Philosopher Peter van Inwagen wrote:[4] "...I am perfectly aware that the fear of ghosts is contrary to science, reason and religion.
If I were sentenced to spend a night alone in a graveyard, <...> I should already know that twigs would snap and the wind moan and that there would be half-seen movements in the darkness.
And yet, after I had been frog-marched into the graveyard, I should feel a thrill of fear every time one of these things happened..." In many traditional accounts, ghosts are often thought to be deceased people looking for vengeance, or imprisoned on earth for bad things they did during life.
[5] Wari', an Amazon rainforest tribe, believe that the spirits of dead people may appear as scaring specters called jima.
In such cases for some days after the burial you may hear about sunset a simultaneous and horrible din in all the houses of all the villages, a yelling, screaming, beating and throwing of sticks; happily the uproar does not last long: its intention is to compel the ghost to take himself off: they have given him all that befits him, namely, a grave, a funeral banquet, and funeral ornaments; and now they beseech him not to thrust himself on their observation any more, not to breathe any sickness upon the survivors, and not to kill them or "fetch" them, as the Papuans put it."