Editing Ghost (section)

===Anthropological context===
{{Further|Animism|Ancestor worship|Origin of religion|Anthropology of religion}}

A notion of the [[transcendence (religion)|transcendent]], [[supernatural]], or [[numinous]], usually involving entities like ghosts, [[demon]]s, or [[deity|deities]], is a [[cultural universal]].<ref>[[Donald Brown (anthropologist)|Donald Brown]] (1991) ''Human Universals''. Philadelphia, [[Temple University Press]] ([http://condor.depaul.edu/~mfiddler/hyphen/humunivers.htm online summary] {{Webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20120630210030/http://condor.depaul.edu/~mfiddler/hyphen/humunivers.htm |date=2012-06-30 }}).</ref> In pre-literate [[folk religion]]s, these beliefs are often summarized under [[animism]] and [[ancestor worship]]. Some people believe the ghost or spirit never leaves Earth until there is no-one left to remember the one who died.<ref name="EncyOccult">Encyclopedia of Occultism and [[Parapsychology]] edited by [[J. Gordon Melton]], [[Gale Group]], {{ISBN|0-8103-5487-X}}</ref>

In many cultures, malignant, [[restless ghosts]] are distinguished from the more benign spirits involved in ancestor worship.<ref>Richard Cavendish (1994) ''The World of Ghosts and the Supernatural''. Waymark Publications, Basingstoke: 5</ref>

Ancestor worship typically involves rites intended to prevent [[revenant]]s, [[vengeful spirit]]s of the dead, imagined as starving and envious of the living. Strategies for preventing revenants may either include [[sacrifice]]; that is, giving the dead food and drink to pacify them, or magical banishment of the deceased to force them not to return. Ritual feeding of the dead is performed in traditions like the Chinese [[Ghost Festival]] or the Western [[All Souls' Day]]. Magical banishment of the dead is present in many of the world's [[burial custom]]s. The bodies found in many [[tumuli]] ([[kurgan]]) had been ritually bound before burial,<ref>e.g. in graves of the [[Irish Bronze Age]] [http://www.iol.ie/~sec/sites.htm IOL.ie] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081225000100/http://www.iol.ie/~sec/sites.htm |date=2008-12-25 }}</ref> and the custom of binding the dead persists, for example, in rural [[Anatolia]].<ref>"In the immediate aftermath of a death, the deceased is removed from the bed he died in and placed on the prepared floor, called a 'comfort bed.' His jaw is bound up and his feet tied together (usually at the big toes)." [https://web.archive.org/web/20110611033740/http://www.kultur.gov.tr/EN/belge/2-16147/eski2yeni.html Kultur.gov.tr] (archive version)</ref>

Nineteenth-century anthropologist [[James Frazer]] stated in his classic work ''[[The Golden Bough]]'' that [[souls]] were seen as the creature within that animated the body.<ref name="GoldenBough">"If a man lives and moves, it can only be because he has a little man or animal inside, who moves him. The animal inside the animal, the man inside the man, is the soul. And as the activity of an animal or man is explained by the presence of the soul, so the repose of sleep or death is explained by its absence; sleep or trance being the temporary, death being the permanent absence of the soul... " [http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/bough11.txt The Golden Bough] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041105053418/http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/bough11.txt |date=2004-11-05 }}, [[Project Gutenberg]]. Retrieved January 16, 2007.</ref>