Possible downsides of not dealing with the souls of the dead [closed]

Question

My fantasy world has a fairly rigid system of dealing with the souls of the dead and ferrying them to the afterlife. However, this system is in peril and in danger of collapsing. This would mean that the souls of the dead would no longer be dealt with, and left to roam the earth freely. This should obviously be disastrous, but why?

The common two downsides in classical literature are ghosts gaining the strength to wreak havoc in the real world, or the ghosts emitting EMF (or equivalent) waves that disturb technology.

However, in my world, the ghosts directly interacting with the real world isn't a thing save through mediums or others with abilities. And the number of 'sensitive people' isn't all that high. The ghosts can talk to these sensitive people, but not to anyone else. No possessions, apparitions, interacting with material objects, etc. Meaning souls directly messing with the living isn't really an issue.

Also my world is low-fantasy with an Edwardian technology level (mid 1910's) vaguely British, so save the odd lightbulb flicker and jumbled telegraph message there's not a lot of technology EMF can influence on a large scale.

In case it is relevant for answering: The system in my world is that there are reapers and carriages who deal with the dead. If someone dies, a carriage comes to collect their soul and transports it through a portal to the afterlife, which then means it is no longer part of the current world. The reapers are similar to the conventional ones, save that they don't do the killing. They serve as the first point of contact to deal with the emotional state of the dead individual and lead them to their designated carriage. The secondary function of the reapers is to care for and coordinate the beasts that draw the carriages. The event that will happen is that something happens to the population of carriage drawing beasts, meaning there isn't anything available to transport the souls. The dead souls would still be soothed by the reapers, but then just left to their own devices. The dead can't use the portals to the afterlife by themselves or with help of the reapers due to the effort required.

Is there any other downside in conventional belief or classic literature that would make sense as a downside to this, beyond "those ghosts would be sad"? Preferably something fairly immediate, not something that would maybe be an issue in a few decades.

TL;DR What happens if you simply don't deal with ghosts who don't go rogue or submit EMF?

Answer 1

It could give Dark Magic users an upper hand

Dark mages are dangerous sorcerers who prey on human souls to power their spells, but they are generally limited by the number of souls they can harvest. If the world suddenly becomes an open buffet of souls, then all of the souls that once moved on all by themselves will become a free power source for necromancers and the like who may use these souls to devastate the world of the living.

Mediums may become a threat to themselves and others

However, in my world, the ghosts directly interacting with the real world isn't a thing save through mediums or others with abilities.

Normally the odd ghost here and there is not a problem, but what happens when you are constantly accosted by ghosts demanding your limited attention. If you can't turn it off, the constant chatter of ghosts could lead to sleep deprivation, depression, anxiety, and an inability to focus on self care. Increased drug abuse, violence, and suicides could result.

This becomes an even bigger problem when you consider what "others with abilities" might mean. If large portions of your magical community are suddenly overwhelmed by ghosts, then the most powerful members of your societies will be the ones most prone to these increased psychological strains. When it's the guys who all have the most power to wreak havoc on the world who are most affected, it's kind of a big deal.

This could also exasperate the first problem of black magic because otherwise light magic users may be driven to necromancy if for no other reason than to be able to silence the ghosts.

Moral Decay

As for your non-magical community, the existence of Mediums means that your society has some level of direct interaction and knowledge of the afterlife which presumably means that they have knowledge of Heaven and Hell (or whatever model of afterlife you've chosen for your world). If souls stop moving on, then the living population would sooner or later learn that there is no divine reward or punishment waiting for them in death which could reshape humanity's views on morality.

No, not everyone will suddenly change how they act because the gates of Heaven and Hell have suddenly shut, but enough people will to create a palatable change in society. Some people are empathetic enough to still choose moral lives regardless of Heaven or Hell and others are psychopathic enough to never consider the morality of thier choices no matter the consequences, but in between these two groups is a large population of people who are frequently motivated to make moral decisions because they fear the consequences of immorality and/or because they are seeking the reward of morality, with no actual concern to the righteousness of thier actions.

Tell these people that there is no reward or punishment, and all sorts of previously benign and borderline psychopaths will become a lot more harmful. This effect could be more immediate than the previouse 2 options if your society mainstreams and trusts in Mediums, but it will take a 2-3 generations for this to apex since it will take time for the immoral behaviors themselves to be normalized by society since there will still be a fair amount of conditioned behavior around moral decision making for everyone raised in the times of afterlives.

Indirect Consequences

Preferably something fairly immediate, not something that would maybe be an issue in a few decades.

