Ghosting (identity theft)
Encyclopedia
Ghosting is a form of identity theft
in which someone steals the identity, and sometimes even the role within society, of a specific dead person (the "ghost") who is not widely known to be deceased. Usually, the person who steals this identity (the "ghoster") is roughly the same age that the ghost would have been if still alive, so that any documents citing the birthdate of the ghost will not be conspicuously incorrect if appropriated by the thief now claiming to be that person.
The use of counterfeit identification falsely documenting a completely fictional identity is not ghosting, as false identification cannot be used to obtain social services or interact with government agencies or law enforcement officials. The purpose of ghosting is to enable the ghoster to claim for his own use an existing identity that is already listed in government records -- an identity that is dormant because its original possessor is dead.
Ghosting is based on the premise (now less justified than in previous times) that separate government agencies do not share a total exchange of information. Therefore, a ghoster can obtain a passport
or Social Security
benefits in the name of a dead person because the agencies in charge of those services do not routinely cross-check an applicant's history to determine if a death certificate
has been issued in that person's name.
of a living person who is an active member of society. The identity thief retains his own name and place in society while making unlawful use of someone else's more advantageous financial status. The so-called "identity thief" is really more interested in exploiting someone else's financial credit rather than acquiring that person's identity. In this sense, it is the creditors, not the person's family and friends, who are the primary victims of this crime.
The motives for ghosting are more complex. The ghoster is sincerely interested in acquiring another person's identity for his own ongoing use and therefore usually selects a person who is dead in order to avoid the risks that would occur if two living people used the same Social Security number
. Generally, a ghoster is unwilling to sustain their existing identity and takes a new identity to get a fresh start in life. Unlike a typical identity thief, who squeezes quick profits from one stolen identity then moves on to the next victim, a ghoster may actively seek to acquire maintain a respectable credit rating in their new identity.
Ghosting is largely a phenomenon of the 20th century. Before the arrival of the Social Security system, a person who possessed no identity documents (no birth records, no high school diploma) could live openly without incurring suspicion. Counterfeit identification could not be easily exposed as fake. Only with the arrival of income tax
and social benefits in the 1920s did it become essential for every adult to possess an identity that was registered in government archives -- if not their own lawful identity, then one appropriated from a person no longer using it. In the 21st century, advances in technology have made ghosting increasingly difficult to achieve, while governments have increased the penalties for those who get caught.
Dashiell Hammett
's novel The Maltese Falcon (1930) recounts the story, apparently based on a true case, of a businessman named Flitcraft who spontaneously abandons his career and his marriage, abruptly moving to another city and inventing another identity. If this incident did indeed occur in the 1920s or earlier, Flitcraft would have encountered little difficulty in establishing a new life without formal documents such as a birth certificate and Social Security number. If this had occurred ten years later, Flitcraft would have needed a ghost identity to begin his new life.
In the days before computerized databases, ghosting was easy to achieve -- especially in Britain
, where birth certificates and death certificates are public documents. The General Register Office
in London
contains indexed registers of all births, deaths, marriages and adoptions in England
and Wales
. The typical ghoster might consult the Deaths index (black volumes, archived by year) for the period 15 years after his own birth, seeking records of the death of a man approximately 15 years old (that is, whose birthdate would be near the birthdate of the ghoster). Finding a suitable candidate, the ghoster would then consult the Births index (red volumes, in a different section of the Records Office) for the deceased person's date of birth. Armed with this knowledge, he could then pay a small fee to obtain a copy of the deceased's birth certificate. Using this document as the foundation for his stolen identity, the ghoster would gradually acquire evidence enabling him to pass himself off as the other person, still alive. Some of this evidence would be faked, with other evidence, such as school records, having being legitimately issued to the deceased person before his death. Other archives outside of Britain, such as the genealogy records of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, have unwittingly served this same purpose of enabling ghosters to find new identities.
