Ghosts

Ghosts - The existence of disembodied human souls or spirits

Since the early days of modern civilization in ancient Mesopotamia, around 5000 BCE, people have believed in ghosts. While most religious traditions are unclear on how the human soul or spirit relates to the human body, the distinction between the two-with the human soul being in some sense the "true person"- has rarely been questioned. Although "ghost" and  "human soul" are often thought to be synonymous, they are not quite the same. While "human soul" is a positive term, "ghost" is, generally speaking, a negative one indicating the unnatural state of the disembodied human soul.

From Mesopotamia to Japan, there has been a strong sense that the human soul is not supposed to be disembodied , though it can be and so there has been a kind of universal horror at the thought of it being disembodied. Gods and angels may function normally without bodies - or at least bodies in our sense-but humans do not. Homer's Odyssey offers a typical example of this when it shows the ghosts in the underworld hungry for blood, since blood and flesh are what make a human. Without blood or-better-bodies, ghosts are foggy-minded and incompetent.

Nevertheless, in shamanistic traditions, ghosts have often have often been consulted for knowledge or advice through the practice of necromancy. Abrahamic religions consider this an evil practice, presumably because the disembodied soul or ghost, dwelling in the underworld, could only be contracted via spirits of the underworld-demons-and so the whole enterprise would be tied up with demonic or evil activity. For these religions, the ghost condition is meant to be healed.