ever dealt with a living that could see them, so they didn't know what to do or how to act. 2) Before the accident their attempt at haunting was explicitly the first time they'd all collectively put effort into messing with the living and it didn't go very well so they could be worried about it not working then to 3) Trevor did type on the computer in front of Jay in the first episode before he knew about the ghost and the show makes it clear that Jay saw it, but he shook it off as just being something weird because of his disbelief at the time, so if they were aware of that they probably didn't think there would be much else they could do,

• Why does the gang not consider the greaser with no head part of their crew? Wasn't he sitting on the couch with them in the very first episode?
  • Crash might be, but he is often looking for his head and the others are apathetic to help him find it. The humans are more interesting to watch, or TV, and so spend less time with Crash.
    • Crash probably has the same rules over how he can't leave the premises though. Wouldn't we be seeing him a lot more?
  • Crash spends a lot of time looking for his head, which probably includes looking in walls as well. Not only that, but Woodstone mansion is a very big place and it had a rather large garden as well, so Crash could spend hours looking for his head in any number of different rooms or walls or other spaces while the other ghosts hang out.
    • When his head was found and reunited with his body he was shown to be very annoying to the point where Flower yanked off his head when he was bothering her while she was watching TV and threw his head out of the house while his body got instantly confused.

• How did Jay's sister have an image of Trevor if Trevor died before digital photos were a thing?
  • Trevor mentions he spent hours when the livings were asleep patiently using their tablet to search for any photo that a friend of his might have put up online. He's a ghost with little else to do. It took a while, but he found it and cropped it.
  • Didn't Trevor say it was his obituary photo? The newspaper that ran it might have uploaded it to their archives when they went digital.

• In "Attic Girl", to have pulled of the prank and to have all the ghosts in on it, Stephanie would have had to asked Alberta to specifically order the baguettes and put down the name the fake pen pal Sam had in front of the other ghost without any of them asking why. When the baguettes arrive, all the ghost show up down stairs to enjoy the prank, seemingly without knowing why it's suppose to be funny.
  • They might have thought it was a more basic prank, something Sam would find funny as a joke to her old life in high school. They had no idea it was related to a traumatic moment of bullying she endured. Plus pranking the livings and watching how things go for their lives are ways they entertain themselves. We see Sass and others had watched Flower's death and in the past Isaac and Thorfinn pranked Hetty to think a seance worked. So a "harmless" prank on Sam is all well and good and they get to use their new access to the Living World to do it, so more entertainment.

• Eric has a near-death experience that, by all accounts, brings him *even closer* to death than Sam (he was literally dead and saw the ghosts). So why can't he see them like Sam can after Thor brings him back?
  • By the rules of this universe, I agree that Eric is indeed seeing ghosts. The show hasn't contradicted that he wasn't. He probably saw the ghosts in the final scene where we saw him but wasn't as shocked as Samantha, as he already saw them before. He'll probably see a universe of ghosts outside too but we didn't see him leaving Woodstone Manor.
  • The short answer is that the circumstances of Sam's near death experience were different enough from Eric's that she can still see ghosts but Eric can't. The longer answer is — Sam was technically dead for 3 minutes and was in a coma for two weeks. It could be that coming back from the dead is what allows her to see and communicate with ghosts but that that was a fluke and therefore, Eric is unable to continue to see ghosts. It could be that she was dead longer than Eric was and that is why she can continue to see and communicate with ghosts. It could also be that it was a combination of being dead and being in a coma that allows Sam to see ghosts. Which would explain why Eric no longer see ghosts (he was dead but not in a coma). Also, the ghost doctor's theory is that Sam was so close to death that she obtained the ability to see ghosts. He noted that the ability is quite rare and that the last time he encountered a similar case was 85 years ago. Because people have probably died briefly and been brought back to life in the hospital since then, the fact that the last example is so long ago suggests that not all briefly dead people retain the ability to see ghosts.
  • Perhaps ghosts need to have been directly responsible for the near-death trauma. The vase which Sam tripped over was there because Trevor pushed it. Eric's electrocution was an accident and no ghosts arranged for him to be electrocuted.
    • Technically, ghosts were responsible for Eric's electrocution, as Bela only had thoughts about electrocuting Eric once Trevor texted her. However, perhaps the ghosts need to have impacted on the very apparatus leading to the near-death encounter, which would be the wires in this case. If a ghost had exposed the wires, perhaps Eric would retain the ability to see ghosts, but no ghost did.