It is easier for a female to appropriate a dead person's identity than it is for a man. For instance, a female ghoster can steal the identity of a dead female who had married and taken her husband's name. Detection is more difficult in this case because the death certificate and the birth certificate will show two different surnames. Also, gaps in the ghost identity's employment history (for the years between the ghost's death and the date when the ghoster claims that identity) will arouse less suspicion if the impostor is a female, who might conceivably have spent the transition years as a homemaker with no wages.
In the 1970s, a counterculture
publishing firm in California
named Eden Press published a pamphlet, The Paper Trip, giving detailed instructions for acquiring a dead person's identity. Among other pointers, the pamphlet advised readers to search newspaper archives for old articles about an entire family getting killed in an accident while on vacation outside of their home state. This scenario offers several advantages to a ghoster:
Whereas typical identity thieves will steal the credit rating of anyone, regardless of age, race or sex, a ghoster intends to live in the stolen identity and therefore usually seeks to acquire the identity of a dead person whose physical description strongly resembles the living ghoster's appearance: similar birthdate, height, sex, race or ethnic background. Rare exceptions are transexual ghosters (see below), who seek to acquire the identity of a dead person of the opposite sex but otherwise resemble the ghoster as much as possible.
maintained its birth records and death records in separate registries with no cross-referencing. Modern search engines enable government clerks to establish quickly if a death certificate has ever been issued to the person named on a given birth certificate.
Many ghosters have criminal records under their original identities and seek new identities in order to gain a fresh start (or to start a new criminal career without the prior arrest record). Before the days of enhanced computer imaging, it was a difficult and time-consuming process for law-enforcement officials to search fingerprint
s archives. If a ghoster were arrested and fingerprinted under their new identity (with no prior arrests under that name), there was a good chance that authorities would fail to discover any records of a prior arrest for the same set of fingerprints linked to a different name and birthdate. This is no longer true. Modern imaging technology now enables search engines to scan a database of millions of fingerprint
s quickly, finding a positive match which police can transmit electronically to other police forces anywhere in the world. New identity documents can no longer conceal prior arrests.
In the United States, it was formerly the case that citizens were not issued a Social Security number until their first paid employment. Thus, in the year 1975, a man ghoster aged 25 would acquire the birth certificate of a boy who was born circa 1950 (the same age as the ghoster) but who had died at age 15 or younger. An individual who died before adulthood would not be likely to possess a Social Security number; therefore, a ghoster claiming to be this person and applying for a first-time Social Security number at age 25 would not arouse suspicion if he could explain why he waited until age 25 to begin working for wages. But a ghoster who attempted this scheme in the year 2000 (or later) would arouse great suspicion because parents are now required to acquire a Social Security number for their offspring before the next annual income tax return is filed, and government computers can instantly retrieve any individual's entire history of employment and income-tax records. A ghoster who applies to a Social Security office for a replacement of a Social Security card issued to someone who died ten years earlier (who claims to be that individual, still living) will immediately be asked why he has not reported any wages for the past ten years and will be challenged to explain how he has supported himself for ten years without wages. There will also be a gap in the tax records, requiring the ghoster to explain why he hasn't filed tax returns for the intervening years.
Another factor that discourages ghosting is the fact that the stakes are now much higher. In prior times, a criminal with a long record of felony convictions had strong incentive to commit the minor crime of ghosting in order to acquire a new identity with no prior arrests. This is no longer true. As a result of the September 11, 2001 attacks
(also known as "9/11"), any person now found to be in possession of false identification is suspected of terrorism
. The unlawful acquisition of false identification, whether counterfeit or falsely appropriated from a dead person, will now be prosecuted far more aggressively than he might have been in the past.
