# Forum > Gaming > Homebrew Design > World-Building >  Looking for info on ghosts and ghost lore

## Greywander

I have a bit of an odd request.  I recently discovered dungeon core as a genre of fiction, where the main character is literally a dungeon core, like they're in some kind of dungeon sim game (and they almost always run on RPG mechanics, too).  As one does when discovering something new and interesting, I've put some thought into writing my own dungeon core story.  At first I thought I might make the protagonist an undead dungeon, but I feel like that's a bit overused.  Now I'm thinking of making the protagonist a "night" themed dungeon core (a "night core", if you will), so kind of a mashup of Things That Go Bump in the Night, the Monster Mash, and Halloween Town.  So yes, undead, but also things like werewolves, swamp creatures, witches, and other night terrors that aren't undead.  Basically anything that could qualify as a "night spirit".

I've been thinking about the sorts of creatures such a dungeon would have access to, and there's certainly a lot depending on where the actual locale is.  I was thinking the dungeon core would spawn in the basement of a house that has people living in it.  Later, the dungeon could expand its territory to take over or build an abandoned house, a graveyard, and a forest and/or swamp, each unlocking new monsters.  But for now I'm focusing on the regular house.  (There might be some overlap between the regular house and the abandoned house, but I think there are subtle differences; you have different types of ghosts coming into a house that is already being lived in vs. ghosts that have been haunting an abandoned house for a long time.  The Creepy Ghost Girl is probably better suited to the abandoned house, for example.)

The first monster I'm planning is the poltergeist.  Poltergeists have no physical form, instead manifesting as a presence that completely fills whatever room they're in.  They can move from room to room (though it's a slow process), but can't go outside.  They can't be damaged in any way, but if an exorcism is performed in the room they're in they will be forced out into an adjacent room.  If there's nowhere for them to go after an exorcism (e.g. the whole house/dungeon has been exorcised), then they are destroyed.  The poltergeist can interact telekinetically with things inside its room, moving things around, throwing or bashing things, opening or closing doors, and can also light or snuff out candles and such.  Poltergeists are used primarily as workers and as dungeon defense; they're not very strong, but they can't be killed and can combo with other monsters or traps.  They're also great at playing pranks on people inside the dungeon.

After that, though, I'm kind of drawing a blank.  I can make something up, but if possible I'd like to base my monsters on existing ghost lore.  I have a couple of ideas, which I'm tentatively calling the basement lurker and the houseguest.

The basement lurker is a fairly powerful monster with serious limitations.  It is invisible except for its eyes and mouth.  It can't go above ground level, so it won't leave the basement.  Bright light will banish it, and it will return once the light is extinguished or moves out of the basement lurker's space; you can trap it by leaving a light in its spot (good thing poltergeists can extinguish candles).  It will usually retreat to darkness if a light source is brought into the basement, though.  Not sure if I'm going to have "spawners" as part of the dungeon mechanics (some dungeon core fics have them, some don't), but if I do then the stairs leading into the basement will probably act as the spawner for basement lurkers.

The houseguest is a 7 foot tall shadow person that roams the house at night, stares at people from the foot of their beds, stands in the corners of rooms, and so on.  They become inactive when the sun rises and resume activity when it sets; time of day is the important factor here, not light level.  They might wash your dirty dishes or reorganize your bookshelf.  Not sure how strong they would be or what exactly they would _do_, but kind of what I'm aiming for is the eerie feeling that there's someone else living in your house with you, even if you live alone or if everyone else in your household is accounted for.  Ultimately, they're dungeon monsters, so they'll need to be involved in developing or defending the dungeon somehow.  Not sure what the spawner would be, maybe a hat rack?

While these are fine, I'd really like to associate them with actual types of ghosts that already have lore.  The thing is, I'm having a hard time finding information on such things.  Doing a search for "basement ghost" isn't really yielding much of value, for example.  It seems that a lot of the info that's out there pertains to specific, unique ghosts, not to a general type of ghost.  Another type of ghost I'm curious about are those that live under beds or in closets, though I don't know that those are meaningful enough to feature as their own type of monster.  Maybe they could be variants of the basement lurker, for example.

