1) Not all spirits are undead.
2) Ghosts are often indistinguishable from spirits.

Hence: either we implicate ghost to spirit and rework ghost to only refer to instances where someone clearly died, or we alias ghost to spirit and remove the implication from ghost to spirit.

Not to mention that Undead tends to imply "brought back from the dead", which is questionable even when the person is dead (Do people who ascended and became angels/summons/etc count as undead? If not, why should ghosts?)

I don't know, the ghost of a person/being usually looks similar to the person themselves. The spirit of a one can look very different.

And then you've got the ghost-type pokemon like Banette and Shuppet, which I feel should not be tagged as ghosts...

I think it would just be easier for tagging to keep ghost and spirit separate from anything else, and as separate tags. Yes, this would mean removing the ghost -> undead implication, but if anyone has any objections, or you have something to say on the matter, speak up now before it's too late.

Riversyde said:
Yes, this would mean removing the ghost -> undead implication, but if anyone has any objections, or you have something to say on the matter, speak up now before it's too late.

Personally, I disagree with the ghost --> undead implication.

Undead are typically creatures and things that should be dead or were dead, but haven't got the message they're supposed to be inanimate, like zombies, animated corpses, certain types of vampires, etc.

Ghosts are manifestations of the dead, so wouldn't qualify as undead. Dead, yes, but not undead.

Spirits would be questionable. Normally, I'd associate them with ghosts or other incorporeal thingamabobbers. The latter wouldn't necessarily be dead although their status as living or ever having lived might be unclear. One could say spirits are supernatural things that aren't undead. Perhaps ghosts can be called spirits, but not all spirits are necessarily ghosts, but probably aren't undead?

Just look at something like a Lich, a Will O' Wisp, etc. These things could be classified as a ghost, spirit and something undead, yes?

Pyke said:
Just look at something like a Lich, a Will O' Wisp, etc. These things could be classified as a ghost, spirit and something undead, yes?

I thought a will o wisp was more of an insect that a ghost...

ippiki_ookami said:
I thought a will o wisp was more of an insect that a ghost...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will-o'-the-wisp

Pyke said:
Just look at something like a Lich, a Will O' Wisp, etc. These things could be classified as a ghost, spirit and something undead, yes?

I don't think so. Liches are more skeletons than ghosts or spirits.

The way I see it, undead are physical things that are or should be dead, but are acting as if they aren't. Animated corpses, animated skeletons (which are pretty much animated corpses pared down to the bare bones), some vampires, and so on qualify as undead.

I'd consider ghosts as usually non-corporeal things. They're the spirits, psychic imprints, what have you of dead people and things. One could say they're what's leftover when you take away all the parts that's used in making an undead.

Spirits are iffy, I think. Some are non-corporeal, but aren't necessarily ghosts. Some are ghosts. Others come in physical forms but are supernatural living beings while others are arguably undead. It's sort of like a catch-all term for apparently supernatural things.

Classifying something as undead or ghost can also be iffy depending on what a thing is and what culture it comes from. Generally speaking, though, I'd say ghost shouldn't imply undead nor should spirit. Ghost would imply spirit. Lich would imply undead as they're basically zombies that still have a mind. A will-o'-the-wisp would imply spirit and possibly also ghost, although some folklore indicates that fairies and other supernatural spirits are responsible for them (of course, this ignores the real life hypotheses that they're just marsh gas and the like).

I think Clawstripe's got it right here.
Removed the ghost -> undead implication, replaced it with a ghost -> spirit one. Also removed the vampire -> undead implication, seeing as how it would be better if they were tagged as undead on a case-by-case basis.

As for the will-o'-the-wisp implication, we don't actually have anything tagged with will-o'-the-wisp, so it'd be kind of useless making them.