There upon the house stairs stood the lady in question herself— more a thing of aether and ectoplasm than skin and substance. Still clad in a gown befitting a queen of the ladies of the night, her ivory skin shimmered in spectral translucence, the suggestive curves of her shoulders sweeping upward to a neck wearing gore like a ruby choker—and nothing more! Outstretched in a delicate claw, gripped unceremoniously by a shock of ephemeral hair, swung the lady’s misplaced head, her beguiling features darkened by the sight of vistas unknowable. Slowly she descended, her every spectral step heralded by a grave note from the towering salon clock’s invocation of the eleventh hour—exactly the time Boles had conjectured the house mistress had been so thoroughly finished.
—Ailson Kindler, Steps Upon the Sanguine Stair
Beyond the world of mortals lies a realm of spirits, an unknowable reach forbidden to all but departed souls and the guardians and gaolers of that fantastic and terrible realm. Death alone serves as both gate and key to this eternity, a supposedly one-way passage from which few return. Yet for some, even the laws of existence prove insufficient to drive them from the realm of the living, with injustice, delusion, fury, or fear compelling them to cling to the f leeting tendrils of their failing lives. In states of boundless sorrow or deathless malice, such spirits linger on, no longer kin to the quick, but death given an impression of thought and form, dire witnesses at the door to beyond—ghosts of the living.
With indescribable forms and myriad intentions, the wayward souls of those recently felled and long forgotten wreak their wills upon the mortal world, seeking to compel or terrorize the living with their undeniable ambitions. While the legends of ages spread stories of unquiet spirits, perhaps no tales prove so diverse and haunting as those of the disembodied dead, and what dread intentions they hold for the living.
Necrology
More than merely wayward souls cast from the cycle of eternity by random chance, the vast majority of ghosts manifest for a purpose—whether one of their own desires or born from the method of their deaths. So-called “ghost stories” often tell of souls lingering upon the mortal world in an attempt to put right some injustice—typically whatever evil led to their deaths—or to prevent some terrible fate. Yet the circumstances leading to the appearance of a ghost need not be so iconic. Although the mysteries of death may never be fully understood by mortals, the most significant requisite in a ghost’s appearance seems to be extraordinary circumstances of trauma surrounding its death. Such a condition need not be a torturous murder or a violent betrayal—the knowledge of a great responsibility or the jeopardized life of a loved one can potentially prove sufficient cause to compel a soul to linger on past its physical capacity. Such leads some scholars of the afterlife to debate whether or not ghosts are truly wayward souls, or rather mere impressions of a single powerful emotion or desire, left as an obsessed copy of a powerful will.
Aside from personal determination, extreme circumstances might also lead to the formation of ghosts. Tales of unquiet battlefields, ghostly ships, and whole haunted cities typically arise from some manner of terrible collective ordeal. Such conditions must be exceptionally painful or damaging to the mortal mind, as not every fallen fortress or disaster-scoured community results in some mass haunting. While individual ghosts typically require some measure of personal connection, suffering, or desire to bind them to the land of the living, such is lessened for ghosts created en masse. The shared experience of multitudinous lesser horrors are seemingly significant enough to match the singular distress of a lone spirit, allowing large groups of spirits to manifest due to an incident of extreme shared emotion or disturbance that might not provoke the ghostly manifestation of an individual.
While many forms of undeath carry with them some measure of dark appeal, such can never be said of ghosts. Foremost, the transition from life to spirit is mysterious and unreliable, with no known cases of a willing, purposeful transition into this state of unlife being recorded. Adding to this is the typically stagnant condition of the ghostly state. Unlike many varieties of undead, most ghosts are unable to retain new knowledge after their deaths, and even memories of their undead existences seem blurred and timeless. Only in exceedingly rare exceptions have ghosts that defy these truths been encountered, with even those existing for millennia having little impression of the modern age or the gulfs of time since their deaths.
Habitat & Society
Encountering a ghost rarely proves as simple as stories of the macabre often imply. Few, for example, care to linger about the monument-dotted graveyards or moldering potter’s fields containing their remains. Such a seeming incongruity is perhaps better understood if one views ghosts as remnants of the living rather than as manifestations of the dead. Typically, ghosts arise near the places they died or at sites to which their lives were connected, with the manors of fallen lords, the vaunted halls of deceased statesmen, and the simple hovels of wayward peasant spirits all holding more connection to the time and meaning of a life than the circumstances of death.
