Bizarre Clive Barker novels aside (Coldheart Canyon and one other, Damnation Game or Weaveworld, maybe?) where the things aren’t really even characters but monsters, are there any books, comics or anime with the unlikely scenario where:
A. A character is the product of a union between a living person and a ghost (the ghost needs to be one before the character’s conception)
And
B. This character spends part of their day alive, and part as a ghost?
I know that there’s a cartoon called Danny Phantom that sort of fulfills B, but definitely not A.
I couldn’t think of a one. However, this thread now seems so sad, maybe some almosts?
White Wolf Game Studio’s Exalted RPG has living offspring between a living person and a ghost. Ghostblooded are like living folks while alive, and like ghosts once dead, though. Although they can pick up some ghost powers to use while alive. Since this is WW, there’s probably Exalted fiction; haven’t read any, though, so don’t know if Ghostblooded figure in any of it.
There’s also Tanith Lee’s Kill the Dead, which is about a ghosthunter and a ghosts’s son, and is quite good although not quite on your requirements.
Beat me to it, although I was getting annoyed trying to remember the title. It was fun. Probably the best of the Shadowline books - certainly my favourite.
The lead character in Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book is a boy who is adopted and raised by ghosts. He does have some of their powers, mainly the ability to become “invisible” when he wants to.
The titles were called Razorline. The Shadowline saga is unrelated.
My favorite was Hokum and Hex- two gods are fighting over the fate of Earth. One god has legions of technomagical armies. The other god chooses as his lone champion, a failed stand up comedian. “Earth’s last hope, is a joke.”
There’s a rather bizarre character in the Ravenloft D&D setting named Tristen ApBlanc. The story as I recall it goes that his father became a vampire after his conception, and then drank his pregnant wife’s blood. The child was born normal, but upon reaching puberty he was starting to turn into a vampire. He then murdered his guardian, and drank her blood, but because she had drank lots of holy water that day, he instead became a vampyre (this is a different monster than vampire in D&D. They are inhuman, but living, creatures who are compelled to feed on blood). Then the guardian cursed him with her dying breath, and he died. Now he’s cursed to be a vampyre during the day and a ghost at night. Weird.
Talking of D&D, Dragon magazine #313 included an assortment of “half-undead” creature templates, one of which was for a half-ghost. Called a “fetch,” these are generally created when a woman and her deceased lover get nasty. Physically, they’re unnaturally pale and wan. While they don’t exactly spend part of the time alive and part as a ghost, they do have the power to project an incorporeal spirit form, plus a few other powers.
You’re right - I invariably get the two of them mixed up.
Shadowline was pretty good, too, though.
I couldn’t get into H&H…EctoKid, Saint Sinner and the superhero team I can’t remember the name of, I liked. I was really disappointed that the TV movie from some time back called Clive Barker’s Saint Sinner wasn’t based on the comic.
Not really A, more of B (and not for a specified time either, it’s her choice).
Putting it in a spoiler, because it is one, but unless you read romance you probably won’t care if you are spoiled.
At the end of the book, Neomi (who was a ghost in the beginning) discovers that she isn’t alive like she thought she now was. Instead she has become a Phantom. Basically after about 500 years, if a ghost lasts that long, they can grow a body and become powerful in the Lore (vampires, werewolves, witches, Valkyries etc) being able to be either incarnate or ghostly with all sorts of cool powers.