Ghosting has never been foolproof. One reason is the overconfidence of ghosters who, after acquiring a new identity, refuse to abandon the habits and associations of their previous identity. Christopher John Boyce
was a spy for the USSR, traitor to the USA, and an armed bank robber who was nicknamed "The Falcon" for his interest in competitive falconry
. There are barely a hundred falconers in the entire United States, and Boyce was known personally to all of them. Eventually, Boyce was arrested. After escaping from federal prison and acquiring a new identity via ghosting, he resumed his old habit of attending falconry competitions, now wearing a new name but still associating with falconers who had known him by his original name. Boyce was swiftly rearrested.
of the 1960s eventually disavowed their radical pasts and desired to become normal citizens with absolutely no ties to their earlier actions. In several cases, former radicals were able to evade arrest for more than 20 years because, through ghosting, they acquired new identities in which they proceeded to live entirely law-abiding lives. During the Vietnam war
, many young men in the United States avoided the draft by fleeing to Canada
or other nations, where they acquired ghost identities enabling them to live as natives of those countries.
During the days of racial segregation in the United States
and apartheid in South Africa
, light-skinned mulattos who were legally defined as Negroes had strong incentive to pass as Caucasians. Some of these individuals may have stolen the identities of deceased white persons, acquiring birth certificates that listed them as "white." (In South Africa, there was a third legal category of colored
people, which would make the transition less noticeable.)
, alias "The Great Impostor", whose case is unusual for two reasons: (1) he appropriated the identities of several different men (in series);(2) all of Demara's ghosted identities were persons still alive at the time and therefore able to confront him. After Demara's death in 1982, it was revealed (in his New York Times obituary) that he had been arrested twice on charges of attempted sex with minors.
The American film actor Wallace Ford
was a successful ghoster. Born in England under the name Samuel Jones, he was estranged from his family at an early age and placed in a school in Canada. At the age of 15, Jones became a hobo
and stowed away aboard freight trains with a fellow hobo named Wallace Ford. The two boys eventually were in a train accident; Jones survived, but Ford was killed. Jones then appropriated the other man's name and some aspects of his biography, becoming a successful actor under the name Wallace Ford, eventually starring on Broadway and in Hollywood films. As "Wallace Ford," Jones used the real Ford's birthdate and other statistics on all of his own tax returns and official documents, even applying for a passport as Wallace Ford for his 1937 return to England. Only shortly before his death in 1966 did the actor reveal the complete truth about his identity.
Jones (Ford) was fortunate to have an ideal candidate for his ghost identity: a dead person of his own race, sex and approximate age whose death was never officially recorded. (No one came forward to identify the real Wallace Ford's remains.) Typically, ghosters seeking a dead person's identity must choose someone whose death has been recorded in public archives, creating a risk that, after donning this new identity, the ghoster will eventually be confronted with a copy of his "own" death certificate.
Some fictional characters are ghosters. One example is Seymour Skinner
, the grade-school principal in The Simpsons
. Several years after his first appearance on this series, Skinner revealed that he was an impostor who had stolen the real Seymour Skinner's life and identity after the real Skinner died in combat overseas. Bizarrely, the false Skinner was abetted in this scheme by the real Skinner's mother, who preferred the impostor over her actual son. Creed Bratton
, from The Office, is another example of a character who has stolen the identity of another man. Don Draper
, the main character in AMC
's Mad Men
, is yet another example of a Ghoster. Don obtained the identity from his deceased superior officer in the Korean War
.
Undoubtedly, there are other successful ghosters whose imposture has never been discovered, because, unlike Wallace Ford, they never revealed their imposture.
Identity theft
Identity theft is a form of stealing another person's identity in which someone pretends to be someone else by assuming that person's identity, typically in order to access resources or obtain credit and other benefits in that person's name...
in which someone steals the identity, and sometimes even the role within society, of a specific dead person (the "ghost") who is not widely known to be deceased. Usually, the person who steals this identity (the "ghoster") is roughly the same age that the ghost would have been if still alive, so that any documents citing the birthdate of the ghost will not be conspicuously incorrect if appropriated by the thief now claiming to be that person.
The use of counterfeit identification falsely documenting a completely fictional identity is not ghosting, as false identification cannot be used to obtain social services or interact with government agencies or law enforcement officials. The purpose of ghosting is to enable the ghoster to claim for his own use an existing identity that is already listed in government records -- an identity that is dormant because its original possessor is dead.
