There’s any number of works of fiction where ghosts or spirits of dead people “possess” the bodies of living people; and there’s at least a healthy subgenre of ghosts possessing otherwise inanimate objects, such as vehicles or even buildings.
But I’m on an on track—I’m looking for works where ghosts take possession of artificial bodies—robots, Golems, statues, even suits of armor. Preferably at least roughly humanoid.
Now, for these purposes, full on cyborgs (i.e., living biological brains in mechanical bodies) don’t count, or setups where someone’s “consciousness” is transferred or copied into a computer brain, unless the process or what is being copied is explicitly established to be supernatural.
So far, I’ve scrounged up…
•In one episode of The Venture Brothers, the ghost of Abraham Lincoln, unable to be seen or heard by most people or interact with any material save for objects with his likeness on them, has someone build him a crude paper-mache body out of $5 bills. He even got the voice to work.
•In an later episode of GI Joe, the ghost of a Conquistador takes over the body of a Cobra android, and even takes to wearing his old Morion and sword. Those were interesting times.
•It seems a character in the manga/anime series Magical Teacher Negima! is a ghost who can possess a voodoo doll…and uses it to control a human-sized android body, manually, by sitting inside it in a tiny cockpit.
•This happened at least a couple of times in Disney’s animated Gargoyles—a cyborg gargoyle, Frankensteined together out of the remains of three dead ones, and possessing the souls of all three, later had two of the souls transferred out into separate gargoyle androids (gardroids?) of their own. Again, interesting times in animation.
Now I’m sure there are other examples, and this scenario to me seems certain to have come up in fantasy literature, but these are all that are coming to mind at the moment.
There are many stories of evil haunted dolls (aka Perverse Puppet, Demonic Dummy, etc). But I suppose most of those don’t fit the criteria because they aren’t possessed by the spirit of a specific dead person?
the character Mettaton, who initially appears to be a robot, is actually revealed (if you follow certain clues) to be a ghost possessing a robot body. Undertale ghosts do have the ability to permanently bond to a corporeal body and become physical beings, but in this case the body was specifically designed and built for this ghost to possess permanently.
In the Tim Powers novel Expiration Date, a certain percentage of Los Angeles’ homeless population are actually ghosts who have created bodies for themselves out of accretions of litter and street trash. Most people haven’t noticed this, because they have trained themselves not to look at the homeless too closely.
Cemetery World by Clifford Simak. After being devastated in a war, Earth becomes an expensive cemetery for rich off-world people who want to be buried on humanity’s home world. Being covered with graves, naturally Earth has a healthy population of ghosts (who call themselves shades.) They were, um, “free standing” until some point in the book when they were given robot bodies to possess.
In the “Full Metal Alchemist” anime, Edward’s brother Alphonse has his body destroyed, and Edward alchemically bonds his soul into a suit of armor. Al isn’t exactly dead, but he’s a disembodied soul that animates a suit of armor, so I think he counts.
In DC Comics, the hero Deadman is a ghost who can temporarily possess the bodies of living people. But there was one story in The Brave and the Bold in which he possessed a painting and caused it to speak. I’m pretty sure it was in issue #133, but it might have been #104. He also possessed an android in Forever People#9 & 10.
I feel like the possessed suit of armor is a fairly common trope, and yet I’m having a hard time thinking of any actual examples. Bedknobs and Broomsticks does feature an army of armor, but they’re animated by magic and not ghosts.
I was hoping somebody would mention that show because they got the whole concept of reincarnation wrong. The standard belief regarding transmigration of souls is that you can’t be reborn as something that already exists during the same time you are alive and the 1928 Porter came into existence during the mother’s lifetime. The soul of Jerry Van Dyke’s mother was actually possessing the car and he could’ve ended her torment by not calling a mechanic but a priest.
Incidentally, if anything deserves a darker and edgier reboot it’s MMTC. Drop the whole reincarnation angle and instead make the car a diabolically-engineered soul magnet that attracts the spirits of the recently deceased. It starts with the protagonist’s mother but soon sucks in many other souls that each try to control the car–sort of like “Sybil” on wheels.
The A Wizard In Rhyme series had the Hollow Men, invisible ghosts that could only become tangible by acquiring clothing or armor; even if it was no more than a glove. While possessing clothing they filled it out like a living person and could enjoy living pleasures like food and drink. On the other hand they could then be “killed” by ordinary means and temporary disembodied.
There was competition among them for better, more durable clothing and especially armor.
If games count, the game Pillars of Eternity has multiple characters and enemies that are spirits inhabiting construct-bodies and statues. This includes a recruitable character The Devil of Caroc.
The webcomic Girl Genius has a case that might qualify: The Big Bad is an entity known as the Other, who may or may not have originally been a living human, or might be a possibly-bodiless extradimensional entity. In any event, though, she can certainly possess humans (which usually completely displaces the host personality, though the exceptionally strong-willed can resist), and on at least one occasion has possessed a clank (steampunk robot) body.
In Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar series of books, there is a sword called “Need” that is possessed by an ancient crone spirit. Throughout the course of the series this spirit slowly awakens. Backstory.
Piers Anthony (no, I know) sort of did this in ON A PALE HORSE, where the latest guy to become the Incarnation of Death handles personal Grim Reaper duty whenever someone dies and special scrutiny is required because the soul isn’t good enough to rise to heaven – or evil enough to sink to hell – on its own.
In one case, the deceased is so perfectly balanced that it’s going to take a really long while, and Death ain’t got time for that, and so the soul gets placed in a robot body complete with metal limbs, the better to pore over a stack of documents that would put every tax code to shame: that way, the deceased can take all the time he needs to do the calculations and file the paperwork himself.