Yeah, it's sort of a rhetorical question

March 17, 2006 10:52 PM

How come we never hear about nude ghosts? Clothes always seem to go into the spirit world in anecdote and popular culture. Is this a reflection of society's taboos, or do ghost believers have an explanation?
posted by shannymara to Society & Culture (15 answers total)

Ghosts don't have bodies. If they didn't wear clothes, there wouldn't be anything there at all.

(Besides, haven't you ever heard of ghosts with sheets over them?)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 10:55 PM on March 17, 2006

"If the spirits have any sort of control over the energy they are now comprised of (or even if their personalities are somehow manifested in the energy), then I would think it possible for the witness to see the spirit as the spirit sees itself. If the personality really does remain, the spirit would visualize itself as it was when alive, looking like a living person and wearing clothing. This could be a totally unconscious effect of the energy on the living person, or it could be a manipulation on the part of the spirit itself, perhaps causing the person to see what it wants them to."

-Troy Taylor, President of the American Ghosts society
posted by vacapinta at 11:03 PM on March 17, 2006

How come we never hear about nude ghosts?

Because people that believe in ghosts and claim to see them don't have very good imaginations.

Seriously. Ghost stories are reflections of society, as you say. Your average ghost-believer is one of the duller knives in the drawer. This person just doesn't have an imagination in the same way that you do. Otherwise, we'd hear less "ghostly figure in white" and more inventive stuff, like a nude ghost.

It's the same with UFOs. Before 1977, when people claimed to see aliens, the descriptions were all over the map -- Nordics, reptiles, robots, etc. After 1977, the "grey" alien was 99.9 percent of the sightings. So what happened in 1977? That was the year this movie came out, making grey aliens popular ever since.
posted by frogan at 1:01 AM on March 18, 2006

Uhm, you really don't want to run across a nude ghost. And if you do run across one, you won't want to talk about the experience casually.
posted by Scram at 1:07 AM on March 18, 2006

"The Indonesian embassy [in Washington DC] is also reputedly home to a unique haunting where the nude ghost of Mrs. Evelyn Walsh McLean (a former owner of the Hope Diamond who once lived in the mansion) is occasionally spotted descending the staircase. "

See also here and here.

There's the "nude ghost thief" of Zimbabwe, and the "sex-mad ghost" Popo Bawa (unclear if he is nude) of Zanzibar.
posted by iviken at 2:51 AM on March 18, 2006

Incubi and succubi would by their nature be unclothed, I'd think. I guess they'd be demons, rather than ghosts, though.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:24 AM on March 18, 2006

The ghost in the house I grew up in didn't wear clothes.
Of course, all we ever saw of it was it's feet.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:57 AM on March 18, 2006

Googling "naked ghost," I learned that Matthew McConaughey is haunted by one. I'm not sure what that proves, but there you have it.
posted by nebulawindphone at 6:03 AM on March 18, 2006

Someone I once knew believed that ghosts weren't exactly the dead come back to haunt the living - it's hard to explain, but he saw ghosts more as an energetic/astral "recording" that had been made very, very strongly (through time, extreme emotion, whathaveyou), and what people were experiencing was this recording playing back on a loop. I can't say as I agree with him, but it might explain the clothing, which was also "recorded"?
posted by kalimac at 6:09 AM on March 18, 2006

In The Gift, Cate Blanchett is haunted by the ghost of a murdered girl, played by Katie Holmes, who appears as she was when she died -- naked.

The general view of ghost hunters is that ghosts are psychic manifestations of lost spirits -- sort of imaginary contructs that they throw up around themselves because they either do not know they are dead or because there is something terribly important to them that is left unfinished. So they present themselves as they see themselves, and few of us see ourselves as naked. Interestingly, the most common photographed "evidence" that ghost hunters point to are weird globules of light, which necessarily raises the question, who sees themselves as a floating ball of light?
posted by Astro Zombie at 8:07 AM on March 18, 2006

Ghosts are from the past, in reported observations and in literature - and one of the best ways to tell the apparition is from the past is by its outmoded clothes. Many old outfits are easily imaginable for a pop-culture exposed person - for instance; ladies' dress from the court of the Sun King; a Revolutionary War or Confederate military uniform; or Edwardian little boy's clothes.
posted by By The Grace of God at 10:31 AM on March 18, 2006

Residual self-image.
posted by PurplePorpoise at 11:22 AM on March 18, 2006

She was only a nude ghost prostitute, but she had the prettiest ectoplasmic face I'd ever come across.
posted by hincandenza at 11:56 AM on March 18, 2006

'Googling "naked ghost," I learned that Matthew McConaughey is haunted by one. I'm not sure what that proves, but there you have it.'

What it proves is that frogan was spot-on when he commented "Your average ghost-believer is one of the duller knives in the drawer." Matthew always did seem a little slow to me.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 12:47 PM on March 18, 2006

'Googling "naked ghost," I learned that Matthew McConaughey is haunted by one. I'm not sure what that proves, but there you have it.'

Read that again. It seems that it is not the ghost that is naked... It is Matthew.
posted by nimsey lou at 12:54 PM on March 18, 2006