CJK Ghost Radical

No: same shape, different job.

A radical is the part of a Chinese character a dictionary files it under. In the classic Kangxi dictionary, radical 194 is 鬼, "ghost". Unicode encodes ⻤ as a variant form of that radical, so charts, textbooks and dictionaries can show the component on its own. The everyday character, read guǐ in Chinese, oni or ki in Japanese, gwi (귀) in Korean and quỷ in Vietnamese, is 鬼.

If ⻤ slips into a name, a word or a search, things break: search engines, spellcheck and sorting treat it as a different character and will not match 鬼. This often happens when text is copied from a radical chart or a PDF. Retype it as 鬼.

Which characters carry the ghost radical?

Spirits, souls and demons, mostly. Characters filed under radical 194 include 魂 (soul), 魄 (vital spirit), 魔 (demon), 魅 (charm, a goblin) and 魁 (chief). The radical hints that the meaning touches the spirit world.

The character 鬼 is ancient: it appears in oracle-bone inscriptions, divination records carved on bones and turtle shells at the late Shang court around 1200 BCE, as a figure with a large head. The Han-era dictionary Shuowen Jiezi explained 鬼 as what people return to after death. Today 鬼 also means a devil, a sly or nasty person, and in Japan the horned ogre, the oni of folk tales.