To the best of my knowledge the Bible does not speak about ghosts and hauntings. The Catholic Church has no official position on ghosts. The doctrine of heaven and hell would seem to negate any reason for ghosts to be the souls of dead people. However paranormal phenomena seems to exist. These phenomena may come from sources other than the souls of people in heaven, hell, or purgatory. We simply do not know. The Church is very suspicious of people who claim to talk to ghosts. With love in Christ.

The idea of ghost comes from the belief that the soul is immortal. That your soul survives and keeps on living after your body dies. This is a common teaching of many churches but is not a belief supported by the bible. Consider what Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10 says about the dead: verse 5 - "For the living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all, neither do they anymore have wages, because the remembrance of them has been forgotten." verse 6 - "Also, their love and their hate and their jealousy have already perished, and they have no portion anymore to time indefinite in anything that has to be done under the sun." verse 10 - "All that your hand finds to do, do with your very power, for there is no work nor devising nor knowledge nor wisdom in She′ol, the place to which you are going." The bible speaks of those that are dead as conscious of nothing at all. So how can they be haunting or communicating with those that are still alive. Ezekiel 18:4 - "...The soul that is sinning—it itself will die." The bible shows that at the death the soul dies. The belief that the soul is some part of you that is immortal is actually a pagan belief that was adopted in to the "Christian" Church many years after Jesus' death. According to the account of creation recorded at Genesis 2:7, Adam was formed from the dust of the ground and “the man came to be a living soul.” Therefore the Bible often uses the expression “his soul” to refer to the person “himself” as in the case of young David: “Jonathan began to love him as his own soul [as himself].” (1 Samuel 18:1) Commenting on this, The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology says: “To such a degree is the soul a summing of the whole personality, of the whole self of a person, that ‘soul’ can be equivalent to ‘I myself’ or ‘yourself’ (1 Samuel 18:1). In Genesis 2:7 [soul] means ‘person’ or ‘being.’” So, there are no such things as ghost, but the bible does talk a great deal about demons. Angels that at one time were faithful but decided to rebel against god. There are many accounts of Jesus and his disciples expelling demons from people. And yes, demons are very real, many people that have experiences with them get them confused with ghost of dead people. Consider: Revelations 12:7-9 - "So down the great dragon was hurled, the original serpent, the one called Devil and Satan, who is misleading the entire inhabited earth; he was hurled down to the earth, and his angels were hurled down with him." 1 John 5:19 - "We know we originate with God, but the whole world is lying in the [power of the] wicked one." Even though God created all things, this world were we live in is influenced by Satan. Satan is called at 2 Corinthians 4:4 - "god of this system of things" Jesus spoke about the ruler of the world at: John 14:30 - "I shall not speak much with YOU anymore, for the ruler of the world is coming. And he has no hold on me..." Obviously Jesus was not speaking about God when he said this. That is the reason this world is in the condition it is in. This system we live in reflects the qualities of it's ruler. Me being a Jehovah's Witness and teaching people the bible door to door, I've see all kinds of things. I've been in houses of people that practice witchcraft or just have spiritistic items in their home that invite the demons. We had to leave one guys living room and have a bible study with him at a McDonalds because when we would try at his house. All his sterio equipment and tvs would start blasting. You could hear pots and pans in the kitchen being thrown around. But my experiences, has also shown me how the demons run from Jehovah gods name many times. My little sister in high school started a bible study with a boy at her school who was having demon problems at home. He had items in his room that once belonged to witch doctors from Africa and the demons would mess with him every night. Maria (my sister) showed him Jehovah's name in the bible, Psalms 83:18 - That people may know that you, whose name is Jehovah, You alone are the Most High over all the earth." And that demons run from that name, James 2:19 - "You believe there is one God, do you? You are doing quite well. And yet the demons believe and shudder." He went home that night and when they started appearing to him at night he started yelling out "JEHOVAH". He said the demon screamed waking up everyone in the house then disappeared. He came into school the next day yelling, It worked!!!, It worked!!! And my sister has been studying the bible with him every since during their lunch break.

The Bible teaches "... people are destined to die once and after that to be judged..." That seems to cross out the possibility of wandering souls or spirits left behind, which are the chief claims of those who believe in ghosts. However, the Bible does teach the existence of spirits, followers of the Devil. Since the Devil is referred to as "The Father of Lies", it can be assumed that part of their brief is to deceive living humans. The Bible also seems to indicate that these spirits trouble PEOPLE, not places. My experience, in the light of these teachings is that spirits impersonate the dead, in order to deceive the living. They try to convince the living that there is no judgment after death, that people are "okay" or can be helped to move on to better places. This contradicts Bible teaching that you decide your eternal fate here, with no changes permitted after death. And that there IS indeed judgment for those who have refused to follow Jesus.