All of the above listed issues would probably take years if not decades to have a noticeable effect because it takes years if not decades for an overpopulation of ghosts to become a problem on a global scale, and for the general population to come to accept an adapt to such a major paradigm shift in thier world views.

If there must be a more immediate outcome, then you may be looking for cause and effect in the wrong place. It may not be the uncollected souls that are negatively impacting the physical world, but rather, the death of the carriage beasts themselves. There are countless possible effects of dead carriage beasts you could come up since they are wholly your creation, but maybe your death beasts work like mortal beasts in reverse. They exist in the realm of death, but if they die there, they are sent to our world, the same way human souls go to theirs when we die. Only when they get here, they are horrible monsters that turn to feeding on humans to sustain their new physical forms.

Answer 2

The souls of the dead are taken to the recycling plant to be reused into another life. It's the basic principle of reincarnation.

Of course if you stop collecting the souls of the dead you will soon run out of souls for the newborns, meaning that you will have 0 birth rate followed by inevitable population decline, society decline and life collapse.

Answer 3

International Diplomacy gets SPOOKY

Assuming your ghosts can leave the general area they died in, the first government to discover the dead are "piling up" would have a huge advantage. Surely there are some steadfast souls who, though dead, still consider themselves "British" "German" "Japanese" or whatever. In 1910 military and diplomatic messages by telegraph were HUGELY important. If, say, the British Empire went to war with Germany, and the Germans had figured out the dead were staying as ghosts on this side, the Germans could use mediums to identify "loyal" spirits to hang out at British army HQs, diplomatic offices, and so on. When war breaks out the ghosts start standing in telegraph receivers/transmitters or whatever they do that "jumbles" messages. Suddenly the British army can only coordinate by hand-carried messages, making the Germans quicker to react. The Royal Navy doesn't get the orders to sortie and the High Seas Fleet takes them unaware in harbor. The diplomatic cables don't go out making it much harder to coordinate alliances. The possibilities are vast and fairly severe.

If both sides are doing this you'll see a reversion to more primitive signals, which will have serious consequences for coordinating large bodies of troops. It will be a race to improve radio devices (assuming they're less susceptible than telegraph) or to the ghosts themselves as messengers that cannot be intercepted by normal means.

Even in peacetime, you could use a loyal ghost to simply walk into a highly sensitive meeting, listen in on all the Top Secret stuff said, and leave. They report to a medium and the enemy government knows all your secrets. Suddenly you need ghosts of your own (if they can interfere with each other) for security. Or at least to report if another ghost is in the room! This could be useful for businessmen, criminals, and law enforcement as well. Big Tony may have died, but but now he hangs out at the police precinct and tells the Mob's medium whenever the cops have a bust planned, and names everybody that snitches when they get arrested.

Answer 4

It attracts ... other things.

If you have reapers, ghosts, and an afterlife, then maybe you also have egovores; creatures that feed off of souls. Normally our planet isn't worth their effort, but now they're piling up, ripe for reaping.

For bonus points, the egovores CAN effect the real world. The living aren't worth their effort to kill, but you could engineer some entertaining calamities.

Answer 5

Soldiers with ptsd can sense them.

A common belief was that excessive exposure to death would expose soldiers to being possessed by spirits, and this caused the ptsd like symptoms of soldiers.

So, people with severe mental illnesses would have lots of spirits whispering secrets and ideas to them and would be talking about it more.

Answer 6

Gravity goes bonkers

Dark matter is actually souls (this is a plot point in His Dark Materials).

Now, if those souls are not being recycled by reincarnation, all that dark matter will accumulate. Slowly at first, but given time weird stuff starts happening. The Moon will be pulled closer, so it will lap around the Earth faster. Tides will be faster and more intense.

Answer 7

I think part of the consequences of this issue will depend on what happens to the souls once they are in the afterlife.

Larges

Mediums or those with abilities are rare. In part because the talents are not common, but also the living people do not end up causing their gifts to trigger. This presumes, of course, that the gift needs to be awakened by a stimulus and it doesn't just manifest on its own

But now that the dead is backing up, causing enhanced spectral activity on the material plane? More ghosts are around more people and this is creating the conditions needed to awaken more mediums and other talents in the material world.

Suddenly, ordinary people that have nothing to do with the supernatural have been bodily thrown into it with little idea or knowledge of what they have stumbled into. Given the low fantasy tag, could this mean that there is a community in the know that now has to deal with a possibly dramatic influx of people in the know that need educating?

