Ghost

A cute sheet ghost, not a real scare. The ghost emoji is the Halloween boo in costume form: a white sheet with dark eyes, often drawn with its tongue out. Unicode files it with the clown and alien faces as a costume, which matches its use — spooky season, silly hauntings, and anything quiet enough to call dead. Snapchat's logo is a white sheet ghost too, so 👻 doubles as Snapchat shorthand.

What does it mean when someone sends you 👻?

Usually a peekaboo tease; timing decides. Out of the blue in your DMs, 👻 tends to mean boo — I'm here, I'm haunting you — playful, sometimes a little flirty, never frightening. After days of silence it reads differently: aimed at someone who vanished, it pokes at the disappearing act; from the one who vanished, it's a sheepish “I'm back.” People who truly mean to disappear just go quiet.

Why do ghosts wear white sheets?

The sheet recalls a burial shroud. The dead were wrapped in cloth, and shrouded apparitions turn up in ghost stories by the 1400s. In 1584 the English writer Reginald Scot, mocking belief in witches and spirits, described a trickster in a white sheet passing himself off as a ghost. By 1939, cartoons had helped turn ghosts into figures of fun — the friendly look this emoji inherits.