To say that a ghost might appear anywhere only slightly hyperbolizes the truth. As noted, a traumatic event and a place of meaning characterize the unlives of most wandering spirits. Beyond these truths, though, nearly any location might give rise to ghostly hauntings. A certain genuineness hides behind the common fear of aged places, crumbling ruins, abandoned residences, and even shadowy attics. Such settings typically hold connections to lives past, whether as the homes of the deceased or repositories of the trappings of past generations, and draw an undeniable weight from the histories, events, and meaningful happenings that transpired within and about them. And with such weight comes the potential for connection, possibly strong enough to draw the spirits of former owners. This is not to imply that ghosts only linger in the dusty places of the world, though. Tales tell of innumerable ghosts with unusual haunts—such as apparitions upon pilgrim roads, the spirits of fallen mountaineers, or the ghostly beasts of ravaged wildernesses—even those that follow the vestiges of their former homes into new dwellings. Only reaches devoid of contact with the living are sure to be entirely free of ghosts, for where the quick tread, their spirits inexorably follow.
Despite nearly any place’s potential for a ghost’s appearance, lost spirits are an extreme rarity, for the laws and paths of natural life are powerful beyond the strength of most mortal wills and all but the most potent magic to defy. Even those that do appear only do so temporarily, as many circumstances that might draw a soul away from its final rest lose their significance with the passing of time. Souls attempting to protect someone, avenge some wrong, or see a loved one once more typically linger only for a matter of hours or days before their desires are fulfilled and they willingly release their holds on life. The will or dementia that shackles a spirit to the world for ages proves far rarer and born of elaborate circumstances. Thus, while sightings of ghosts or brushes with the dead are relatively common in the folktales of even the smallest communities, actual incidents of an established ghostly resident or continuous haunting prove truly extraordinary.
Even in areas where multiple ghosts do arise through the most unusual of circumstances, these spirits typically have no concern for one another, showing little more interest toward the living. In most cases, such undead seek only to interact with those who hold some connection to their former lives, bearing on their deathless existences, or those who somehow interrupt their immortal reveries. For example, the ghost of a murder victim might only interact with those it deems sympathetic to avenging its death, while the spirit of lonesome dowager might only treat with those who resemble her lost ancestors. Even in exceptionally rare cases where multiple ghosts haunt the same area, how such apparitions interact largely ref lects their relations in life, with the apparitions of strangers ignoring one another even after centuries of cohabitation and enemies playing out rivalries over endless ages.
Facets of Fear
More so than even the dread of death, ghosts embody the eternally unknowable, and the irreconcilable fear of the afterlife. Among the oldest of humanity’s fears, the question of what occurs after one’s last breath has been addressed by philosophers, theologians, and storytellers since prehistory. Finding evidence lacking, nearly every approach to the question suggests some manner of life after death, each such answer proving from one vantage comforting and, from another, singularly terrifying. The concept of one’s flesh being possessed by a greater, spiritual self that goes on to life again—whether in reward or punishment, in this world again or on one wholly new—inspires more than just tales of the afterlife, but of spirits that fail to move past the mortal world, whether by cosmic accident or undying intention. Thus, one of the oldest literary and folkloric traditions, the ghost story, is born.
Aside from being intrinsically fearful creatures themselves—unnatural, disembodied manifestations of the dead—ghosts possess a deeper horror in the questions concerning their reasons for existence and intentions toward the living. Rarely do spirits forgo the afterlife without great cause, giving spirits typically dire motivations. The ghost that seeks to avenge its death, to right some injustice, to torment its murderer, or to lay claim to that which it eternally views as its own all occur again and again in the folklore and literature of dozens of cultures. To aid them in their dire goals, ghosts draw upon strange powers of the dead and the afterlife, manifesting a wide range of supernatural powers from intense cold to possession of bodies or items, moving or destroying objects, unnaturally changing their environment, or even wilder and stranger effects. The ghostly traditions of different cultures also have widely different explanations and descriptions of ghosts and their powers, making such spirits among the most variable and unpredictable of all undead.
