Ghost stories have been with us since the first campfire was lit, and they’ll stick around as long as dads want to scare the hell out of their kids. We’ve seen friendly ghosts, sad ghosts, ghosts that don’t even know they’re dead…

So what’s left?

Turns out: plenty. You just have to start asking better questions.

The Ghost That Wants to Stay

So many ghost stories are about ghosts “moving on.” They want to go to their next life but can’t – something here is holding them back and preventing their cosmic journey.

But what if the Ghost likes it here?

Maybe this ghost has not only made peace with the fact that they’re dead – they enjoy it. Being dead offers some new and interesting opportunities that the living can’t imagine! This ghost might enjoy scaring people, especially if they’re people the ghost didn’t like in life. Or maybe they’ve become a protective spirit, watching over a home or a person with the kind of vigilance that only the undying can have.

That puts an important question in front of your players: How do you help someone who doesn’t want your help?

The Ghost That Needs

One of the most terrifying abilities in the Ghost stat block is Possession. On a failed Constitution save, a character is possessed by the Ghost, becoming a passenger in their own body. Silent, helpless to watch the Ghost take full control of the character until it either decides to leave or the character drops to zero HP.

This is scary enough as a combat trick, but what if the Ghost needs that possession in order to exist? Outside of a living body, the Ghost slowly decays, its substance quietly sublimating away into the Ethereal plane? If it wants to avoid its consciousness being spread out across the universe, it needs to have a living body to latch on to.

It would be bad enough if the person it possessed lost all autonomy, but let’s give this a twist: what if the possessed character gained benefits as well? Give them access to some of the Ghost’s abilities, like Ethereal Sight or Horrific Visage. Now, not only will the Ghost not want to let go – neither will your player.

The Ghost That Lives

Most ghost stories assume the same thing: The spirit is only freed when the body dies. And under normal circumstances this is true.

But what about abnormal circumstances?

What would it take for the spirit of a living person to be disconnected from their flesh? What if the Ghost your players is hunting isn’t a dead person, but a living one. Could they defeat the Ghost without hurting the person it came from?

Even more fun: the Ghost isn’t the whole person, but an aspect of them. Their sense of mischief. Their anger. Their heartbreak. The person is slowly splintering, and every time they do, a piece of them becomes a Ghost. How do your players fix this? Do you destroy the ghosts, knowing you might destroy the person? Or do you try to make them whole again before they fracture even further?

The Ghost that Changes

Some theories about Ghosts is that they’re like living memories. That’s why they can’t leave their hauntings, and why they seem to repeat their routines over and over again. But the thing about memories is that they’re malleable. The mere act of recalling something changes the memory itself. You focus on another detail, or you know things now that you didn’t know then.

What if the Ghost is like that?

Every time someone talks to the Ghost, their version of the Ghost is different. It remembers things differently, or carries baggage that it didn’t have before. The Ghost might accidentally lie because its memory is decaying. And maybe merely interacting with the Ghost causes you to remember things differently. If you have a game about memory and story, this would be a great addition.

Ghosts are more than just a stat block. Sure, they’re hard to banish and scary to fight, especially when they possess someone in your party.

But the real terror might not be death at all.

Use ghosts in your game to explore obsession, agency, memory, identity — the things we wrestle with while we’re alive. And then imagine how much worse that wrestling becomes when the story won’t let you die.

Ghosts endure. And maybe that’s the horror.