Given the time frame (1910's), a large number of people that all of a sudden start to hear voices from nowhere may be thought to be the sign of a new disease or plague. Alternatively, as a flu pandemic swept through the world in the mid to late 1910's, perhaps people come to a conclusion that the flu and the new wave of awakened mediums are related.

This might not be an immediate problem, but depending on what it takes to awaken a medium's gift, it might take long for this to be noticed

Ghostly Chills

Humans are still a social species -- I don't see why that would necessarily change in death. Having been set adrift in death, unable to cross over, there is no reason why some people won't band together if for no other reason than to keep each other company in the afterlife until they can pass on.

Ever get a strange chill when you go through a particular area? That's a ghost you just walked through. In a world with a handful of ghosts in an entire city? Not a problem. But now if you have half a dozen ghosts living in the same house as the new owners, that will probably have an effect on them. Sure, both sides may try to minimize their discomfort but that living family now also has a dead on there with them.

And that does not get into the vengeful, angry, and just plain petty people that will dedicate their afterlife to making sure that the target of their ire is as uncomfortable as possible. Again, a lot of people feeling random chills at all times could be seen as a sign of something wrong with them.

Notice that all of this was solely about human ghosts? There is nothing to indicate that it is just humans in question here when it comes to the cycle of life, outside the word "someone". So it is entirely possible that some people will be perpetually cold because somebody's beloved dog dies and the goodest dog still remains with its owner after death.

Answer 8

If your ghosts cannot interact with matter that's okay. But if they can talk to sensitive people, it can be a big trouble for these people. By 'sensitive', I assume you refer to the people who are emotionally weak or crumpled and the ones who require extra care and concern. When a ghost that is roaming around boundlessly comes in contact with these people, chances are that the particular ghost in question is a bad or evil one. It will try to manipulate these sensitive people and influence their emotions negatively and may worsen their sensitivities upto a point where they may commit suicide. This is as bad as causing physical heavoc and must be avoided anyhow.

Answer 9

Our world becomes the new Afterlife

As the souls accumulate in our world their number inevitable reach the critical mass where there is more souls in this world than there is in the afterlife. When that happens the Laws of Universe will flip the roles of both worlds.

This may happen over time, the balance changing gradually, like the movement of arms of the scales. Making the life less and less 'potent' while allowing the dead to have more and more direct impact on the world.

For a short time, there will be perfect balance, when there is no difference between the state of 'Alive' and state of 'Dead' but then one single death would finally tip the world into being under-world.

For what would happened to living people stuck there I suggest to consult various real world mythologies, but usually it is not exactly pleasant.

Answer 10

Few people can communicate with the souls of the dead, but many benefit from their abilities. Listening to the last words of the deceased before they are taken by reapers aids in police investigations and handover of work. It is unknown whether their existence is publicly known or secretly utilized, but it has become an important task for this country.

As the number of deceased souls increases, the large volume of souls becomes noise, making communication difficult. Mediums may struggle to find the victims of murder cases and might convey the wrong person's last words to everyone. The system developed under the assumption of regular retrieval of old souls will no longer be usable.

Answer 11

Afterlife is a far better place for the ghost than the current world. You do not want other people to be stranded here and suffer. Additionally, some ghosts might attack your soul after your death, damaging it and making the afterlife for you even worse. Because the population density is high, the density of feral ghosts will be high. Therefore even after a couple of years souls of anyone who dies will be shredded really fast.

Additionally, ghosts could interact with the word in a subtle way. Causing crops to die would be a big enough problem. Really terrible nightmares could also work.

Answer 12

"Server is full, please try again later."

Or, rather: the so-called living world can only support so many Souls at a time. Perhaps there's a fixed amount of magic to go around, or perhaps it's based on how well the world can be hidden from Demons. No matter.

Whatever the reason, the fact is that the number of souls is limited. And, dead souls count towards this limit.

Moving the souls of the deceased to the afterlife is like "archiving" data. Since they are now removed from this plane of existence, they no longer count towards the Soul Limit of this plane of existence.

(And, depending on why the limit exists? It might be that souls in the Afterlife support the Living World, and the number of Souls that can exist in the Living World will creep up slowly as more Souls move to the Afterlife. Experienced/well-developed — and, above all, old — Souls may even have more of an impact there.)

Answer 13

Here's one that hasn't been mentioned yet: Humans can't see the dead souls, but animals can! And they're instinctively terrified of them. When there was just one or two souls wandering around, that was no big deal. But now the wildlife (and even domestic animals) are going crazy! Some bored souls even mess with them on purpose.

The result is that all animals are hugely stressed out, there's mass death events among animals, bugs aren't pollinating sufficiently anymore, maddened animal attacks on humans are becoming commonplace, etc.

