What does it mean to dream about ghost?
A ghost often stands for something unresolved, a memory, a grief, or a part of yourself that has not been laid to rest.
Four ways to read it
Each reading below comes from a named tradition and a cited source, so you can see where it came from and decide what fits your dream.
Freud
Freud would read the ghost as the return of the repressed, a wish or loss pushed down that reappears in disguise, often bound up with mourning.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.Jung
Jung would see contents of the unconscious, or the dead, seeking acknowledgment. The ghost can be a complex or an ancestor asking to be faced and released.
Jungian concept (our summary).Modern
Continuity links ghosts to unresolved grief and lingering guilt or fear. The haunting pictures something waking life has not finished.
Continuity hypothesis (our summary).Mythological
Across nearly every culture the dead return with unfinished business, from the shades of Homer to the restless spirits of folk tale, appeased only when their due is paid.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis (after Bulfinch; Frazer).