Author: A Solitary Pagan

Maybe you think I’m crazy for saying elementals and fairies are a type of ghost. But hear me out. There’s a fine line between fairies and ancestors. There are NUMEROUS stories in Celtic and Norse lore that talk about the dead being taken up by the fairies. Or how someone loses a loved one, only to see them walking down the hill with a troop of fairies the next day. There are even some theories tha...

I’m including the poltergeist under the “other” type of ghosts for a reason. When we break down the term poltergeist, it is a German word for “noisy ghost“. And while it very could be the soul of a departed human being, there is much evidence to suggest this phenomenon is a psychic projection instead. When poltergeists manifest, they frequently seem to revolve around teenagers. Young women, to be ...

Types of Ghosts 7, Wraiths. A wraith is described like any other ghost, as a spirit of someone who died that has stuck around after leaving its body. However, a wraith is a ghost that has attached itself to someone or something. That something is often an object like a ring (think the Ring wraiths in Lord of the Rings), a piece of furniture, a doll, or heirloom of some kind. They are so obsessed w...

Types of Ghosts 8, Animal Spirits. Sometimes an animal’s soul lingers at the site of its death, at its physical home, OR around his or her human friend. Sometimes animal ghosts aren’t of this world at all, but are otherworldly beings like the Hounds of Hell, for example. To complicate things further, sometimes animal spirits might even be a witch’s familiar spirit OR her fetch spirit (see above se...

Types of Ghosts 9, Shadow People, The Hat Man, and Shadow Spiders. Some people believe shadow people were once of a human nature, though I’m not quite sure I believe in this theory. I’ve encountered a shadow person in my lifetime and it didn’t feel quite human…but something else entirely. These shadow people tend to dart out of the corner of your eye and are frequently seen in corners, darting dow...

Types of Ghosts 6, Hitchhiking Ghosts (Attachers) You’ve heard those creepy stories about people pulling over to the side of the road to give a girl in a prom dress a ride home? And then they find out later on that the girl is dead? This is the classic story of the hitchhiking ghost. There are many variations of the story including with hitchhiking men, as well. When I refer to the hitchhiking gho...

Types of Ghosts 3, Wandering Souls. While also apparently a Spanish flamenco song, wandering ghosts are a type of ghost that I am all too familiar with. I don’t know the song, but I know the ghost. I call this type of spirit a wandering soul or wandering ghost because any time I’ve had contact with them, they seem lost. Not just in the typical way we assume a ghost is lost but like…literally lost....

Types of Ghosts 5, Doppelganger, and Fetch Spirits. Now the doppelganger is a ghost that could be the soul of a dead human being OR the fetch of a human being. This spirit is the “spiritual twin” of a living individual. What is a fetch, you ask? A fetch spirit is a person’s astral double that may separate from the human’s body ad may go out to do the person’s bidding. Sometimes they might have a m...

Types of Ghosts 4, Residual Energy or “Imprints”. This type of ghost isn’t intelligent, meaning it isn’t a sentient being with its own thoughts, feelings, or form, necessarily. A residual energy ghost or what I also call an “imprint” is more of a supernatural phenomenon instead of an actual spirit. This is when something so traumatic or intense happens that the situation itself is imprinted on the...

Types of Ghosts 2, Intelligent Ghosts, and Classic Hauntings. This is probably the most iconic type of ghost or what we also call a “classic” haunting. This spirit is the disembodied soul that once inhabited a human body. That can’t seem to find its way onto the next phase of the afterlife. There are likely different reasons for this phenomenon, including the individual might have died an unexpect...