Ghosting is based on the premise (now less justified than in previous times) that separate government agencies do not share a total exchange of information. Therefore, a ghoster can obtain a passport
Passport
A passport is a document, issued by a national government, which certifies, for the purpose of international travel, the identity and nationality of its holder. The elements of identity are name, date of birth, sex, and place of birth....
or Social Security
Social Security (United States)
In the United States, Social Security refers to the federal Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program.The original Social Security Act and the current version of the Act, as amended encompass several social welfare and social insurance programs...
benefits in the name of a dead person because the agencies in charge of those services do not routinely cross-check an applicant's history to determine if a death certificate
Death certificate
The phrase death certificate can describe either a document issued by a medical practitioner certifying the deceased state of a person or popularly to a document issued by a person such as a registrar of vital statistics that declares the date, location and cause of a person's death as later...
has been issued in that person's name.
General description
Typically, identity theft is done for criminal financial gain, with the thief preying upon the credit ratingCredit rating
A credit rating evaluates the credit worthiness of an issuer of specific types of debt, specifically, debt issued by a business enterprise such as a corporation or a government. It is an evaluation made by a credit rating agency of the debt issuers likelihood of default. Credit ratings are...
of a living person who is an active member of society. The identity thief retains his own name and place in society while making unlawful use of someone else's more advantageous financial status. The so-called "identity thief" is really more interested in exploiting someone else's financial credit rather than acquiring that person's identity. In this sense, it is the creditors, not the person's family and friends, who are the primary victims of this crime.
The motives for ghosting are more complex. The ghoster is sincerely interested in acquiring another person's identity for his own ongoing use and therefore usually selects a person who is dead in order to avoid the risks that would occur if two living people used the same Social Security number
Social Security number
In the United States, a Social Security number is a nine-digit number issued to U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and temporary residents under section 205 of the Social Security Act, codified as . The number is issued to an individual by the Social Security Administration, an independent...
. Generally, a ghoster is unwilling to sustain their existing identity and takes a new identity to get a fresh start in life. Unlike a typical identity thief, who squeezes quick profits from one stolen identity then moves on to the next victim, a ghoster may actively seek to acquire maintain a respectable credit rating in their new identity.
Ghosting is largely a phenomenon of the 20th century. Before the arrival of the Social Security system, a person who possessed no identity documents (no birth records, no high school diploma) could live openly without incurring suspicion. Counterfeit identification could not be easily exposed as fake. Only with the arrival of income tax
Income tax
An income tax is a tax levied on the income of individuals or businesses . Various income tax systems exist, with varying degrees of tax incidence. Income taxation can be progressive, proportional, or regressive. When the tax is levied on the income of companies, it is often called a corporate...
and social benefits in the 1920s did it become essential for every adult to possess an identity that was registered in government archives -- if not their own lawful identity, then one appropriated from a person no longer using it. In the 21st century, advances in technology have made ghosting increasingly difficult to achieve, while governments have increased the penalties for those who get caught.
Dashiell Hammett
Dashiell Hammett
Samuel Dashiell Hammett was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories, and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade , Nick and Nora Charles , and the Continental Op .In addition to the significant influence his novels and stories had on...
's novel The Maltese Falcon (1930) recounts the story, apparently based on a true case, of a businessman named Flitcraft who spontaneously abandons his career and his marriage, abruptly moving to another city and inventing another identity. If this incident did indeed occur in the 1920s or earlier, Flitcraft would have encountered little difficulty in establishing a new life without formal documents such as a birth certificate and Social Security number. If this had occurred ten years later, Flitcraft would have needed a ghost identity to begin his new life.
