Ghost and the Writer

Spooking

The table of contents was set up in a rather confusing manner being separated into spectral coefficients (whatever that means), which Mandy would probably understand had she read the intro. Mandy had other plans - she flipped to the back and found an index. Ghost was there and so was an undead dryad. A small smile settled on her lips as she first flipped over to the first mention of 'Ghost'.

Yet as Mandy started reading her smile soon faded, being replaced with a despairing look. For one, she now had no question whatsoever why everyone cast wary looks at her.

As she had heard before, to become a ghost you needed to give up your own life, so most ghosts were a result of a suicide. If their will was feeble and rather than hating life they just completely gave up on it, then they turned into wandering spirits not bound to anyplace in particular - due to that weakness they were picked off by other astrals and eaten. Being so feeble they often even didn't remind of humans anymore - being something like white cartoonish blobs. The book described these as harmless and even had some methods for capturing - either as feed for other astrals or as materials for alchemy.

If a ghost retained their human form, then that almost always implied that they had an agenda - they either hated life to a point of wishing to take revenge on life itself or had some insane reason to take their own life, often to torment others with their death and by causing paranormal activity afterward. 

Mandy looked up from the page and thought a bit on her own agenda. She certainly didn't want to disappear, but... did it make sense that she wanted to live on to read more books? No use thinking on it, she continued reading. 

Apparently, In very rare cases ghosts are formed when a person, who is sacrificing their life for some other reason, is fully aware that their actions will lead to their own death, but these cases are so rare they are negligible, and - in most cases, they give up on life as a side-effect and thus don't form a complete astral body either. In case of taking the bullet for someone else - people who care for others more than for themselves are too thoughtless to consider their own mortality. Their body moves 'by itself' so to say, so they die without this awareness and thus no ghost forms. 

It seemed like the author considered people like that idiots. Mandy somewhat agreed even if she was among those idiots.

Also, according to the author - some crafty ghosts, especially the first type, that hate life itself, learn to hide their dying marks and pretend to be victims of fate or use humans with ill desires to ascend to being gods of calamity. If a ghost without any apparent wounds freely walks around, then 99 out of 100 times they are already on the path towards being a god of calamity. The author suggests for anyone below silver rank to flee upon spotting one of this type. 

A wry smile appeared on Mandy's face. Was this author at fault for the wary looks cast at her? Probably not, but Mandy couldn't help but feel iffy. Mandy didn't exactly know what a God of Calamity was and it wasn't explained in this chapter, but from the context, it sounded like something bad.

Mandy sighed and continued reading.

Base abilities for human shape ghosts are telekinesis, ability to disregard gravity, possession and dream interference. Ghosts have a natural aptitude for dark element magic, which they often pick up on their own with the passing of time, so it's important to clear them away as soon as possible. Their base abilities also start out weak but grow stronger. A ghost older than a decade often possesses enough telekinetic force to hold down an enhanced human or even an untral.

Mandy made another wry smile at this line as that's exactly what she had done to Ian.

The following pages described various atrocities older ghosts do as a warning to readers - example, pin humans down till they pass out from exhaustion, then torment them in their dreams, at times force their astral bodies out, consume them, steal their bodies, go out and commit homicide, then kill the host body to escape, rinse and repeat. Or an even more horrid example, haunt a human they like and hurt everyone around them till the haunted human commits suicide and then consume the soul as it comes out. In any example, the ghost ends up ascending to a god of calamity status eventually and, if left unchecked, often ends up causing a war or worse. Souls are, apparently, very tasty to ghosts and give an instant power-up, so ghosts commonly engage in cannibalizing and rarely form relationships among themselves - thus, there is no known ghost community.