• How has Sam not met the dead mother of her neighbors who doesn't approve of her being a swinger?
  • The woman dressed in clothes from the 1950s is the neighbor's mother. Sam spoke with her briefly the first time they met but it was not clear to the audience then that she was the neighbor's mother. The second time we encounter her, Sam was preoccupied with the Viking ghost she saw and I can't recall if she even spoke with her on that occasion.
  • She didn't. Sam was focused on Bjorn and the woman stayed near Jay yelling about her son's sexual preferences. The next time Sam went there to tell Bjorn how to converse with his father, the mother could have been hiding to avoid seeing her son's sexual activities, so no interaction then.
    • She has happened upon the neighbor's mansion more than once. If the neighbor's mother can see Sam, wouldn't the neighbor's mother have the "you can see me! hallelujah!" reaction and tell her she's a ghost?
    • She did in the Season 1 finale.

• Why didn't Flower and Thor ask Trevor if he would be interested in being their third? They asked everyone else.
  • He could have been asked off-screen. It's been a while since I saw the episode, but did they categorically show each other inquiry? And either Flower or Thor could not have liked him as a partner.
  • At the time, Trevor was busy trying to figure out why his best friend was pretending to not remember him.

• What do people think happened to Trevor? He had an obituary (Bela found it when she thought she was being catfished), so people know he's dead. However, there's nothing to suggest that there was an investigation into his death/disappearance.
  • His friends could have said they didn't know what happened to him and he was found sometime later in the lake. The police could have suspected something and the chemical tests would have shown what was in his blood, there might not have been enough evidence to search the house. After all, if they all said, "We were hanging out and he went off to do some drugs. We don't know why he is pantless or what happened after this time." It would be harder to break them. And the one guy who returned to the house showed he hadn't broken before then.
  • But according to an deadline article Trevor’s body won’t be found until the titular episode Trevor’s Body which aired in Season 2. Trevor’s parents had to have him legally declare dead, but they won’t have an idea what happened to his body until that episode.
  • When a person disappears without a trace for long enough, they can be declared legally dead.

• How did Todd arrive at the mansion so soon after Sam discussed creating a podcast about Alberta's death? In the episode where he is introduced, he says that he lives about 6 hours away in Altoona, PA where his museum is in his mother's garage. It's possible that he just happened to be nearby when he got a call about the podcast but that seems unlikely since he had a lot of Alberta's belongings in his car.
  • Given he is looking at anything Alberta, he could have been close since he did find evidence of her murder before. We also don't know how long he was in hospital since that poisoning. He could have been only recently released. Alternatively, we don't know when Sam's meeting was and when she returned to the manor. If Sam calls him at 8-9am, Todd could have driven very fast to get there in five to six hours, which puts it at 1pm to 3pm the same day.

• Jessica's "ghost keys" still work on the car. Keys send a radio wave to the receiver in the car, so her keys can still send the signal to the car.
  • By that same token Alberta can be heard by the living and an Alexa device, meaning she's actually making sound, which requires the movement of air particles.

• Why is it all the Ghost in the Manor seem to have the exact same perimeter, when those like Thorfinn, Sasapssis and Isaac all predate the building of the Manor, and as such would have had no ties in life to that particular boundary?
  • Maybe their boundary changes over time, dependent on changes to the property line.
  • It could be possible that some have a different boundary then others do. So far we've seen a few are able to at least reach the gazebo.

• Aren't the odds astronomically high that Isaac would did at the exact same spot where he shot Nigel? I don't recall this happening at the same time frame.
  • Isaac shot Nigel while they were both in their respective camps, and the British and American camps weren't that far away from each other. It's likely that both camps had some sort of medic tent, and as seen in the Christmas episode, Isaac died in a medic tent. So what most likely happened was that shortly after shooting Nigel, Isaac contracted dysentery and was sent to the medic tent, where he died. It's not the exact same spot, but it was close enough that they share a boundary.

• In "Dumb Deaths", why was Isaac ignorant about the US and UK no longer hating each other? He has a housemate who died after World War One and multiple housemates who died after World War Two. Plus, the living inhabitants of Woodstone must've talked about current affairs during those wars at least once.
  • Considering how bored they were before they could control the TV, I'm willing to bet that no stone was left unturned in conversations. I'd call it a continuity error.
  • Alberta only likes to talk about herself, Crash spends most of his time looking for his head, and Flower is Flower. By the time Pete and Trevor died, the World Wars were part of history, they had no personal anecdotes about them, and it likely wouldn't have occurred to them to talk about the political alliances unprompted.

