Ghost

For the audio drama, see Ghosts (audio).

Ghosts are a phenomenon occurring in the collective mythology and popular culture of Earth and other worlds including, perhaps, Skaro. Those who believe in ghosts sometimes hold them to be souls that could not find rest after death, and so linger on in the world of the living. This inability to find rest is often explained as unfinished business.

A ghost is sometimes referred to as a fetch, and the woods around Fetch Priory were long believed to be haunted, the result of its being near a relative continual displacement zone, or hole in time. (DW: Image of the Fendahl)

Eugene Jones was able to interact with Gwen Cooper of Torchwood Three for a time after his death as a de facto ghost. Ultimately, he briefly became visible to not only Cooper, but other members of the Torchwood team, before "crossing over" and ceasing to be a ghost. (TW: Random Shoes)

A Cardiff building was haunted by three cowled men with scythes, it is unknown what these things actually are, but they were considered ghosts. Toshiko Sato and Ianto Jones were sent by Torchwood Three to kill them. They appeared in front of them, and were shot dead by Tosh and Ianto. (TW: Exit Wounds)

The Doctor explained that Psychic residue was a cause of ghost sightings. (DW: The Pandorica Opens)

Professor Alistair Gryffen's numerous failed attempts to retrieve his family with The Space-Time Manipulator left a mark on the fabric of reality. A trio of pandimensional specters were enticed by the living anomaly and used it to enter the real world where they were perceived as the ghosts of Gryffen's wife and children. They slowly drained the youngsters of their life force so they could take physical form but were discovered before the plan could reach fruition and weakened by their losses, the phantoms could not fight back allowing Gryffen to send them back from whence they came. Although exhibiting the classic signs of ghosts they were more like negatives from a photograph. They were beings of living entropy native to The Void, the only such lifeforms known. The negative charge generated by the storm jump started the STM and pulled them through and without such a large disturbance they wouldn't be able to return, another storm that immense not being due for several hundred years. (K9TV: The Fall of the House of Gryffen)

Mistakenly identified as Ghosts

• The Cybermen were once mistaken as an army of ghosts. (DW: Army of Ghosts, Doomsday)
• The Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith were once mistaken for ghosts. (MA: The Ghosts of N-Space)
• The Gelth were mistaken for ghosts, as their gaseous forms could fly and were a translucent blue. (DW: The Unquiet Dead)