In the days before computerized databases, ghosting was easy to achieve -- especially in Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, where birth certificates and death certificates are public documents. The General Register Office
General Register Office
The General Register Office for England and Wales is the section of the UK Identity and Passport Service responsible for the civil registration of births , adoptions, marriages, civil partnerships and deaths in England and Wales and for those same events outwith the UK if they involve a UK citizen...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
contains indexed registers of all births, deaths, marriages and adoptions in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
. The typical ghoster might consult the Deaths index (black volumes, archived by year) for the period 15 years after his own birth, seeking records of the death of a man approximately 15 years old (that is, whose birthdate would be near the birthdate of the ghoster). Finding a suitable candidate, the ghoster would then consult the Births index (red volumes, in a different section of the Records Office) for the deceased person's date of birth. Armed with this knowledge, he could then pay a small fee to obtain a copy of the deceased's birth certificate. Using this document as the foundation for his stolen identity, the ghoster would gradually acquire evidence enabling him to pass himself off as the other person, still alive. Some of this evidence would be faked, with other evidence, such as school records, having being legitimately issued to the deceased person before his death. Other archives outside of Britain, such as the genealogy records of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, have unwittingly served this same purpose of enabling ghosters to find new identities.
It is easier for a female to appropriate a dead person's identity than it is for a man. For instance, a female ghoster can steal the identity of a dead female who had married and taken her husband's name. Detection is more difficult in this case because the death certificate and the birth certificate will show two different surnames. Also, gaps in the ghost identity's employment history (for the years between the ghost's death and the date when the ghoster claims that identity) will arouse less suspicion if the impostor is a female, who might conceivably have spent the transition years as a homemaker with no wages.
In the 1970s, a counterculture
Counterculture
Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...
publishing firm in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
named Eden Press published a pamphlet, The Paper Trip, giving detailed instructions for acquiring a dead person's identity. Among other pointers, the pamphlet advised readers to search newspaper archives for old articles about an entire family getting killed in an accident while on vacation outside of their home state. This scenario offers several advantages to a ghoster:
- Because the incident involved multiple deaths, there are multiple candidates (of different ages, and both sexes) for an identity that the ghoster can steal.
- Because the entire family died in the same incident, the dead person whose identity is chosen for ghosting is not likely to have any immediate relatives who are still alive and aware of his death.
- Because the family died outside their home state, their birth records and death records are archived in two different states and are unlikely to be cross-referenced. Also, if the deceased family's remains were not returned to their home community for burial, the staffers in the local records office are unlikely to be aware that the family is deceased and will not be suspicious when someone claiming to be a member of this family requests a copy of his birth certificate.
- Because the deaths occurred years ago, new requests for an old birth certificate are unlikely to stir anyone's memory of that individual's death.
Whereas typical identity thieves will steal the credit rating of anyone, regardless of age, race or sex, a ghoster intends to live in the stolen identity and therefore usually seeks to acquire the identity of a dead person whose physical description strongly resembles the living ghoster's appearance: similar birthdate, height, sex, race or ethnic background. Rare exceptions are transexual ghosters (see below), who seek to acquire the identity of a dead person of the opposite sex but otherwise resemble the ghoster as much as possible.
Drawbacks
Ghosting is no longer as easy as it once was. This is largely due to the increasing computerization of vital records and the increasing power of search engines. Until the 1990s, each state in the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
maintained its birth records and death records in separate registries with no cross-referencing. Modern search engines enable government clerks to establish quickly if a death certificate has ever been issued to the person named on a given birth certificate.
Many ghosters have criminal records under their original identities and seek new identities in order to gain a fresh start (or to start a new criminal career without the prior arrest record). Before the days of enhanced computer imaging, it was a difficult and time-consuming process for law-enforcement officials to search fingerprint
Fingerprint
A fingerprint in its narrow sense is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. In a wider use of the term, fingerprints are the traces of an impression from the friction ridges of any part of a human hand. A print from the foot can also leave an impression of friction ridges...
s archives. If a ghoster were arrested and fingerprinted under their new identity (with no prior arrests under that name), there was a good chance that authorities would fail to discover any records of a prior arrest for the same set of fingerprints linked to a different name and birthdate. This is no longer true. Modern imaging technology now enables search engines to scan a database of millions of fingerprint
Fingerprint
A fingerprint in its narrow sense is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. In a wider use of the term, fingerprints are the traces of an impression from the friction ridges of any part of a human hand. A print from the foot can also leave an impression of friction ridges...
s quickly, finding a positive match which police can transmit electronically to other police forces anywhere in the world. New identity documents can no longer conceal prior arrests.
