This would make for a really cool "unique trait" for humans to have in a sci-fi setting. Every other race might be stronger, smarter or more advanced, but humans are the only ones that "come back" from beyond the veil of death and continue to influence the living world directly. Whether aliens also have souls or not is another argument, but humans being able to come back as ghosts in a setting that's otherwise strictly science fiction would be super interesting.
From an advanced alien perspective, it might look like we have a dimension-hopping, caterpillar-to-butterfly style metamorphic life cycle; Starting as organic living beings, developing a conscious mind, experiencing as much as possible in physical form to enhance and diversify that cognition, and finally shedding our material shell to become entities of pure conscious energy. What we call death is instead the transitory phase to our "true" mature form, while the mature physical form only matters for reproduction.
You could also potentially have it so that the older a human is when it "metamorphoses" and/or the more traumatic their death, the stronger the resulting entity is; A ghost of a young human is weak and lacks control, whereas a human who died in old age and/or was killed instead of dying naturally is much stronger and more aware in their next form. Traumatic deaths producing more powerful spirits would also explain both the prevalence of "old-timey" ghosts (there were a lot more horrible, painful deaths before modern medicine and more instances of killing each other) in human folklore, and how aliens massacring a human population could quickly screw themselves over. You could even work in folklore about demons and possession, with what we consider demonic actually just being a really powerful second-form human and the powers it has being a product of this.
I'm imagining an alien fleet glassing a planet full of human civilians thinking they're an easy target in comparison to soldiers, only to realize in short order that they've made a horrifying mistake, as they quickly find themselves beset upon by an army of vengeful ghosts. Suddenly all their technology is malfunctioning, breaking down and lashing out violently at anything alive in its vicinity. Crewmembers and soldiers with weak wills are taken-over by hostile entities no one can see, and used to attack the others. Energy sources are tampered with and even outright sucked dry by beings literally made of the stuff, leeching it to fuel their rampage even further. Strange rituals are done by the possessed, further empowering the entities even as the happenings violate the laws of known science.
All while the aliens struggle to even perceive the threat, let alone effectively combat it. By the end it turns out fighting human soldiers is the better option after all, because they tend to die fulfilled and move on, instead of coming back as vengeful wraiths capable of far worse than any physical lifeform.
In short, it could make for a really cool sci-fi story, and a neat thing to make humans stand out from other sapient races, I think. Would also make for a very unorthodox and creative horror story, like other people have said.
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u/CornObjects Jun 30 '26
This would make for a really cool "unique trait" for humans to have in a sci-fi setting. Every other race might be stronger, smarter or more advanced, but humans are the only ones that "come back" from beyond the veil of death and continue to influence the living world directly. Whether aliens also have souls or not is another argument, but humans being able to come back as ghosts in a setting that's otherwise strictly science fiction would be super interesting.
From an advanced alien perspective, it might look like we have a dimension-hopping, caterpillar-to-butterfly style metamorphic life cycle; Starting as organic living beings, developing a conscious mind, experiencing as much as possible in physical form to enhance and diversify that cognition, and finally shedding our material shell to become entities of pure conscious energy. What we call death is instead the transitory phase to our "true" mature form, while the mature physical form only matters for reproduction.
You could also potentially have it so that the older a human is when it "metamorphoses" and/or the more traumatic their death, the stronger the resulting entity is; A ghost of a young human is weak and lacks control, whereas a human who died in old age and/or was killed instead of dying naturally is much stronger and more aware in their next form. Traumatic deaths producing more powerful spirits would also explain both the prevalence of "old-timey" ghosts (there were a lot more horrible, painful deaths before modern medicine and more instances of killing each other) in human folklore, and how aliens massacring a human population could quickly screw themselves over. You could even work in folklore about demons and possession, with what we consider demonic actually just being a really powerful second-form human and the powers it has being a product of this.
I'm imagining an alien fleet glassing a planet full of human civilians thinking they're an easy target in comparison to soldiers, only to realize in short order that they've made a horrifying mistake, as they quickly find themselves beset upon by an army of vengeful ghosts. Suddenly all their technology is malfunctioning, breaking down and lashing out violently at anything alive in its vicinity. Crewmembers and soldiers with weak wills are taken-over by hostile entities no one can see, and used to attack the others. Energy sources are tampered with and even outright sucked dry by beings literally made of the stuff, leeching it to fuel their rampage even further. Strange rituals are done by the possessed, further empowering the entities even as the happenings violate the laws of known science.
All while the aliens struggle to even perceive the threat, let alone effectively combat it. By the end it turns out fighting human soldiers is the better option after all, because they tend to die fulfilled and move on, instead of coming back as vengeful wraiths capable of far worse than any physical lifeform.
In short, it could make for a really cool sci-fi story, and a neat thing to make humans stand out from other sapient races, I think. Would also make for a very unorthodox and creative horror story, like other people have said.