# How long do ghosts live? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 4, 2018, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-do-ghosts-live/805848 "2018-01-04T13:58:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2018, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-do-ghosts-live/805848/61 "2018-01-04T18:52:02Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Inter-dimensional time-travelling aliens, obviously. It might explain why ghosts wear clothes. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2018, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-do-ghosts-live/805848/62 "2018-01-04T18:58:19Z")
> [@cmyk](#): > > It might explain why ghosts wear clothes. Fashion can die out too, y’know. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2018, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-do-ghosts-live/805848/63 "2018-01-04T19:11:19Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Have we ruled out the possibility that the “poltergeist” is actually a mischievous fey of some sort? In that case, you can try to befriend it with gifts like milk, or you can wait for it to find someone more amusing to annoy. Possibly a “Tina” fey, known to annoy Alaskans. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2018, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-do-ghosts-live/805848/64 "2018-01-04T19:14:15Z")
Have a seance party. Be sure to invite a local psychic practitioner. I can almost guarantee the Ghost will turn up. Then you can ask him how he’s feeling. ---
**Author:** ![Green\_Bean](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/green_bean/32/1760_2.png) [@Green\_Bean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Bean)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2018, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-do-ghosts-live/805848/65 "2018-01-04T19:25:12Z")
> [@B-Rad](#): > > A little empathy, please? Imagine being a disembodied consciousness whose senses are no longer linked to meaty organs, nor to whatever analogs might exist in the afterlife. You can no longer interact with or experience the world as you did when you were alive, and what you do have is ill-suited for the physical world you still inhabit. Loosening a couple screws and effecting even miniscule physical contact with others is probably a huge accomplishment. Besides, maybe he _has_ gotten up to other stuff, but I can’t blame the doorknob screws on the cats. Maybe I should? My ghost is more accomplished than yours. He makes a nail in the floorboard pop up, and he likes to hide the remote. Fortunately, he’s not very creative. It’s always the same nail, and he only ever hides the remote between the couch cushions or under the ottoman. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2018, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-do-ghosts-live/805848/66 "2018-01-04T19:43:21Z")
Oh, no, the remotes are stolen from me by Aliens. They come in the wee hours and take them. They don’t get eggs or eyeball juice or anything else. Just remotes. Probings are rare. I think they are obsessed with the boob-tube. P.S. they sometimes return them under the sofa, always after I have bought a new one. ---
**Author:** ![CaptMurdock](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/captmurdock/32/11736_2.png) [@CaptMurdock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaptMurdock)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2018, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-do-ghosts-live/805848/67 "2018-01-04T20:29:09Z")
(In that “can’t believe I’m actually contributing to this discussion” sense…) ISTR that Guinness Book of World Records, decades ago, stated that “Ghosts are not immortal” (!) and they apparently tend to fade away/cease manifesting after about four hundred years. The exception to this, according again to Guinness, was the repeated modern-day visitation by 1st-century Roman Legionnaires in Britain. Maybe they were still trying to get their pensions. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![buddha\_david](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ee7513/32.png) [@buddha\_david](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddha_david)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2018, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-do-ghosts-live/805848/68 "2018-01-04T20:34:23Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > By definition, “Ghosts” are not alive, hence they do not “live”. [Ghost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_(Swedish_band)) is indeed alive. Though I’m not sure about the Nameless Ghouls. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2018, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-do-ghosts-live/805848/69 "2018-01-04T20:44:37Z")
> [@CaptMurdock](#): > > (In that “can’t believe I’m actually contributing to this discussion” sense…) > > ISTR that Guinness Book of World Records, decades ago, stated that “Ghosts are not immortal” (!) and they apparently tend to fade away/cease manifesting after about four hundred years. The exception to this, according again to Guinness, was the repeated modern-day visitation by 1st-century Roman Legionnaires in Britain. Maybe they were still trying to get their pensions. :dubious: Was that from the Guinness Book of World Records…or from drinking a world record number of Guinnesses? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2018, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-do-ghosts-live/805848/70 "2018-01-04T20:46:19Z")
Twice as long as half a ghost. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2018, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-do-ghosts-live/805848/71 "2018-01-04T21:12:15Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > The fiction market is glutted with stories like that. You need to market it as "non"fiction-the woowoos will eat it up. There’s my problem. This damned integrity prevents me from writing ghost stories as anything but fiction. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2018, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-do-ghosts-live/805848/72 "2018-01-04T21:12:17Z")
> [@CaptMurdock](#): > > The exception to this, according again to Guinness, was the repeated modern-day visitation by 1st-century Roman Legionnaires in Britain. Maybe they were still trying to get their pensions. :dubious: If they weren’t worth their salt in life … ---
