Minecraft Forums

Ghosts are short recordings of a player or a mob's movements and actions, which are stored by the server. The movements/actions are later played back, and transmitted to clients as ghostly apparitions. Ghosts are mostly an audio and visual phenomenon, and have very minimal ability to interact with their environment.

Graphics. Ghosts have multiple modes in which they can appear.
1. Floating orb. (or box)
2. Partially transparent clone of the player/mob whom they mimic.
3. Invisible (though audible).

Other graphical effects: They may cast darkness, in the opposite fashion that a torch cast's light, or alternatively, they may glow.

Audio. Ghosts generally issue the same noises as a player/mob, though the ghost sounds should be muffled, more eerie versions of those sounds, or on rare occasion, greatly amplified in volume. Ghosts may sometimes be completely silent (though not silent and invisible at the same time.)

Game mechanics...

At some point in the game a series of adjacent chunks are chosen as "haunted". A specific mob class or player is chosen as the form of the ghost. Periodically, a random time in the near future is chosen by the server. The server will record the actions/movements of a member of the chosen mob class or the chosen player at any point after this time, beginning when the chosen target enters the haunted chunks, and ending when he/she leaves it or dies or when the recording buffer is full . A new recording will overwrite the previous one.

The server chooses random times, preferably at night, somewhere near midnight perhaps, to play back the recording it made earlier of the mob/player's movements/actions. Each instance, it chooses a graphics and audio mode from the lists above. The ghosts' movements and actions would be transmitted to the clients in the same fashion as one player's actions are transmitted to the others. The times chosen to replay the ghost recording should be suitably spaced from the time the recording was made, so that it would be difficult to recall the actual events being portrayed. (It really is a haunting from the past.) The recording may be played back more than once, so you may see the same ghostly events transpire on several nights in a row.

Ghosts may pass through solid objects, so if you are recorded moving down a corridor and later block it off with cobblestone, for example, you may at some point see a ghostly apparition navigate down that corridor and through the solid wall you erected there.

Ghosts normally cannot pick up or drop items, break or build blocks, or activate any input device connected to redstone circuitry. With some exceptions, (which are detailed below), they don't interact with the environment; however, they do produce animation and sounds as if they were interacting with it.

(poltergeist activity) They can turn on or off jukeboxes. They can open or close wooden doors. They can move items from one chest to another, providing that a) the item they are trying to move is located in the first chest, and :cool.gif: there is room for it in the second chest. The item would be instantly teleported between chests rather than be carried, in order to avoid possible glitches causing the item to disappear. If lanterns may directly be turned on or off, ghosts can turn them on or off as well. They can enter and exit ghostly boats and minecarts, which appear when they enter, and disappear when they exit.

Ghosts cannot directly hurt mobs or players, though a ghost passing near or directly through a player, may have some impairing effect. Perhaps temporarily impaired vision (as if looking through a thick fog) or impaired agility (such as sluggish movement).

To Interrupt, or permanently remove a haunting:

Ghosts cannot be injured or killed by normal means. Ghosts should be inclined toward haunting while it is quiet and still; therefore, prevent a night of haunting or dispel a ghost by making some noise! Move around, stomp your feet, turn the jukebox on: don't let it get too silent. Ghosts don't like fire, so light up that fireplace to keep them away. Hauntings may be more common among chunks in which many mobs or players have perished; therefore, avoid a haunting by building your house on land away from these areas.

I'm not certain how a haunting should be permanently removed. The method must make some kind of sense and not be too easy or too difficult. There is always the possibilities of blasting it with some kind of special weapon, placing or surrounding your house with some kind of deterrent item (a ring of flowers or mushrooms?), or placing down signs which convey a specific message (though it would have to be something that works for players of different lingual backgrounds.) I like the idea that in order to discover the means to dispel a haunting, you must first confront it and watch or listen for clues. Perhaps the ghost occasionally makes noises which suggest certain ghost removal remedies.