Answer 14

Ghost can be bribed with a ferry to afterlife

They can:

1. Steal secrets (technology, strategy, business etc.) - every company, general and science department will need medium 24/7 - there isn't many of them so it will cost more then some might be able to pay/afford.
2. EMF - disrupt instruments a) navigation (compass) - as above medium 24/7 or your fleet of dreadnought will end on rock during foggy night (army lost in a jungle) b) science and technology measurements etc. - wrong results -> wasted resources*time with some chance to put your scientist life at risk (ouch we have taken too much TNT...)

Other

3. Some VIP might be mediums - and live in such noise could be an disaster for them - an since they have needed power to change it...
4. @Nosajimiki already mentioned Moral Decay - which i believe could be huge factor - for example I would start with holy wars (you are prohibiting people to (re-)unite with God/s)

Black Market

5. It's always there event if that may bring destruction to whole planet - you may want to handle this situation before it goes out of hand - like your citizens may question why mobster relatives get better treatment then regular citizen? In the end power/government is there because people believes it's add more then take from them

Answer 15

They can't affect the physical world, but they can affect us.

Ghosts may only communicate with mediums who are sensitive to them, but they do have an aura that may influence us mentally. A person may decide that something seems foreboding about a room or location for no apparent reason, or that it feels like one's dead parents or loved ones are watching over them. These are easily dismissible If there is only one or two ghosts in the area, but they become more chaotic and harder to ignore when there are ten, one hundred, one thousand ghosts crammed into areas, as they might do If they sense something fundamental is wrong.

Cases of mental disorders will be on the rise, and certain areas will elicit a definite emotional aura as the ghosts gather together to try to communicate with those who can make a difference, or just inhabit the most popular places they spent their lives in. People who were unable to communicate with one ghost will feel the influence, and maybe the words of multiple ghosts together.

People will become steadily more eccentric, sliding slowly and steadily towards mental instability until the situation is resolved, or society is too crazy to hold itself up.

Edit: considering that the ghosts may seek out world leaders for answers, this may become a crisis long before it reaches world-altering potential. Losing world leaders gets a lot of attention.

Answer 16

Really good answers so far, so let me add my two cents:

Souls still exist somewhere, so eventually they will interact with our plane:

normally we don't feel interactions from ghost because they're far in between and low in intensity, but if the plane they exists start getting overcrowded things will change fast because existing means they are either energy or mass, and both have really interesting properties when increased.

This post does some math assuming souls work like a gas, reaching the conclusion that if souls keep getting in eventually hell WILL freeze over, but the more interesting thing will be that if being in presence of a souls make us loose temperature (feeling cold), a super-filled other plane could either become a huge temperature sink for our plane that would freeze us to death or a constant radiator that will boil us outta existence, depending how you wanna take it.

if some ghost can cause poltergeist effects, imagine what hundreds could do:

it is normally said that more powerful ghost can make supernatural phenomenons appear, but a bunch of dead bored dudes could easily pass the eternal life either annoying people or doing stuff that normal people normally couldn't, like playing catch with the queen's crown in the middle of an official act, rescuing pets and kids trapped in really small places, or making robbers float and hang from their ankles in the middle of the street. Needless to say the common population would found about them quite easily. this make war way more scary, since killing the enemy is actually giving them a buff in forces.

Also we must consider the fact that souls might not remain complete forever, so over time they might decompose or fuse into new things, things without a clear conscience but with strong feelings and supernatural powers that now find themselves roaming the streets.

souls affect electric devices, so they're energy or at least magnetic:

if a ghost can have an effect on electric devices that mean that enough of them would be sufficient to start causing magnetic phenomenons all over the world, which not only will make things like lighting and aurora boreallis way more fun, but also make every kind of travel (either on plane or boat) like gambling your entire life savings without choosing the numbers yourself, since compasses would change direction constantly.

But the most interesting thing will be that since souls are energy with intention a group of a few could easily:

• become a thunder with its own mind and targets
• A bunch of bored ghost could take over london and turn it into the bermuda triangle 2: electric boogalo
• a bunch of ghost could gather to make all the compasses point to a specific port, making a nice monopoly on sea travel destinations.
• a dedicated group (since they have all the time in the world) could figure out how precisely interact with a telegraph to actually talk with people, skipping the need for mediums. Fast forward to radio and TV and you could have your evening news interrupted by larry of canterville dancing mid screen while bob screams that everything is propaganda and the world will end soon.

At the end of the day the story is yours, so you could take to wherever you want, so i hope at least i gave you some ideas