Varieties of Ghosts
Much confusion arises in folktales and legends between the use of the word “ghost” referring to a specific type of undead and as a generalization for all ethereal undead. Aside from ghosts, numerous disembodied undead exist, just a smattering of the most common being noted here.
Allips: Few fates could be more horrifying than having a life of fear and suffering end, only to find another existence of such torment stretching into eternity. Such is the doom of allips, the mad dead. Souls of the insane too hate-crazed and vicious to find their ways to the afterlife, these shades blather endlessly, spouting profanities and demented tirades from forms stripped of all mortal reason, reduced to nightmarish hallucinations themselves.
Shadows: Little more than impressions of wickedness, shadows are the souls of petty villains too fearful of their eternal punishments to pass on to the outer planes, yet too weak-willed to manifest as greater undead. Cursed to wander the darkened places of the world, these pathetic spirits become scavengers of life, sapping vitality from the living in a hopeless attempt to reclaim even an impression of their forgotten lives.
Spectres: While ghosts take on a fearful variety of forms for all manner of traumatic reasons, instances of extreme violence and hatred often give rise to a lesser form of spirit: spectres, souls of rage. Compelled to linger upon the mortal plane by their fury, these vicious spirits seek to revenge themselves upon all living creatures, violently aff licting others with their own terrible condition. The light of the sun weakens spectres, forcing them into dark, dismal haunts that only further fuel their loathing for life in all its forms.
Wraiths: The souls of exceptionally malevolent individuals, wraiths are manifestations of true evil. They torment the living not out of any particular desire or rampant emotion, but in the indulgence and sadistic enjoyment of malice for malice’s sake. Those that intrude upon their darkened realms risk falling victim to their deadly touch, a freezing grip that drains the vital energy from the living until all that’s left is an ashen husk and a pathetic soul enslaved to the wraith’s cruel whims.
Ghostly Corruptions
Just as the reasons for ghostly materialization differ wildly, so too do the abilities manifested by the disembodied dead. Upon becoming a Ghost the dead have displayed a range of special powers, each representative of the spirit’s cause of death or undead intentions. Presented here are a variety of special attacks, encountered by foes of these lost souls.
Corrupting Gaze (Su): The ghost is disfigured through age or violence, and has a gaze attack with a range of 30 feet that causes 2d10 damage and 1d4 Charisma damage (Fortitude save negates Charisma damage but not physical damage).
Corrupting Touch (Su): All ghosts gain this incorporeal touch attack. By passing part of its incorporeal body through a foe’s body as a the ghost inflicts a number of d6s equal to its CR in damage. This damage is not negative energy—it manifests in the form of physical wounds and aches from supernatural aging. Creatures immune to magical aging are immune to this damage, but otherwise the damage bypasses all forms of damage reduction. A Fortitude save halves the damage inflicted.
Corrupting Gaze (Su): The ghost is disfigured through age or violence, and has a gaze attack with a range of 30 feet that causes 2d10 damage and 1d4 Charisma damage (Fortitude save negates Charisma damage but not physical damage).
Corrupting Touch (Su): All ghosts gain this incorporeal touch attack. By passing part of its incorporeal body through a foe’s body as a the ghost inflicts a number of d6s equal to its CR in damage. This damage is not negative energy—it manifests in the form of physical wounds and aches from supernatural aging. Creatures immune to magical aging are immune to this damage, but otherwise the damage bypasses all forms of damage reduction. A Fortitude save halves the damage inflicted.
Deathly Delusion (Su): The ghost died suddenly or unexpectedly. Not even realizing it’s dead, this spirit goes about the routines of its daily life, ignoring the living in a state of undead denial. Should a ghost with this ability pass through the square of a living being, that creature must make a Will save or fall into a fitful sleep full of nightmares that aren’t its own for 1d4 minutes. For a number of following nights equal to the ghost’s Charisma modifier, the victim must make an additional Will save or be affected as per the spell nightmare. (CR +0)
Draining Touch (Su): The ghost died while insane or diseased. It gains a touch attack that drains 1d4 points from any one ability score it selects on a hit. On each such successful attack, the ghost heals 5 points of damage to itself. When a ghost makes a draining touch attack, it cannot use its standard ghostly touch attack.
