Ghost sickness

What it is

Ghost sickness is a culture-bound syndrome, a pattern of distress that appears within a particular cultural setting. It is reported among some Indigenous peoples of North America and among Polynesian peoples. A person said to have it is caught up with the dead: the mind turns again and again to someone who has died, or grief takes a form Western medicine calls pathological. In the communities concerned the trouble is understood as an illness sent by ghosts, or now and then by witches and witchcraft. It sits where mourning, spirit belief and healing meet: at once an affliction to be treated and a sign that something between the living and the dead has gone wrong.

Where it comes from

Ghost sickness is associated in North America with the Navajo, with some Muscogee (Creek) communities and with some Plains cultures, and it is also reported among Polynesian peoples. A documented turning point came in 1881, when the United States government banned some of the traditional mourning rituals of the Lakota and other tribes. Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, a Lakota scholar, proposes that losing these rites left the Lakota further predisposed to grief that hardens into illness. On her reading, the suppression of ceremony helped shape the syndrome among her people. Muscogee thought supplies its own ground: every person shares in an energy called Ibofanga, said to arise from the movement of mind, body and spirit together, and sickness follows when that movement is disrupted.

How it is done

Care is described in outline rather than as a fixed recipe. Among the Muscogee, medicine is used to keep an obstruction from forming or to clear one, so that energy moves peacefully through the person again; mourning purification rites aim to stop grief from draining a mourner emotionally and physically over a long time. Among the Navajo, religious leaders perform ceremonies more than once, with the aim of freeing the sufferer from thoughts of the dead that consume them. The repetition is part of the point: a single rite is not treated as the end of the work.

What it is for

The work around ghost sickness aims at mourning that ends. Rites and medicine are sought so that grief does not harden into lasting weakness, a failing appetite, nightmares or the dread described in the syndrome. Purification in mourning is meant to head off an unnatural, prolonged drain on feeling and body, and Navajo ceremonies are performed to lift consuming thoughts of the dead away from the sufferer. Some signs of grief that has not settled sit close to spirit contact: a mourner may chase visions of a dead relative's spirit, dwell on memories, long for a reunion, imagine the person's return, or believe they can step into the past or future. Healing aims to bring the mourner back.

Who does it

Two kinds of specialist appear in the record. Among the Navajo, religious leaders carry out the ceremonies, and the descriptions note that they may be performed more than once. Among the Muscogee, medicine, meaning both remedy and rite, is applied to clear blocked energy and restore its peaceful movement. Scholarly voices run alongside: Putsch, Erikson and Macgregor have studied the syndrome, and the Lakota scholar Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart has written on grief among her own people, proposing that suppressed mourning rites lie behind some of its depth.

Peoples and places

Ghost sickness is reported for several peoples, and each frames it differently. The Navajo appear in connection with ceremonies against thoughts of the dead. Muscogee (Creek) teaching holds that every person shares in an energy called Ibofanga, which arises from the movement of mind, body and spirit together; when that movement is disrupted, illness can follow, and healing works to restore it. Some Plains cultures are also counted among those who recognize the sickness. The Lakota case carries a particular history: after the United States banned some of their mourning rites in 1881, Brave Heart argued that the community became more prone to grief turning pathological. Polynesian peoples are reported to hold the syndrome as well.

What people believe

The worldview behind ghost sickness treats the dead as active presences. Putsch records that spirits, or ghosts, may be seen as tied, directly or not, to how an event, an accident or an illness comes about. In Muscogee understanding the person works as an energy system: Ibofanga, the movement joining mind, body and spirit, is meant to run peacefully, and blockage brings sickness. Contact with the dead is not always unwelcome, since mourners may seek visions of a relative's spirit; the boundary lies in whether that contact stays within mourning or consumes the living.

How scholars and sceptics see it

Researchers read ghost sickness in psychological terms as well as spirit terms. Putsch writes that spirits or ghosts may be held to cause an event, an accident or an illness, directly or through a chain of circumstances. Erikson and Macgregor report evidence of a trauma response in the syndrome, with numbing and withdrawal, watchful anxiety, guilt, a sense of carrying ancestral pain and death, and sadness that will not lift. Brave Heart, working from Lakota experience, ties pathological grief to the mourning rituals lost under the 1881 ban. The label culture-bound syndrome itself marks the field's angle: a pattern of distress shaped by one culture's setting rather than a universal illness.

Compare and confuse

Ghost sickness sits beside two named relatives: complicated grief disorder, a Western diagnostic category for mourning that will not ease, and the vengeful ghost, a spirit that harms the living. The framework differs from mainstream Western grief practice, which scholars describe as qualitatively unlike traditional Native American grief resolution. Where Western care frames the trouble as pathology, the communities concerned name ghosts, witches or a blocked flow of energy, and answer with ceremony.

Law and persecution

United States law once reached into Lakota mourning. In 1881 the federal government banned some of the traditional mourning rituals of the Lakota and other tribes. Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart proposes that losing these rites left the Lakota further predisposed to grief that hardens into illness, so the ban is bound into how the syndrome is understood among the Lakota rather than standing apart from it.

Today

The practices are treated as current. Navajo religious leaders are described as performing ceremonies, repeatedly where needed, to free a sufferer from thoughts of the dead that consume them. Muscogee medicine is used to prevent or clear an obstruction, so that Ibofanga flows peacefully once more. Lakota scholarship argues for what was lost in 1881 and for grief work of the community's own. Polynesian peoples are also reported to know the syndrome, so the pattern reaches beyond North America.

Questions people ask about Ghost sickness

Good reading and sources

• Ghost sickness on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data