[xattt]

Are ghost clothes made from ghost cotton? Or is there a mystical alteration process to convert human clothes to those that ghosts can wear?

Jokes aside, I am wondering if cynicism and humorous over-analysis is a recent phenomena, because the general population is more educated/have basic needs met than those in Victorian times.

[harimau777]

An important principle in folklorists study of legends (which many ghost stories fall under) is that the legend cannot be separated from its telling. That means that telling legends is generally a group process. For example, after someone tells a legend someone else might speak up to add some details that they heard; only to be interrupted by someone to contest a point, and so on. I suspect that in that framework there have always been people who play the role of the skeptic who provides alternative interpretations or the practical joker who makes light of the story.

[krapp]

This is what happens when people still have a desire to believe in a metaphysical reality, but want to reconcile that with their understanding of physical reality. It's assumed that ghosts are real actual disembodied spirits of the dead because belief in them serves a cultural need, but in a modern society not entirely governed by magical thinking, such beliefs don't seem practical enough to be comforting. The attempt to move past "superstition" and ground the supernatural in science was the driving impetus behind the spiritualism movement (that and grift.)

You see the same incentives in the modern day with Biblical literalism and flat earth, and UFO folklore where "ultraterrestrial" and "interdimensional" theory shows up. It seems like science if everything you know about science comes from Reddit and TikTok but it's really just three space goblins stacked in a lab coat. Three because, of course, three is a sacred number.

There's no explanation for why ghosts wear clothes that isn't less ridiculous than the obvious, that it's because we imagine people wearing clothes, and ghosts are imaginary people.