Question: Exactly WHO were the ghosts when they were alive?
Answer: Ghosts are mostly mentally deranged earthbound spirits!
In VERY few instances do ghosts give personal information about themselves. They are earthbound spirits and in most cases, they have been in isolation for many years and can’t even remember their names. Human interaction with ghosts is generally very fleeting, and most of the time, the spirit itself is too absorbed in its own misfortunes even to want to communicate. Any identification provided by haunting spirits is obtained either through mediums who report what they see and sense, or through Ouija boards and seances in which communication is conducted through psychokinetic means like tapping and “table tipping”.
There are two types of sentient spirits that a medium or people engaging in a seance might communicate with. First, there are the more or less “normal” spirits that return voluntarily to the transitional plane from the mainstream spiritual realm to communicate with the living. These are the shades of recently deceased people like Aunt Selma, mom and dad or old friends or acquaintances who show up to give comfort and guidance to their living friends and loved ones.
But the vast majority of ghosts are simply earthbound souls that have been trapped on the transitional plane for a long time as a result of their “defective” mental state. These are likely to be spirits with character disorders and who yearn to return to earth life, like addicts looking for their next fix. Some will grasp any opportunity to communicate with the living, and because of this, they often spin tales to keep the conversation going.
Thus the spirit that reveals itself to be a famous person may just be a bored earthbound who pretends to have been someone of importance for its own selfish reasons. A ghost can’t present a valid drivers license. It can’t prove that it is who it claims to be. Even the most honest medium simply has to take its word as truth. But Spirits lie all the time. Of course, not all spirits lie, and if their claimed identity “makes sense”, they may just be telling the truth.