There is another monster that I looked into: gremlins.  I was actually quite surprised to learn the origins of gremlins.  There's not really anything about them that suggests they're any kind of night spirit, but I think they're something that _could_ be a night spirit.  Specifically, I was looking for a creature that could serve as a worker, alongside the poltergeist, but was able to go outside and (unlike most of your other monsters) wouldn't be affected by light/sunlight.  Turns out gremlins originated as an explanation for aircraft malfunctions, so they actually fit really well as a "workshop" type of builder/crafter/mechanic monster (akin to gnomes or goblins in a lot of fantasy settings), and they also have a mischievous prankster nature that fits well with the "Halloween Town" theme.  They are a bit of an anachronism for a medieval fantasy setting, since, you know, _aircraft_ malfunctions; gremlins weren't a thing before the 20th century.  The spawner would probably be a toolbox.

So yeah, anyone know where to find good info on ghost lore?  Or other monster lore that's related closely enough?  I know there must be really obscure, really specific lore out that there I could use to come up with new monsters.  I also have a few idea for some of the other dungeon mechanics, if anyone is interested in hearing those.

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## Yanagi

> There is another monster that I looked into: gremlins.  I was actually quite surprised to learn the origins of gremlins.  There's not really anything about them that suggests they're any kind of night spirit, but I think they're something that _could_ be a night spirit.  Specifically, I was looking for a creature that could serve as a worker, alongside the poltergeist, but was able to go outside and (unlike most of your other monsters) wouldn't be affected by light/sunlight.  Turns out gremlins originated as an explanation for aircraft malfunctions, so they actually fit really well as a "workshop" type of builder/crafter/mechanic monster (akin to gnomes or goblins in a lot of fantasy settings), and they also have a mischievous prankster nature that fits well with the "Halloween Town" theme.  They are a bit of an anachronism for a medieval fantasy setting, since, you know, _aircraft_ malfunctions; gremlins weren't a thing before the 20th century.  The spawner would probably be a toolbox.


Okay, so your precursors for gremlins go in two directions: mischievous spirits and domestic spirits.

So on one hand one have stuff like the tommyknockers--creatures that interfere with miners--and on the other you have stuff like kobolds , brownies, and domovoi.

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## Greywander

I kind of forgot that TV Tropes has examples for each trope, one of which is mythology and folklore.  After doing a bit more research, it looks like the basement lurker is probably a bogey or one of its variants.  The houseguest might qualify as a boggle, or maybe some bogey variant, or, as you pointed out, a brownie or domovoi.  It sounds a bit like the babau, except that specifically comes from outside the house and knocks or doors or windows.  A boggart sounds a bit like the outdoor version of the poltergeist.

The whole concept of "night spirit" is one that I'm not sure has much of an establishment in pop culture or folklore.  It feels like there's a lot of overlap with both fey and demons, and of course ghosts.  In a way, these are all kind of the same thing, we've just artificially broken them down into categories.  But to a medieval peasant, there wouldn't have been an appreciable difference between them.  That said, fantasy writers are well versed in creating meaningful distinctions between different types of spirits.  Obviously, sunlight is a weakness for night spirits, where it's not typically a weakness for other types of spirits.

I looked up tommyknockers, and their lore is interesting.  More mining related than crafting, but I can see how they could serve as a precursor to gremlins, they could definitely work as an alternative.  Often, the hardest part in doing this kind of research is just getting the names of things to look up.

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## Bohandas

> While these are fine, I'd really like to associate them with actual types of ghosts that already have lore.  The thing is, I'm having a hard time finding information on such things.  Doing a search for "basement ghost" isn't really yielding much of value, for example.  It seems that a lot of the info that's out there pertains to specific, unique ghosts, not to a general type of ghost.  Another type of ghost I'm curious about are those that live under beds or in closets, though I don't know that those are meaningful enough to feature as their own type of monster.  Maybe they could be variants of the basement lurker, for example.


Maybe try searching for "underground ghosts" instead, there's definitely lots of ghosts, goblins, and fairies in old mining lore. Tommyknockers, kobolds, goblins, etc.

EDIT:
Hollow earth monsters and underworld monsters might be a relevant  line of research as well

EDIT:
If we're dip into high fantasy the balrogs of Middle Earth haunted underground places

EDIT:
*GHOULS!* Lovecraft's ghouls literally come up out of basements!