In the United States, it was formerly the case that citizens were not issued a Social Security number until their first paid employment. Thus, in the year 1975, a man ghoster aged 25 would acquire the birth certificate of a boy who was born circa 1950 (the same age as the ghoster) but who had died at age 15 or younger. An individual who died before adulthood would not be likely to possess a Social Security number; therefore, a ghoster claiming to be this person and applying for a first-time Social Security number at age 25 would not arouse suspicion if he could explain why he waited until age 25 to begin working for wages. But a ghoster who attempted this scheme in the year 2000 (or later) would arouse great suspicion because parents are now required to acquire a Social Security number for their offspring before the next annual income tax return is filed, and government computers can instantly retrieve any individual's entire history of employment and income-tax records. A ghoster who applies to a Social Security office for a replacement of a Social Security card issued to someone who died ten years earlier (who claims to be that individual, still living) will immediately be asked why he has not reported any wages for the past ten years and will be challenged to explain how he has supported himself for ten years without wages. There will also be a gap in the tax records, requiring the ghoster to explain why he hasn't filed tax returns for the intervening years.
Another factor that discourages ghosting is the fact that the stakes are now much higher. In prior times, a criminal with a long record of felony convictions had strong incentive to commit the minor crime of ghosting in order to acquire a new identity with no prior arrests. This is no longer true. As a result of the September 11, 2001 attacks
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...
(also known as "9/11"), any person now found to be in possession of false identification is suspected of terrorism
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
. The unlawful acquisition of false identification, whether counterfeit or falsely appropriated from a dead person, will now be prosecuted far more aggressively than he might have been in the past.
Ghosting has never been foolproof. One reason is the overconfidence of ghosters who, after acquiring a new identity, refuse to abandon the habits and associations of their previous identity. Christopher John Boyce
Christopher John Boyce
Christopher John Boyce is a convicted KGB who sold U.S. spy satellite secrets to the Soviet Union in the 1970s.-Espionage:...
was a spy for the USSR, traitor to the USA, and an armed bank robber who was nicknamed "The Falcon" for his interest in competitive falconry
Falconry
Falconry is "the taking of wild quarry in its natural state and habitat by means of a trained raptor". There are two traditional terms used to describe a person involved in falconry: a falconer flies a falcon; an austringer flies a hawk or an eagle...
. There are barely a hundred falconers in the entire United States, and Boyce was known personally to all of them. Eventually, Boyce was arrested. After escaping from federal prison and acquiring a new identity via ghosting, he resumed his old habit of attending falconry competitions, now wearing a new name but still associating with falconers who had known him by his original name. Boyce was swiftly rearrested.
Types of ghosters
Most ghosters are running away from something: a criminal record, a marriage, or bad debts. Unlike more typical identity thieves, it is often the case that a ghoster is a former criminal who genuinely desires to reform and who seeks an unblemished identity (even if acquired illegally) as a necessary part of the process. Several members of the Revolutionary Youth MovementRevolutionary Youth Movement
The Revolutionary Youth Movement was the section of Students for a Democratic Society that opposed the Worker Student Alliance of the Progressive Labor Party...
of the 1960s eventually disavowed their radical pasts and desired to become normal citizens with absolutely no ties to their earlier actions. In several cases, former radicals were able to evade arrest for more than 20 years because, through ghosting, they acquired new identities in which they proceeded to live entirely law-abiding lives. During the Vietnam war
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, many young men in the United States avoided the draft by fleeing to Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
or other nations, where they acquired ghost identities enabling them to live as natives of those countries.
During the days of racial segregation in the United States
Racial segregation in the United States
Racial segregation in the United States, as a general term, included the racial segregation or hypersegregation of facilities, services, and opportunities such as housing, medical care, education, employment, and transportation along racial lines...
and apartheid in South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
, light-skinned mulattos who were legally defined as Negroes had strong incentive to pass as Caucasians. Some of these individuals may have stolen the identities of deceased white persons, acquiring birth certificates that listed them as "white." (In South Africa, there was a third legal category of colored
Colored
Colored is a term once widely used in the United States to describe black people and Native Americans...
people, which would make the transition less noticeable.)
