ghost town, term for any once flourishing American community that has been abandoned, generally for economic reasons. While most of the towns have little or no population, they often contain old buildings, which may serve as tourist attractions. Many, such as Virginia City, Nev., were gold-mining towns hastily built during a boom. When the gold strike ended, the itinerant prospectors left. Ranking with the largest and most interesting Western ghost towns are Silver City, Idaho; Elkhorn, Mont.; Bodie, Calif.; and St. Elmo, Colo. Other ghost towns were former milling centers, railroad connections, or oil-well communities. In Texas several ghost towns were originally settled by European exiles who emigrated to the United States following the 1848 revolutions. Some, such as Burning Bush, Tex., were religious havens. Many deserted areas of towns have been restored to their original appearance; notable examples are Denver, Colo., Mystic, Conn., Williamsburg, Va., and Harpers Ferry, W.Va.

ghost: see apparition; poltergeist.

Holy Ghost: see Holy Spirit.

Ghost Dance, central ritual of the messianic religion instituted in the late 19th cent. by a Paiute named Wovoka. The religion prophesied the peaceful end of the westward expansion of whites and a return of the land to the Native Americans. The ritual lasted five successive days, being danced each night and on the last night continued until morning. Hypnotic trances and shaking accompanied this ceremony, which was supposed to be repeated every six weeks. The dance originated among the Paiute c.1870; later, other Native Americans sent delegates to Wovoka to learn his teachings and ritual. In a remarkably short time the religion spread to most of the Western Native Americans. The ghost dance is chiefly significant because it was a central feature among the Sioux just prior to the massacre of hundreds of Sioux at Wounded Knee, S.Dak., in 1890. The Sioux, wearing shirts called ghost shirts, believed they would be protected from the soldiers' bullets.

or chimaera

Any of the 28 species of ancient fishes constituting the subclass Holocephali (class Chondrichthyes), found in temperate to cold waters of all oceans. Like sharks and rays, chimeras have a skeleton of cartilage rather than bone, and the males possess external reproductive organs (claspers). They have a single external gill opening, covered by a flap as in the bony fishes, on each side of the body. Males have a supplemental clasping organ that is unique among fishes. Chimeras have large pectoral and pelvic fins and two dorsal fins, the first preceded by a sharp spine. They range in length from 24 to 80 in. (60 to 200 cm) and in colour from silvery to blackish. They inhabit rivers, estuaries, coastal waters, and open ocean to depths of 8,000 ft (2,500 m) or more. They eat small fishes and invertebrates.

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In Greek mythology, a fire-breathing female monster. Its foreparts resembled a lion, its middle a goat, and its hindquarters a dragon. It devastated the land around Caria and Lycia until it was killed by Bellerophon. The word is now often used to denote a fantasy or a figment of the imagination.

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Soul or specter of a deceased person. Belief in ghosts has been common since ancient times and is reflected in folklore around the world. It is based on the notion that the spirit is separable from the body and can continue its existence after the death of the body. Ghosts are believed to inhabit the netherworld and to be capable of returning to the world of the living, appearing as living beings or in a nebulous likeness of the deceased. They are thought to be especially likely to haunt places or people connected with some strong emotion of their past life, such as fear, remorse, or the terror of a violent death. The traditional visual manifestations of haunting include ghostly apparitions, the movement of objects, or the appearance of strange lights; auditory signs include disembodied laughter and screams, knocking, or footsteps.

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or Holy Ghost or Paraclete

In Christianity, the third person of the Holy Trinity. Though references to the spirit of Yahweh (God) abound in the Old Testament, Christian teaching about the Holy Spirit is derived mainly from the Gospels. The Holy Spirit descended on Jesus at his baptism, and outpourings of the Spirit are mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, in which healing, prophecy, exorcism, and speaking in tongues are associated with its activity. The Holy Spirit also came to the disciples during Pentecost. The definition of the Holy Spirit as a divine person equal in substance to the Father and the Son was made at the Council of Constantinople (AD 381).

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Nineteenth-century Native American cult. It represented an attempt by Indian peoples in the western U.S. to rehabilitate their traditional cultures. The Ghost Dance arose in 1889, when the Paiute prophet-dreamer Wovoka announced the imminent return of the dead (hence “ghost”), the ousting of the whites, and the restoration of Indian lands, food supplies, and way of life, all of which would be hastened by dances and songs revealed in Wovoka's spiritual visions. The Ghost Dance spread rapidly. It coincided with the Sioux outbreak of 1890, which culminated in the massacre at Wounded Knee, where the “ghost shirts” failed to protect the wearers as promised by Wovoka. The cult soon became obsolete.

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