Which Ghost Is the Best Ghost of All Time?

Who among us hasn’t spent countless hours debating which ghost has the best ghost skills? What was that? You haven’t? Okay, fine, we can’t all be Ghost Scientists. (No, we don’t have a PhD. Stop asking questions.) Anyway, let’s try and get to the bottom of who’s the best ghost of all time.

Let’s start with Casper the Friendly Ghost. Anyone who knows anything about ghosts knows dead kids equal creep soup. Dying under the age of 18 for ghosts is the equivalent of being born in Wisconsin if you’re a serial killer; it’s a huge career boost. However, Casper has one significant ghostly drawback—he’s friendly. He’s not just a little friendly; he’s so friendly they made it his last name. If this was a friend contest that might be helpful, but it’s not, so Casper’s out.

How about the Phantom of the Opera? A mysterious mask hiding a janky excuse for a face is pretty much ghost-gold. A secret layer beneath a Parisian opera house is also up there on the weirdo scale. But there’s one minor drawback: YOU’RE NOT A PHANTOM IF YOU HAVEN’T DIED. YOU’RE JUST A SINGING DORK NAMED ERIK WHO LIVES IN A BASEMENT AND HAS A CRUSH ON SOMEONE ELSE’S GIRLFRIEND!!! That’s right; this ghost is no ghost at all, so he’s out.

In any ghost showdown the Headless Horseman has to be a contender. Here’s why: As students of the human condition, one thing we’ve learned is that people like people who have heads. One of the first things you generally notice when you meet someone is whether or not that person has a head. In the rare instance in which a head is lacking, you will correctly conclude that this person is a ghost, and then you will poop into your pants.

It's whole horseman deal is what takes old Skull-less Carl out of the running. I mean come on, a jockey? Not scary. It's 2011, get a bicycle or something. A horse can’t even climb stairs (upon researching the previous sentence it turns out a horse can climb stairs), so you can just chill upstairs and be fine (you can’t). Headless lame-o outski.

Blinky, the red ghost from Pac-Man, is pretty horrifying, but the sphere of his haunting is relatively limited. As long as you are not Pac-Man or Ms. Pac-Man (can a woman get a first name around here or what?), Blinky will pretty much leave you alone. So Blinky’s out, unless you’re part of the Pac family, in which case stop reading right now and find a power pellet.

Oh man, there are way more ghosts than we thought, time to speed things up. Ghost of Christmas Past, Present, Future, the Eighties, you know, all those lesson-teaching ghosts, they’re out because nobody likes a morally superior ghost. Who wants to be scared crumb-less by a know-it-all? If you’re so smart why are you dead? Hamlet’s Father: out, because we can’t remember anything about Hamlet right now. The ghost-shaped pail they used to give out at McDonald’s around Halloween: out, for being an inanimate object. Space Ghost: out, for being a snarky talk show host in space.

So who’s left, you ask? That’s all the ghosts, you say. Why did you lead us on with the promise of crowning a ghost-champ, just to let us down like you always did when you were the kicker on your high school football team?

Not so fast, you scallywags, you sons of other people’s sons, there’s one ghost we haven’t discussed. The quintessential haunter, the ghosts all ghosts strive to emulate, Dr. Terror himself, you guessed it...

As we analyzed the pros and cons of the loser-ghosts, what image has been playing in all of our Captain Crunch-addled minds (maybe just us on the Captain Crunch thing)? That’s right, the classic billowy white of old Sheet-on-a-Stick. He never talks, he never moves, he’s not really all that scary, but he’s what a ghost should be, and he’s the winner of this contest.

Who do you think is the greatest ghost of all time, and why?

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