Draining Touch (Su): The ghost died while insane or diseased. It gains a touch attack that drains 1d4 points from any one ability score it selects on a hit. On each such successful attack, the ghost heals 5 points of damage to itself. When a ghost makes a draining touch attack, it cannot use its standard ghostly touch attack.
Fatal Fate (Su): The ghost died with some work undone or desire unfulfilled. In its desire to see its efforts completed, once per day, a ghost can lay a compulsive curse upon the living, forcing them to either take up its work or face a terrible end. A ghost can lay this curse by making a touch attack, which forces the target to make a Will save or be stunned for 1 round. During this round, the target receives a f lood of images suggesting a course of action—though such might remain vague or require research into the ghost’s history to discern an exact meaning. The target has a number of days to fulfill the ghost’s intentions equal to 14 days minus the ghost’s Charisma modifier, to a minimum of 7 days. If the target does not fulfill the course of action suggested by the vision within this set period, he takes 1d4 points of Constitution drain per day. This effect can be overcome via the spell remove curse, requiring a caster level check with a DC equal to this effect’s initial DC. (CR +0)
Frightener (Su): The ghost’s unique personality manifests even in death. The ghost gains a number of spell-like abilities equal to its Charisma modifier. It may select these abilities from the following list: animate rope, chill metal, control undead, dancing lights, entangle, faerie fire, fog cloud, ghost sound, heat metal, hideous laughter, invisibility, minor image, open/close, pyrotechnics, scare, sleep, spiritual weapon, soften earth and stone, summon swarm, warp wood, or whispering wind. A ghost may use each of these abilities 3 times per day. The DCs are 10 + spell level + the ghost’s Charisma modifier. (CR +0)
Frightful Moan (Su): The ghost died in the throes of crippling terror. It can emit a frightful moan as a standard action. All living creatures within a 30-foot spread must succeed on a Will save or become panicked for 2d4 rounds. This is a sonic mind-affecting fear effect. A creature that successfully saves against the moan cannot be affected by the same ghost’s moan for 24 hours.
Frightful Moan (Su): The ghost died in the throes of crippling terror. It can emit a frightful moan as a standard action. All living creatures within a 30-foot spread must succeed on a Will save or become panicked for 2d4 rounds. This is a sonic mind-affecting fear effect. A creature that successfully saves against the moan cannot be affected by the same ghost’s moan for 24 hours.
Grave Trappings (Su) The ghost died with a strong attachment to a specific item or set of objects. A ghost with this ability may choose a number of items it died with equal to its Charisma modifier to carry with it into death. The ghost continues to be able to use and benefit from these spectral duplicates just as though they were the real things. Weapons and armor are treated as having the ghost touch special ability, while other items act as being incorporeal themselves and can be manipulated by the ghost. Regardless of the type of object, all selected items are treated as being part of the ghost’s form and cannot be disarmed or removed from the ghost (even by the ghost). Should a ghost be destroyed, its equipment reappears with it upon rejuvenating. (CR +0) Occasionally, the transition into death might imbue a single ghostly item with strange powers, granting it powers comparable to a magic item suited to the ghost’s character level.
Malevolence (Su): The ghost’s jealousy of the living is particularly potent. Once per round, the ghost can merge its body with a creature on the Material Plane. This ability is similar to a magic jar spell (caster level 10th or the ghost’s Hit Dice, whichever is higher), except that it does not require a receptacle. To use this ability, the ghost must be adjacent to the target. The target can resist the attack with a successful Will save. A creature that successfully saves is immune to that same ghost’s malevolence for 24 hours.