• How is Thorfinn unaware that sugar and cinnamon have become far less valuable since his time? These goods would have become significantly cheaper in the last century or two, and the people who have inhabited Woodstone Manor in that time would have definitely used them fairly regularly.
  • The people who lived in Woodstone Manor before the Arondekars would have been firmly upper class; Thor may have assumed that sugar and cinnamon were readily procurable by the inhabitants because of their extraordinary wealth, not because these goods have become less valuable.
  • Likewise, how is Hetty unaware that cocaine is no longer recognised as a cure-all medicine? She would have likely seen its application from time to time since her death.
    • Probably assumed it was for therapeutic purposes, and somehow none of the ghosts who died in the latter half of the 20th century told her otherwise.
    • Pete has told Hetty that cocaine has been an illicit drug since the 1980s, in S1 E04. However, that time can't possibly be the first time Pete (or any of the modern ghosts) has ever brought up the subject to Hetty. Perhaps she isn't willing to accept/listen - she has taken a very long time, and in very gradual steps, to accept that women have more freedom now than in her time (and still hasn't fully accepted it yet), and that many societal conventions have changed.

• Would it have been that big of a deal for Sam to tell Pete's widow and daughter that he hears the voices of Pete? It would be extremely meaningful to them and they got away with it and their lives not turning upside down for Jay's sister.
  • It probably would've been a big deal, as the two of them most likely would've assumed Sam was mentally unwell or just lying.
  • It would probably be very upsetting for them to learn that Pete is stuck for what could be an eternity in a mansion with a bunch of jerks who constantly take advantage of his good nature.

• How are Thor and Sass bound to the property even though they both died centuries before the house was built?
  • They both died in the area where the house would be in the future. Thor died out in an open field, Sass (likely) died in his village, and Isaac (who also died before the house was built) died in a medic tent in a military camp. Those spots all shared the same location, just across different time periods.
  • This raises the question - did they always have such a narrow range, or has their range expanded/contracted as different settlements/properties occupied the land?

• How do Pete and Trevor not know that the Nigerian Prince email is a scam? The scam has existed for basically as long as email has, which would have been around in their time.
  • As Sam pointed out “senior citizens” fall for those types of scams. Pete was born during the end of WW2 and Trevor would be in his mid 50s if he was still alive, so it’s still possible for people that age to fall victim to scams.

• How was Thor not aware of Bjorn's ghost's existence earlier? When they died, the area would have been an open field (it was when Thor died), presumably with fairly high visibility.

• Rule of Funny aside, is there a reason why Thor and Bjorn speak such stilted English? They're both over a thousand years old, that's definitely enough time to catch up to using at least a semi-modern way of using cadence and diction instead of using the third person to describe themselves and using such awkward grammar. By comparison, Sass is 500 years younger than Thor and speaks just like any person from the modern day would.
  • When Sass was alive, colonization had already begun in North America. He might have known some English when he was alive.
    • Sass is a Storyteller. Communication is his thing.
  • He had 500 years to learn and little else to do before radio/TV was invented. It might also be pointed out that flashbacks to Isaac's time might not be particularly accurate because English itself has changed from the 18th century to the present.
  • In one episode, Pete asked Thor if he's doing the "barbarian speak" on purpose, as he's heard him using some of the words he acts like he doesn't know.

• On a similar note, is there Translation Convention going on when Thor and Bjorn talk to each other? Considering communicating isn't exactly easy for them, it'd be a lot easier for them to just revert to Old Norse instead of using the choppy modern-day English they're shown to be yelling at one another.
  • Seems more like a WMG for me.

• Can’t Jay establish some kind of simple communication method with Alberta in case the ghosts need to tell him something when Sam isn’t around? Like one hum for no, two for yes, three for open a device and let Trevor type a more detailed message.
  • Since Amazon Echos can hear Alberta, she could use its message sending function to talk to Jay. On the other hand, considering how frustrated she got with the other ghosts and their demands to use her Alexa communication powers, she probably wouldn't want to do it.

• In the Halloween episode where some of the ghosts watch Ghostbusters, how did they know Slimer's name? He wasn't called that until The Real Ghostbusters, which came out after Pete died. They never say the ghost's name in the movie, and it was called "Onionhead" in the script, anyway.
  • Trevor can pause the movie, so maybe they wanted to see if Slimer had a name and googled the question.
  • Trevor died in the year 2000. By then, the name Slimer was well known by the fans.

• Thorfinn was killed when struck by lightning while wearing a metal helmet. Since each of the ghosts wear the clothing they wore when they died, why isn't Thorfinn wearing his helmet as a ghost?
  • When he fell from the strike, he could have been in the process of dying. When he hit the ground the helmet fell off.
• How did Sam finish the podcast? They figured out who did it, but there's no evidence and, as far as anyone contemporary is concerned, so reason to suspect Thomas, an upstanding member of society. (Alright, there's a note that says 'T', but that's hardly conclusive.)
  • As there’s no concrete evidence, it wouldn’t be too unreasonable to admit they have no solid proof of anything, but they could mention the note and their own research to bring what actually happened up as "a theory" to quickly conclude the series because the new owner of the Newspaper didn’t want Sam to continue using the business resources for the podcast.

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