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## PoeticallyPsyco

No list of night spirits is complete without the Grue, a monster or species of monster that hunts those foolish enough to stray into the darkness without a light. Extremely fast and never seen (they won't enter the light for any reason), they're basically an embodiment of the fear that there is something in the darkness with you, and you're helpless against it because it can see you while you can't see it.

"It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue."

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## Greywander

That fits almost perfectly with my description of the basement lurker. Maybe I'm worrying about this too much, as the grue also seems like a recent invention, moreso than even the gremlins. And while the gremlins are arguably still part of folklore, grues are 100% fiction. In fact, it actually fits pretty well to create my own night spirits, as a big aspect of them is that they're unknown. Using established lore means people will have some idea what to expect, which is antithetical to the whole concept of night spirits. What makes e.g. Slenderman so spooky is how little we know about him, and this is pretty much an allegory of why darkness is scary; because we don't know what might be hiding within.

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## D&D_Fan

Monsters that can be in a dungeon, many of which are ghostly in nature (not all are, but most):
*Spoiler: Huge list of spirits and monsters and other stuff*
Show

Cool Japanese Ghosts:Akamanto (red or blue toilet paper?)Akaname (licks the bathroom floors, nasty)Betobeto-san (follows people and makes footsteps behind them)Elevator game, the (the right order of buttons will send you somewhere else)Fukushima hornets (giant mutant radioactive hornets!)Hikeshibaba (extinguishes lamps and light sources)Jikininki (cannibal/corpse eating ghosts)Jinmenken (human faced dog)Jatai (animate folding screen)Kodama (echoing voices)Jiangshi (hopping vampire) [this one is technically Chinese, but there is a Japanese equivalent]Kubikajiri (decapitating demon)Kunekune (pale wriggling body)Miage-nyudo (grows as fast as you can look up at it)Momokuren (watching eyes on the walls)Nuppepo (flabby rotting flesh monster)Noppera-bo (faceless spirit that scares people)Nue (nightmarish chimera monster)Nurebotoke (blackened rotting monster with dangling eyes)Nurikabe (wall monster that traps people)Obariyon (heavy piggyback spirit that weights people down)Omukade (human eating giant centipede)Taka-onna (can stretch its body to look though tall windows or follow people)Tenjokudari (crawls on ceilings)Te-no-me (eyeballs-on-palms monster)Ungaikyo (freaky mirror)Zashiki-warashi (house spirit)Zorigami (animate clock)

Other Ghosts (Other Asian, European, American, and African):Black houndBlack-eyed children (trick people)Backrooms, the (yes, this is considered urban legend or folklore)Bogeymen (general catch-all term for creepy figures)Boo hags (steal skin, evil, generally)CHUDs (cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers)Chupacabra (blood sucking monsters)Corpse lights (generate false hope)Death Number (sacrifice life for a wish, call 999-9999)Dybbuk (possessing spririt)Frogmen (big frog, can eat people, probably)Goatsquatch (big goat monster)Golem (animated clay entity)Hand-licker (it isn't a dog...)Hidebehind (guess what these guys do)Hodag (horrid monster that arises from cremated oxen)Jersey devils (screech horridly)Killer clownsKushtaka (lure people with mimicked voices)Mannanangal (vampiric monsters made of a head and organs and wings)Melon heads (humanoids that attack people)Molemen (hide underground)Mothmen (very large mothes. moths? moth?)Nain Rouge (another one that foments misfortune)Nightcrawlers (walking leg monsters)Nightmarchers (marching Hawaiian warriors)Owlmen (big owles. owls? owl?)Poisoned candy (more a trap than a monster)Pukwudgies (little humanoid critters)]Ratmen (not a giant rat, actually, a vengeful spirit whos face was eaten by rats)Rougarou (a werewolf-thing)Sasquatch (bigfoot, yeti, etceti...)Sewer gators (gators, in a sewer)Skinwalkers (everyone you see around you)Slendermen (why not lol)Spider bite spiders (their wounding bite is full of eggs that hatch inside of you and burst out)Vanishing roomsWendigo (cannibal monsters)Zombies (a classic)


Besides that, you can also have human cultists and killers

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## Greywander

Wow, that's quite the long list.  Thanks to everyone who shared in this thread, I think I have enough to keep me busy for a while researching these.

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## Bohandas

Regarding the lovecraft ghouls, check out the story _Pickman's Model_ in particular

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