Top Tens: Flickchart’s Favorite Non-Horror Ghost Movies
Not all hauntings are confined to the horror genre. In fact, most of the highest-placed ghosts on Flickchart belong to movies that aren’t likely to frighten anybody. If you want to celebrate Halloween but can’t stand to be scared, consider putting on one of these beloved films that just happen to feature an apparition or two.
1. The Empire Strikes Back
When Obi-Wan Kenobi died in Star Wars Episode IV, he became “more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” What that means in practice is that he hangs around a swamp debating semantics. If you’re brave enough to sit down with a grandfatherly, soft-spoken ghost and consider the malleable nature of language and reality “from a certain point of view,” The Empire Strikes Back is your film this October. Be on your guard when venturing into the hollow tree stump, though: not all apparitions on the planet Dagobah are as genteel as old Ben.
- Globally ranked #2
- Wins 77% of matchups
- 2767 users have it at #1
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark
The spirits that emerge from the Ark are probably the scariest ghosts on this list, but don’t worry, they’re on our side. Well, strictly speaking, they’d have gone after anyone foolish enough to look at them, but in practice their only victims are hubristic fascists, so it’s hard to feel too threatened. (Unless you’re a fascist, in which case you deserve what’s coming to you.) When the ghosts morph from Virgin Mary-like to Skeletor-esque, it’s chilling, and the face-melting, head-shrinking vengeance they exact on the titular Ark raiders is seared into the memory of anyone who’s seen the movie (i.e., everyone), but the catharsis of watching Nazis get what’s coming to them should override any real fear.
- Globally ranked #4
- Wins 74% of matchups
- 1607 users have it at #1
3. Return of the Jedi
The end of the original Star Wars arc triples the number of ghosts. Joining Kenobi on the sidelines of the great Ewok party are Yoda, who passed away at the ripe old age of 900, and Anakin Skywalker, who redeemed himself at the end of his life. They form a venerable trio of translucent Jedi and are perhaps the three most powerful beings in the galaxy, but they appear to be ready for an eternity of pinochle rather than poltergeisting. No need to fear them — unless you’re watching the special edition and one of them looks like Hayden Christensen. Then you’ve got to be on your guard for skin-crawling line reads.
- Globally ranked #8
- Wins 71% of matchups
- 1186 users have it at #1
4. Ghostbusters
A conceit of Ghostbusters is that the ghosts are frightening, but that’s only true to the characters in the film. Of course, they’re going to run screaming from a fifty-story Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, but as a viewer you’re not going to lose sleep unless you lie awake chuckling. It’s a comedy, and these ghosts are funny. Or just gross, like Slimer.
- Globally ranked #31
- Wins 64% of matchups
- 856 users have it at #1
5. Vertigo
Note: This blurb has been edited to remove spoilers.
Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak [redacted] but [redacted] until [redacted]. Vertigo is not exactly [redacted], but [redacted].
- Globally ranked #46
- Wins 59% of matchups
- 291 users have it at #1
6. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
The Nazgûl came by their ghosthood in an unconventional manner. Rather than dying, they are mortal kings who lived so long they outlasted their bodies and became nothing more than malevolent wraiths roaming Middle Earth at the behest of their master Sauron (who himself is an only sometimes-corporeal being.) But they look like ghosts, whether riding around in black shrouds or wavering ethereally in the half-light of Frodo’s Ring-enhanced vision, so I think they count. They have an imposing presence, to be sure, but they are not unduly scary: they are the enemies of a fantasy adventure, not a horror. Plus, all it takes to drive them off is a little fire.
- Globally ranked #57
- Wins 69% of matchups
- 1687 users have it at #1
7. The Seventh Seal
Ingmar Bergman’s midcentury medieval fantasy contains two unforgettable sequences, both of which are vaguely ghostly. In the first, which actually plays out in several scenes over the course of the film, the personification of Death plays a high-stakes game of chess with a war-weary knight. If Death himself doesn’t meet the definition of “ghost,” the dancing deceased in the last scene surely do. That memorable shot was parodied in Woody Allen’s costume comedy Love and Death in which Allen plays, you guessed it, a ghost.
- Globally ranked #70
- Wins 58% of matchups
- 41 users have it at #1
8. It’s a Wonderful Life
Clarence the Angel has got to be the least-intimidating spirit on this list. Henry Travers, who plays him, built a career on gentle-to-a-fault characters with puppy-dog eyes in movies like High Sierra and the Oscar-winning Mrs. Miniver. Most people, though, know him as a slightly down-on-his-luck angel who talks James Stewart out of suicide and thereby earns his wings. Incidentally, an angel is just a high-ranking ghost, right?
- Globally ranked #108
- Wins 54% of matchups
- 292 users have it at #1
9. Throne of Blood
In this cross-cultural translation of Shakespeare’s MacBeth, Akira Kurosawa replaces the “double, double toil and trouble” witches with a solitary ghost at a spinning wheel in a forest glade. The scene in question is fairly creepy due to the ghost’s slow movements and speech, but the focus is on Toshiro Mifune’s response, his mixture of astonishment and awakening ambition. The movie’s famous climax, which doesn’t involve a ghost at all, is actually the most ghastly part.
- Globally ranked #132
- Wins 64% of matchups
- 1 user has it at #1
10. My Neighbor Totoro
In the end, a ghost is just a spirit, and the countryside in My Neighbor Totoro is full of spirits. Satsuki, Mei, and their father pray to the local Shinto gods. The girls joke about their new (old) house being haunted. They clear the attic of soot sprites. The totoro creatures and the cat bus are both real and unreal: they seem to be manifestations of nature, of wind and plants and rain, but they are tangible enough to successfully deliver the girls to their mother’s hospital. Certainly they are supernatural, yet extremely non-threatening, and those traits are enough to earn them the final spot on this list.
- Globally ranked #141
- Wins 62% of matchups
- 39 users have it at #1
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir