Building on my paranormal exterminators thread the thought just occurred to me. Since ghosts are known to be real since the awakening, could you get historical information from ghosts? Spots where they are famously known to haunt? Like Lincoln in the White House or Anne Bolyn in the Tower of London? Could great mysteries now be answered?
Dickens finished Edmund Drood? We finally learn what Howard Hughs really wanted done with his money?

sonce many Asian and NAN cultures revere ancestor spirts this would not be so wierd to them and might look at western cultures and say 'yeah, what too you so long?"

Eh, I don't agree with that. Ghosts are thought to be real, and the NAN summon Spirits of Man (and others) that appear to be ancestor spirits. The fact that they know so much information about the recently deceased may simply mean that everyone has their very own personal Spirit Voyeur who constantly spies on their every move.

Well, there are some precedents in the Novels . .

I would keep it ambiguous if there are REALLY dead people in the metaplanes or in "spirit of man"-form on earth. Saying YES, they really are dead people opens a can of worms and saying: nope they are just spirit entities with access to some knowledge (how?) craps up a lot of magical traditions and religious concepts.

Let there be spirits who MAY have been someone, never give definitive answers. Let the spirits be vague. Maybe they just fill a role of expectation, empowered by our collective will to have someone there for us. Or maybe let some fractions of people "survive" their demise.

Thank god Shadowrun is not a Common Law system, otherwise see Summerstorm

...which is probably why the game info for ghosts (in Running Wild, and for their electric counterparts in Unwired) is deliberately vague, a ghost MAY be a copy of the person's personality, or it MAY just have become convinced to be a person whose demise happened close to its own creation, or it simply is a liar.

the SR novel Changling had the lead character encounter the ghost of osmeone he knew in life, inside the Chicago noose

I had Jesus make an appearance in one game...

He beat up the group's tank with his Cross.

But novels are no rulebooks. There's allways room for artistic freedom.

this was back in the early 90's and 1st ed rules did include actual ghosts.

Personally, RL there are parts of Gettysburg battlefield that give me the heeby jeebies and another friend of mine refused to stay in the town. Imagine a place like that, already has a nasty reputation for hauntings, getting worse.

Let's try to keep this topic SR - RL ghost theorums can start infringing on religious concepts, which is not something that should happen here.

BUuuuuUUt: With the simple ambivalence of mana permeating everything by the time the game is set, why can't you be sure that every single meta in the whole Sixth World doesn't have their own personal gaggle of voyeuristic spirits watching and recording their every move? Knowledge is power, after all... I mean, it's kind of obvious that spirits waaaaaaaaay outnumber metas in the first place - what else do you think they do with all that "Free" (bwahahah! Pun!) time?

I think Ghost are fairly common in SR and I seems to remember that there is some laws about Ghost testimonials in courts. But it's probably novels/older stuff material.

Well, there was something in the official time line about the first ever case solved by magic through a magician conjouring up and then watching the spirit of the dead interact with the world to find his murderer . .

Nope, I remember reading it in one of the 4th Ed books...Running Wild probably, since that is where the rules for ghosts are.

Testimonials are accepted in some of the places where the "state religion" includes ancestor spirits, elsewhere they are not admissible because how are you going to prove that this thing really is the spirit of the deceased victim? Not to mention the giant can of worms opened (both IC and OOC) once an astral entity is considered the equivalent of a former living person...


A ghost may however lead police to the location of the body or something like that, just like RL police may use the lucky guess of a "medium" or throw darts at a map.

This is one of those "It's debatable" because it's so in-game. It's still being argued all around.

Ghost are usually not recognized as able to produce a valid testimony in court. If I'm not mistaken the ghost lead the magician to the body of the victim, which then provided enough clues to identify and prosecute the perpetrator.

Magic is another thing that can have widely different legal implications. IIRC NAN courts accept the result of mind probe spells as proof and can even force the defendant to accept it, while UCAS and CAS don't allow it.

Its hard to trust spirits as a historical reference because one never knows their motivations or even if they are indeed who they say they are. "Ghosts" of recognizable loved one or people in history might be astral echos of events in history that "reoccur" over time due to an intense emotional imprint. Or if such creatures seem to be capable of reasoning, they might be manifested beings who have some connection to the collective unconscious through the metaplanes, in which case its hard to tell if their insights would be "true" or just the popular imaginings of society.

Which is why you never, EVER summon a spirit on the ground of a former concentration camp, gulag, recurrent battlefield, and, possibly (maybe even probably), reserves.

Bad Things happen. BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD THINGS!

Also, don't summon anything bigger than your head. Just . . don't . .

There is also one significant issue brought by Corporate Download and System Failure. Shiawase board had the ghost of Ryoi Shiawase staying on and retaining shares and vote as long as medium Jeri Howard maintained communication with him. Maybe it was just a plot to prevent Ryoi's daughter from inheriting. This ended with Howard death in 2064 (though the Shiawase decided two years later, after Sadato Shiwase committed suicide, to establish a Shiawase Shinto Advisory Board and grant it voting stock, to give the Shiawase kami their say on the corporation management).

For state religions I was thinking it would be more like nations with a strong ancestor connections- Japan, China and the NAN in particular might have their shamans particularly adapt at conjuring. I mean the priest at the local shrine in Nihama is more likely to be spending his day with that than casting combat spells.

So, that means, what? You summon Watchers and that's it?

usually, i don't summon anything, period.
furthermore, i usually play trolls, so i have a bit more room to play with. literally.

Hollow in there?

Sorry I could not resist.

*nods* allways someone who asks that very same question . .

Trolls can be magicians as well.

You're right - Fomori make great Mystic Adepts.

Some real world magical traditions, to boot, have conjuring but not spells. A Hmong shaman is of course all about spirits, but "spells" per se aren't part of the culture; those who claim to know them in traditional Hmong culture usually got them from the Chinese or Thai or Karen.

The more spiritually and magically connected countries even allow Spirits to be JUDGES in court.

I guess they figure it's harder to bribe a spirit than a (meta)human.