Phantasmagoria (Su): The ghost died as a victim of its own delusions or folly. A number of times per day equal to the ghost’s Charisma modifier, the ghost can create an elaborate illusion. This illusion functions similarly to the spell mirage arcana in combination with multiple major images, allowing the ghost to recreate any scene, setting, or characters it wishes. The ghost can even incorporate itself into the effect, appearing as it wishes within the illusion as if it were under the effects of alter self. The entire illusion can be disbelieved with a Will save. The illusion is treated as a 6th-level spell created by a caster with a level equal to the ghost’s CR. If any part of the illusion is dispelled, the entire illusion fades. (CR +0)
Reinvigoration (Su): The ghost died in the throes of a terrible fear, and is desperate for any way to escape its fate, both perceived and actual. Once per round a ghost can possess an adjacent corpse, merging with the remains and reanimating them as a skeleton or zombie. The skeleton or zombie animated by this ability may be no higher than the ghost’s CR minus 2. If the animated corpse is destroyed, the ghost reappears in the corpse’s square and cannot possess another body for 1d4 rounds. (CR +0)
Telekinesis (Su): The ghost’s death involved great physical trauma. The ghost can use telekinesis as a standard action once every 1d4 rounds (caster level 12th or equal to the ghost’s HD, whichever is higher).
Telekinesis (Su): The ghost’s death involved great physical trauma. The ghost can use telekinesis as a standard action once every 1d4 rounds (caster level 12th or equal to the ghost’s HD, whichever is higher).
Vehemence (Su): A ghost with a powerful connection to a specific location gains a measure of mastery over the objects in that place. Once per round, a ghost can possess an object of size Large or smaller, giving it life as an animated object. This animated object’s CR can be no higher than the ghost’s CR minus 2. If the target object is being held by a creature, the object can make a Will save using its bearer’s saving throw to resist possession. If the animated object is destroyed, the ghost reappears in its square and cannot possess another object for 1d4 rounds. (CR +0)
Known Ghosts
All manner of geists and apparitions linger in the dark, ancient, and mysterious places of Golarion. A handful of some of the best-known local ghosts follows.
Coath, The Wight Whale: Tales along the eastern coast of Garund have long told of Coath, the Black Whale, a murderous leviathan that seemed to take umbrage at man’s incursion into its watery realm. For years, the gigantic, dusky whale roamed the seas and brought ruin to even the best-armed vessels, typically under the cover of starless night. Finally, whalers from Ilizmagorti managed to coax the beast into a stretch of sandy shallows, and with blade, poison, and great loss of life finally laid the monster low. Soon after, a gigantic ghost of radiant darkness was spotted near Mediogalti Island, seeming to circle the vast landmass in search of land-bound prey, with several able ships disappearing soon after. Claimed by pirates to be the vengeful spirit of that hateful sea beast Coath, many sailors of Ilizmagorti fear to travel on moonless nights, when the sea proves darker and the stars less bright, out of fear of what they call the Wight Whale, the king of the stormy seas returned to take revenge on not just its killers, but all who sail.
Lord Carnavy Trous: In life, the good-natured Lord Trous straddled Oppara’s social and scholarly world, being a gentleman antiquarian of some repute. The third son of a minor noble family, he filled his sumptuous home with room upon room of bookshelves, creating a maze-like library mansion. When Trous finally took a wife (late in life and at his family’s insistence), Lady Sharrine Lemmor, it was for show and entirely loveless. Lemmor, a vain and moody woman, demanded Carnavy dote on her, giving him little peace and coming to resent his historical pursuits. In her instability and bitterness, it was little problem to murder her husband by crushing him under a stack of his beloved tomes. In death, however, the timid nobleman found himself free of the demands of standing and courtesy, taking to haunting his terrible former wife with zeal. The Trous Manor, a halfday’s travel from Oppara, is now a deadly trap of winding halls and shifting tomes wherein lurk the thoroughly insane Lady Sharrine Lemmor and the spirit of her vengeful husband.
Ordellia Whilwren: Tales in the Varisian city of Magnimar tell of the ghost of one of the city’s first leaders, Mistress Ordellia Whilwren, who aided in establishing friendly relations between the fledgling city and the region’s Varisian wanderers. Magnimarians have long claimed that during poor fishing seasons, at the threat of war, or when the people seem lost, a vision of the dead leader appears upon the towering Arvensoar, her comforting ghost often leaving some token to aid the city through its need, such as a historical relic or an encouraging Harrow card. The sightings and tokens often serve to hearten the people and comfort the city with the knowledge that the spirits of the past still watch over their descendents.