Famous examples
The most famous ghoster is Ferdinand Waldo DemaraFerdinand Waldo Demara
Ferdinand Waldo Demara, Jr. , known as "the Great Impostor", masqueraded as many people from monks to surgeons to prison wardens...
, alias "The Great Impostor", whose case is unusual for two reasons: (1) he appropriated the identities of several different men (in series);(2) all of Demara's ghosted identities were persons still alive at the time and therefore able to confront him. After Demara's death in 1982, it was revealed (in his New York Times obituary) that he had been arrested twice on charges of attempted sex with minors.
The American film actor Wallace Ford
Wallace Ford
Wallace Ford was an English film and television actor who, with his friendly appearance and stocky build later in life, appeared in a number of film westerns and B-movies....
was a successful ghoster. Born in England under the name Samuel Jones, he was estranged from his family at an early age and placed in a school in Canada. At the age of 15, Jones became a hobo
Hobo
A hobo is a term which is often applied to a migratory worker or homeless vagabond, often penniless. The term originated in the Western—probably Northwestern—United States during the last decade of the 19th century. Unlike 'tramps', who work only when they are forced to, and 'bums', who do not...
and stowed away aboard freight trains with a fellow hobo named Wallace Ford. The two boys eventually were in a train accident; Jones survived, but Ford was killed. Jones then appropriated the other man's name and some aspects of his biography, becoming a successful actor under the name Wallace Ford, eventually starring on Broadway and in Hollywood films. As "Wallace Ford," Jones used the real Ford's birthdate and other statistics on all of his own tax returns and official documents, even applying for a passport as Wallace Ford for his 1937 return to England. Only shortly before his death in 1966 did the actor reveal the complete truth about his identity.
Jones (Ford) was fortunate to have an ideal candidate for his ghost identity: a dead person of his own race, sex and approximate age whose death was never officially recorded. (No one came forward to identify the real Wallace Ford's remains.) Typically, ghosters seeking a dead person's identity must choose someone whose death has been recorded in public archives, creating a risk that, after donning this new identity, the ghoster will eventually be confronted with a copy of his "own" death certificate.
Some fictional characters are ghosters. One example is Seymour Skinner
Seymour Skinner
Principal W. Seymour Skinner is a fictional character in the American animated sitcom The Simpsons. He is voiced by Harry Shearer. Born in Capitol City, he is the principal of Springfield Elementary School...
, the grade-school principal in The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
. Several years after his first appearance on this series, Skinner revealed that he was an impostor who had stolen the real Seymour Skinner's life and identity after the real Skinner died in combat overseas. Bizarrely, the false Skinner was abetted in this scheme by the real Skinner's mother, who preferred the impostor over her actual son. Creed Bratton
Creed Bratton
Creed Bratton is an American actor and musician, a former member of The Grass Roots...
, from The Office, is another example of a character who has stolen the identity of another man. Don Draper
Don Draper
Donald "Don" Draper is a fictional character and the protagonist of AMC's television series Mad Men. He is portrayed by 2008 Golden Globe winner Jon Hamm. Until the third season finale, Draper was Creative Director of Manhattan advertising firm Sterling Cooper...
, the main character in AMC
AMC
AMC may refer to:* AMC , a short-lived British steam car manufactured in London in 1910*AMC Networks, an American media company** AMC , originally American Movie Classics, a cable television channel owned by AMC Networks...
's Mad Men
Mad Men
Mad Men is an American dramatic television series created and produced by Matthew Weiner. The series premiered on Sunday evenings on the American cable network AMC and are produced by Lionsgate Television. It premiered on July 19, 2007, and completed its fourth season on October 17, 2010. Each...
, is yet another example of a Ghoster. Don obtained the identity from his deceased superior officer in the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
.
Undoubtedly, there are other successful ghosters whose imposture has never been discovered, because, unlike Wallace Ford, they never revealed their imposture.