On the Nature of Ghosts, Ghouls, Wraiths and other Phantasms

When the Aedra sacrificed themselves to bring our world into being, they gave us the gift of mortal life. For in those days of Chaos and Elder Magic all was formless. Mortal life had no meaning because there was no order. Nothing could have purpose or a story. Then Father Akatosh blessed our existence with time. Now it was possible for spirits to have a story. But this also allowed the spirits’ actions to have consequences. There were those spirits who hated this new world, thinking the Aedra fools for giving up a part of themselves. Thus, they wished to create their own worlds, entirely from their own essence. How selfish they were! The ones who would become the stars fled too, scared of the Aedras’ selflessness.

With these malevolent spirits gone, the Aedra were free to shape and cultivate Nirn, seeding her with life in all shapes and sizes. However, the Aedra realised that for life, existence, to have any meaning it needed to have an end. Thus, Arkay instituted the seasons and appointed times for all things. Death was now in the world. But this was not sorrowful for mortals could now truly love piously and wholesomely. We learned to revere transition and the passing of our people became a cause for celebration not anger or grief. Yet, living in paradise as we were, there were still those who could not see or were unwilling to see the Aedras’ gift. They claimed that Lorkhan, the spirit who had set everything in motion, had betrayed them by ‘cursing’ them with mortality. They were foolish and prideful, seeking to place themselves above the Aedra. Despising death, they sought every means to prolong their lives, making evil pacts with demons and worshipping heretical deities. No longer would death halt their wicked lives. In this way, the first ghosts came into being.

For a ghost is simply a spirit which does not wish to relinquish its grip on our world. When the spectre lingers in some place this is called a haunting. But the Aedra gave life and death, two sides of the same Septim, as a gift to all the people of Nirn and were angered by its perversion by these heretics. They were cursed for their arrogance, ensuring that theidentities which they had in life would perish and dissolve after death. Those ghosts, now bound to the site of their death, retained but an echo of the life they once had, mere shades compared to the living faithful. However, not content with their own blasphemy they hunted down the faithful and offered them as sacrifices to their demon masters. It is known that when a faithful servant of the Aedra is violently slaughtered by a heretic or heathen, their spirits cannot find rest. They become worse than ghosts in that they become wraiths and ghouls. In those hateful days of Ayleid Domination, many ghouls and wraiths were created to serve their slave masters even in death. Whatever foul magics were used they persist even to this day, still tethering poor, wretched, departed souls to our world. The ruins they defend are dangerous and should not be entered or even approached. Only pain and suffering lies within.

Concerning Will O’ the Wisps I know very little. Numerous theories abound but these are often fanciful or blasphemous. It is my opinion that they are simply hallucinations brought on by bad air which swamps (where these sightings are most often reported) are filled with. I have heard that the Wisps of Skyrim are either lost mothers and children who have fallen into ice lakes or else they are the souls of the Falmer (the elves who once inhabited Skyrim) which now possess the snow and ice, animating it to seek vengeance on the Nords. As with many tales from the North the truth is probably much simpler and far less exciting. However, all these things being considered, the foulest creature to traverse our world is the Lich. Of its nature, origin, or desires I shall not speak. For it is wholly evil and corrupts everything with which it makes contact. Let us pray to the Aedra that we never encounter one.

[Excerpt from a compendium of Sermons on Life and Death by Brother Caius, priest of the Order of the Dragon’s Fire.]