I want to ask you all a question. In your opinion what is the difference between ghosts, spirits, ghouls, and entities? Are they simply all synomyms? Are there any diffences that seperate them from the rest. Feel free to discuss your ideas on what each of these things are.

Originally posted by Nosred
I want to ask you all a question. In your opinion what is the difference between ghosts, spirits, ghouls, and entities? Are they simply all synomyms? Are there any diffences that seperate them from the rest. Feel free to discuss your ideas on what each of these things are.

Ghosts- Intelligent spirits that know they are dead

Spirits- The soul of a living thing still on earth. Not all spirits are ghosts, but all ghosts are spirits.

ghouls- Ghosts that are haunting you

entities- Beings that are on earth that fit anywhere in the paranormal, from ghosts to aliens.


Those are my views atleast.

You leave out alot of the spirit world.
Are you only interested those examples?

I don't consider them all the same; Ghoul has the most specific definition:

ghoul
1. One who delights in the revolting, morbid, or loathsome.
2. A grave robber.
3. An evil spirit or demon in Muslim folklore believed to plunder graves and feed on corpses.

Entity is actually the antonym of ghost. Entity means it exists as a fact. You and me; corporate entities such as Nike and Microsoft exist as a fact. You can show someone that you exist anytime. Ghosts don't exist as a fact. They could be hallucinations or just mistaken identity.*** (I am not judging or saying ghosts do not exist, but a skeptical mind has to be open to those possibilities as well. I understand there are ghost pictures that are unexplained out there, but that doesn't prove they exist, it's just evidence that they might exist.)

As for ghosts/spirits, they're pretty similar in definition. A disembodied soul being the common theme there.

Personally I think they are all different words for the same thing.

Their specific meaning may be different in a literal sense, but the absence of hard facts or evidence leads me to suggest that these are terms used subjectively by people who have had experiences.

Kind of like that saying about the world's religions being fingers on a hand that is pointing to the moon. They all have elements of truth but are not truth in and of themselves.

Or that story about the blind men and the elephant. Each one felt a different piece of the elephant and concluded wildly different things about what they were touching. All of them were right and all of them were wrong.

I was always under the impression that a ghost was the "memory" of a person that necessarily isn't aware that they are still here- like someone who passed unexpectedly and doesn't realize that they are dead.