What Do Ghosts Say Around the Globe?

Curiosity #11

Originally posted on Substack, October 20, 2025

While ruminating on some of the spooky movies I’ve watched this month. I remembered reading that the classic ghostly onomatopoeia “boo” originated from the original Latin boare or Ancient Greek boaein which mean “to cry out.”¹ Now, I cannot remember where I originally read this, but there is a pretty fair chance that it was from a Tumblr post², so imagine my surprise that the story may actually have some truth. However, it is not set in stone. The sound might also come from Scots English. ³

Some friendly ghosts from “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2024/10/18/its-the-great-pumpkin-charlie-brown/75715887007/

Although I have little memory of my five years of conversational Japanese (I took it as an extracurricular from 5th to 10th grade), I do remember the ghost stories my teacher would tell us. In them, the ghosts would make the sounds テケテケ (Teke Teke)⁴ or わっ (wa).⁵

This made me curious as to what sounds ghosts made in other languages. In Spain, ghosts might say “uuh,” and in France they say “hou.”⁶ It is notable that ghosts do not always speak. Rather, they could make the sound of rattling chains or screaming/crying.

I am just scratching the surface of ghost lore (and what it could mean culturally/historically when ghosts speak), but I find these cultural differences and similarities incredibly interesting.

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1 https://www.portablepress.com/blog/2017/10/why-do-ghosts-say-boo/

2 Ah! I found the post!!! https://allthingslinguistic.com/post/152482805612/psychrophile-grizzlyhills-flightcub

3 https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/504982/why-do-ghosts-say-%E2%80%98boo%E2%80%99

4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teke_Teke

5 https://blog.duolingo.com/scary-words-around-the-world/

6 https://slate.com/human-interest/2011/10/why-do-ghosts-say-boo.html