# Ghost-human offspring in mythology/folkore? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 19, 2012, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-human-offspring-in-mythology-folkore/616231 "2012-03-19T15:53:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-human-offspring-in-mythology-folkore/616231/1 "2012-03-19T15:53:12Z")
I know that there are a few characters in modern fiction who are the child of a living person and a ghost who was already one at the time of the child’s conception (usually the mother is the living person and the father the ghost, but there is that Clive Barker novel…), but that’s not what I’m looking for. Instead I want to know, is there any culture’s mythology/folklore that includes a human-ghost hybrid? It seems like there _ought_ to be, considering you have things like half-vampires with a human parent and a vampire parent in Balkan folklore, but I’ve spent a lot of time looking for mention of such a creature and have come up empty. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-human-offspring-in-mythology-folkore/616231/2 "2012-03-19T21:08:33Z")
Would a [banshee](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banshee) fit the bill? They’re kinda fairies (that are nearly always presented in human form) but also kinda ghosts. Otherwise I’m not exactly sure what you mean. I’d have thought a ghost-human hybrid could only be from one ghost parent and one living parent, and you’ve ruled that out. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-human-offspring-in-mythology-folkore/616231/3 "2012-03-19T21:54:03Z")
Jesus was sired by a ghost. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-human-offspring-in-mythology-folkore/616231/4 "2012-03-19T21:56:51Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Jesus was sired by a ghost. That right there is pretty awesome. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-human-offspring-in-mythology-folkore/616231/5 "2012-03-19T22:02:37Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Jesus was sired by a ghost. Now I was going to come in with that, but I don’t understand the Trinity thing. Wasn’t he sired by the Father part? ---
**Author:** ![WotNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e19b73/32.png) [@WotNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WotNot)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-human-offspring-in-mythology-folkore/616231/6 "2012-03-19T22:08:48Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > Otherwise I’m not exactly sure what you mean. I’d have thought a ghost-human hybrid could only be from one ghost parent and one living parent, and you’ve ruled that out. I think he means that he’s looking for examples from folklore rather than fiction. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-human-offspring-in-mythology-folkore/616231/7 "2012-03-19T22:27:04Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Now I was going to come in with that, but I don’t understand the Trinity thing. Wasn’t he sired by the Father part? Nope. > [@](#): > > "How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” > The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. So apparently not only was Jesus the son of a ghost, but what with the ghost coming on Mary, he was apparently the miraculous result of a pearl necklace. While I posted that original answer facetiously, it does highlight a problem with the question. Real mythologies aren’t arranged like a D&D monstrous manual. There isn’t any line between ghost, zombie, lich, demon, faerie, dryad and so forth. Indeed. with the animist and transmigration aspect of most religions, it doesn’t even make any sense to impose such lines. A spirit that dies in many religions is \*expected \*to haunt an area that it was attached to in life. IOW hauntings. Locations and objects were expected to be inhabited by a non-corporeal spirit. Ancestors were expected hang around and watch over the family and so forth. There wasn’t any hard-and-fast line between these supernatural entities. Your dead father inhabited the shrine in the garden, but so did the nature spirits. They were they same thing, except when they were not. And nature spirits were the same as gnomes, except when they were not. And an evil gnome was a goblin, except when it was a demon. There was never any clearly defined line between any of these entities. Ghosts, genius loci, gnomes, goblins, demons. They were all poorly defined and interchangeable. Even western mythology vampires, for example, were originally described as blood sucking ghosts. Although they traditionally inhabited the corpse, the idea of them being actual walking corpses that rose from the coffin every night is a very modern invention and may have even been invented by Stoker. Similarly, traditional western ghosts were forever forming physical bodies and getting up to mischief. This presents a problem with answering the question. Because ghosts in traditional mythologies are so ill-defined, we tend to re-define them when we translate them. If a ghost produces a child, we have a tendency to translate that as “vampire” or “goblin”, whereas the original tellers of the tale wouldn’t even understand the distinction. All mythological figures could become non-corporeal and/or invisible at will, they were all spirits of something, they all inhabited the spirit realm/fairyland and so forth. The distinctions were never clear to the tellers and they weren’t really relevant. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-human-offspring-in-mythology-folkore/616231/8 "2012-03-19T22:34:00Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > I’d have thought a ghost-human hybrid could only be from one ghost parent and one living parent, and you’ve ruled that out. 😕 I haven’t ruled it out, I just don’t want examples from modern fiction, like Danny Phantom or the Sims 3, rather than folklore or mythology. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-human-offspring-in-mythology-folkore/616231/9 "2012-03-19T23:34:29Z")
Incubi and succubi are said to be demonic carriers of human seeds, able to impregnate women and able to be impregnated by men, and other variations of that. ---
**Author:** ![benbo1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19adc/32.png) [@benbo1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/benbo1)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2012, 10:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-human-offspring-in-mythology-folkore/616231/10 "2012-03-20T10:49:14Z")
Keith Richards? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2012, 11:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-human-offspring-in-mythology-folkore/616231/11 "2012-03-20T11:23:41Z")
Not exactly a ghost (unless you describe vampires as “blood drinking ghosts”, as has been done), but a _dhampire_ is the offspring of a vampire and a human, although the term has been used to mean other things by recent authors: > **[Dhampir](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhampir)** > > In Balkan folklore, a dhampir (Albanian pronunciation: \[ðamˈpir\]) is a mythical creature that is the result of a union between a vampire and a human. This union was usually between male vampires and female humans, with stories of female vampires mating with male humans being rare. > The word dhampir is an Albanian word borrowed from Slavic vampire, from which it evolved through Albanian sound changes. Superficially it seems to derive from the Gheg Albanian words dhamb 'tooth' and pir 'to drink'. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2012, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-human-offspring-in-mythology-folkore/616231/12 "2012-03-20T23:26:28Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Not exactly a ghost (unless you describe vampires as “blood drinking ghosts”, as has been done), but a _dhampire_ is the offspring of a vampire and a human, although the term has been used to mean other things by recent authors: > > [Dhampir - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhampir) That’s what I was referencing towards the end of the OP. Man, this is disappointing. There are fae/mythological just about everything according to lore, from horse-sized cats to monsters that can’t bow least they spill water out of their heads to trickster gods who take the form of raccoons, but not a half-ghost? Considering how specific mythological beings can be, it just seems improbable that **no** known culture has a term for such a thing. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2012, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghost-human-offspring-in-mythology-folkore/616231/13 "2012-03-21T07:16:25Z")
Well, people were quite clear on the concept of “dead, non-solid bodies don’t make babies”. Once they’re solid they get other names: zombies, revenants, vampires… Same for a variety of mythological spirits known to have children with humans, they’re alive and they get other names: dones d’aigua, fae, nymphs, dryads, satyrs…