"In centuries past (and even now, although the present world is less hospitable to them), members of the spirit company frequently appeared among mortals. They came in an infinity of guises and for a multitude of reasons. Some manifested themselves as nothing more than rustlings in halls, cold spots on floors or shadows in corners. Some took human form, thier aspects familiar save for the ashen pallor imparted by the grave and a frightening, elusive substantiality. They appeared and disappeared at random: existing as they did in another dimension, the barriers of the ordinary world - walls, roofs, floors and doors - had no meaning to them, and they passed effortlessly through solid structures.
Most disturbing of all were ghosts who came not as they had been in life, but as in death of long standing, thier briefly animated corpses beribboned with tattered, earth-caked remnants of shrouds. Some maimed of mutilated at the moment of death, returned in like fashion - armless or legless or horribly headless.
As for the motives that impelled the hauntings, they evidently were as varied as those that informed the actions of the living. Some ghosts came to complete business unfinished in life; some, victims of real or fancied wrongs while living, came back bent on vengeance. Some, malefactors while alive, existed in perpertual punishment, doomed to reenact their crimes forever, denied the easeful rest of death. Some returned to life because they were summoned by the living: ghosts could be called from the grave, although only the foolhardy or careless did so. Still others did their spectral work for no apparent purpose, driven by malevolent forces terrifyingly meaningless to thier living victims; it was as if they were consumed by envy of anyone still possessing the gift of life. And some ghosts were only harmless, wistful spirits, apparently unable to leave the familiar scenes of thier past."
From the Ghost book of the Enchanted World series of books by the editors of Time-Life Books.
The Wifes revenge