**Author:** ![GaryM](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garym/32/241_2.png) [@GaryM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GaryM)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2018, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-do-ghosts-live/805848/73 "2018-01-04T21:25:03Z")
> [@naita](#): > > If they weren’t worth their salt in life … I see what you did there. GaryM ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2018, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-do-ghosts-live/805848/74 "2018-01-04T21:26:35Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#): > > Thank you. Now if I could only get some of this shit published (professionally to get paid). Presuming that by “this shit” you mean “novels”, you can easily and cheaply publish print-on-demand books on Amazon via their CreateSpace Service. And by “cheaply” I mean “no money down at all” - if you’re cheap and don’t care much about your work. If you do care at all you really ought to spend a couple hundred bucks on some ISBNs, and if you _really_ care you should spend a couple hundred more to register your work with the copyright office. (In the USA your work is automatically copyrighted even without registering, but it becomes a hell of a lot easier to win copyright disputes if you register.) But even without paying for anything it’s trivial now to become a professionally paid published author - just write something, put it on CreateSpace, set a price, and talk somebody into buying it. Poof! You’ll be a paid published author. Easy as that! And it’s at least 0.05% less embarrassing than traditional vanity publishing - 0.08% if you factor in that you won’t be left with 4996 unsold copies of your book sitting in your garage as a monument to your failure. And speaking of vanit-er, CreateSpace publishing, my own efforts on that front coincidentally qualify me as a published authority on ghosts! Rules against shilling here suggest I shouldn’t actually say which books are mine, but suffice to say I’ve written not one but two books about…psychics. (Fiction books, that is.) And in one of those books one of the psychics talks about her speculation on ghosts! > [@kopek](#): > > Not really since there isn’t even a good consensus among those of us who believe in such things in regards what the heck they even are. > > “Residual haunts” are something like a tape that plays over and over on some sort of cycle or due to conditions. Those can repeat for hundreds of years or fade over time almost like a film loop wearing out. A “residual” has no idea we even exist. “Intelligent haunts” are things that are aware of us and interact with us. Some seem tied to locations and others tied to people. These seem more sometimes to disappear rather than fade although some have been “documented” (by personal experiences) over hundreds of years; your description seems more like that kind of thing. Again, if you believe the people who believe, they can sometimes return but in a sense their need was fulfilled and they have moved along to ------ whatever. The “residual haunts” description matches what I describe in my books, though in addition to fading out I also allow for the possibilities of psychic mediums interacting with them and exorcising them - unraveling the tangle of energy that’s made the ghostly impression on reality. Why not, right? My fiction doesn’t include “intelligent haunts” because there’s no conceivable way they could have avoided being detected and proven by science by now, unlike static recordings and people who can lift cars with their mind. An intelligent haunt has no reason whatsoever to by shy, and it would be trivial for someone with even a modicum of intellectual curiosity to start trying to ask them questions (“Unscrew one screw for yes, unscrew two for no”), which would about three seconds later turn into science and six seconds after that a nobel prize. It would be trivial to demonstrate that an intelligent ghost was real - or at least that _something_ million-dollar-prizeworthy was going on. When Casper flies up and starts carving his name into everyone who come to see him, people take notice. ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2018, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-do-ghosts-live/805848/75 "2018-01-04T21:42:29Z")
^ Maybe it was [his brother, Jasper](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peNvv5709XU). (NSFW) ---
**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:** [January 4, 2018, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-do-ghosts-live/805848/76 "2018-01-04T21:52:06Z")
Ghosts ‘live’ until no one remembers that they ‘exist’. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2018, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-do-ghosts-live/805848/77 "2018-01-04T21:58:58Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Ghosts ‘live’ until no one remembers that they ‘exist’. Ah, so you’re saying ghosts are a visible Schrodinger-esque manifestation of scalar quantum physics! For real? ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2018, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-do-ghosts-live/805848/78 "2018-01-04T22:04:13Z")
> [@B-Rad](#): > > Ah, so you’re saying ghosts are a visible Schrodinger-esque manifestation of scalar quantum physics! For real? Wait, your ghost was _visible?_ Neat! ---
**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:** [January 4, 2018, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-do-ghosts-live/805848/79 "2018-01-04T22:10:19Z")
> [@B-Rad](#): > > Ah, so you’re saying ghosts are a visible Schrodinger-esque manifestation of scalar quantum physics! For real? For certain definitions of ‘live’ and ‘exist’, and now ‘visible’, yes. There’s no need for quantum cats though, it’s much simpler than that. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2018, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-do-ghosts-live/805848/80 "2018-01-04T22:34:57Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > By definition, the answer will be a negative number. Imaginary number. > [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > This was confirmed in the well-known Patrick Swayze [documentary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_(1990_film)). I prefer his dramatic recreation of the true story of adrenaline junkie surfer bank robbers and the former college football star “F…B…I…AGENT!” who pursues them by jumping out of an airplane without a parachute. > [@Colibri](#): > > Ghosts are not an area of scientific research, even if certain people claim “expertise” on them. > > When you can cite a peer-reviewed analysis that provides a plausible mechanism for the existence of ghosts, get back to me. 🙂 ”Ah, if there’s a steady paycheck in it, I’ll believe anything you say.” — Winston Stranger [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-do-ghosts-live/805848.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-do-ghosts-live/805848.md?page=5)