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{{trope}}
[[File:NecromancerSolvesCase.jpg|frame]]
{{quote|'''Jack Hardemeyer''': Wait! Uh... Now, I'm sure there's another way.<br />
'''Mayor''': Jack, I spent an hour last night in my bedroom talking to Fiorello La Guardia, and he's been dead for forty years. Now get me the [[Ghostbusters]]!|''[[Ghostbusters]] 2''}}
|''[[Ghostbusters]] 2''}}
 
A character previously shown to be dead appears and converses with a living character. Often a [[Spirit Advisor]] character. [[I See Dead People]] is the ability to do this with spirits in general.
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* [[Naruto]] got one with the Fourth Hokage when he was about to release too much of the Kyuubi's power. Turns out, the Fourth put a bit of himself into the seal so he could keep an eye on Naruto. After all, {{spoiler|he is Naruto's father}}.
** Same with Kakashi. After being taken down by Pain, spend some time talking to his dead father.
* In ''[[SoraSo noRa WotoNo Wo To]]'' a flashback shows Filicia having a conversation with a dead soldier from the war a couple of hundred years earlier.
* Since Subaru Sumeragi is a psychic whose powers include contacting the spirits of the dead, this happens often in [[Tokyo Babylon]].
* In ''[[Code Geass]]'', C.C. often chats with {{spoiler|Marianne}}.....[[Not Quite Dead|Oh]] [[Grand Theft Me|wait]].....
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== Comic Books ==
* This is pivotal in the ''[[Marvel 1602]]'' comic miniseries. A character gains vital information, but only by promising not to reveal it as long as he lives. Since he's already on death row and both he and his wife are powerful sorcerers, he's able to use the [[Exact Words]] escape and tell the other characters what he's learned -- afterlearned—after he's dead.
* The James Robinson ''[[Starman (comics)|Starman]]'' comics had yearly issues where David Knight, Jack Knight's dead brother, came back to talk to him; these were some of the deepest and most emotional of the series.
* The ghost of [[Captain America (comics)]], dead for a year in [[Comic Book Time]], was summoned by Thor [https://web.archive.org/web/20081101132355/http://community.livejournal.com/scans_daily/6495598.html here]. [[Tear Jerker/Comics|It is sad.]]
* In ''[[Shade the Changing Man]]'', Kathy's murdered boyfriend Roger returns as a ghost for awhile. He couldn't talk at first but eventually starts communicating.
* Jesse Custer of ''[[Preacher (Comic Book)]]'' has several conversations with the ghost of John Wayne. According to Custer, the first one happened several years before John Wayne died.
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* Bill Willingham's ''[[Fables]]'' has [[Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs (novel)|Snow White]] receiving warnings of doom from beyond the grave courtesy of Colin, one of the [[Three Little Pigs]]
 
== [[Fan Works]] ==
* ''[[In The Dark]]'': In an effort to find Melanie after a freak accident involving their tour bus, both the remaining [[Spice Girls]] go to see a medium for some help. The girls' concerns about finding Melanie's lifeless body were alleviated when the medium explains how she wasn't able to talk to her because the abilities only work if the person is already passed on. The good news was that since Melanie wasn't present in the afterlife, she had to be still alive. {{spoiler|She eventually is found, but traumatized from being kept as a prisoner.}} The bad news is that Officer Shaw also meets with the same medium to find out about the other disappearances, {{spoiler|which ends with others being found dead.}}
 
== Film ==
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* ''Over Her Dead Body''
* ''Sin City''
* [[The Boondock Saints|Connor and Murphy MacManus]], after losing a friend while taking down a murderer, begin to question whether their [[Mission Fromfrom God]] is worth it. Cue [[Dead Person Conversation]] as their late buddy Rocco visits them in a dream and delivers an awesome pep talk on what it takes to be [[Rated "M" for Manly|REAL MEN]] and [[Vigilante Man|do what needs to be done]].
* [[Shutter Island]]. Teddy spoke with his dead wife during his sleep and his wife offered hints to aid his investigation.
* ''[[An American Werewolf in London]]''. David's dead best friend Jack, who was killed in the same attack that turned David into a werewolf, keeps appearing and telling David to commit suicide, else he'll keep transforming and killing people (who'll [[Walk the Earth]] in Limbo). Each time he turns up, he looks more and more decayed and rotted...and he starts being joined by all the people David kills along the way.
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* Much older than [[Shakespeare|Hamlet or Macbeth]]: Saul, desperate for advice now that God will no longer send him signs, consults a medium to conjure up the spirit of the prophet Samuel for advice. Samuel appears, chews Saul out for consulting with mediums, and foresees his death in the upcoming battle. Whoops.
** Interestingly, the Medium seemed shocked that Samuel actually appeared; she was probably a fraud and God bent the rules to let Samuel speak to Saul.
* In ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows]],'' a [[Dead Person Conversation]] between Harry and Dumbledore takes up an entire chapter.
** And in the chapter before that, Harry meets up with the ghosts of his parents, Sirius, and Remus Lupin, who give him final advice and escort him to his apparent doom.
** And one major plot-point resolution is that Snape is killed by Voldemort in the presence of Harry, but doesn't die immediately; he lives just long enough to urge Harry to extract certain memories to later view in the Pensieve, which Harry does. These finally settle the "whose side is Snape really on?" question.
** The characters also frequently interact with portraits of dead people, who seem to possess all the knowledge of the person, as well as with ghosts.
* Mad Larkin of [[Dan Abnett]]'s ''[[Warhammer 4000040,000]]: [[Gaunt's Ghosts]]'' is known to occasionally hallucinate conversations with people, including a certain dead Ghost. Some of this may be due to Soric's influence.
* [[Amelia Peabody]], the detective archeologist, has had at least one [[Talking in Your Dreams|dream-conversation]] with her deceased friend Abdullah since his death. They are cryptic enough that they do not interfere with fair play in the detection, but she believes them to be genuine.
* ''[[The Dresden Files]]''' main character Harry Dresden has had conversations with both of his deceased parents. His conversation with his mother was in "Blood Rites" as a magical sentient recording stored in Thomas's mind meant to prove that he was Harry's brother. His father appears both in a dream and when Harry is conscious. He just dispenses cryptic peptalks and no explanation is given how he's contacting Harry.
* In [[Graham McNeill]]'s [[Warhammer 4000040,000]] [[Ultramarines (novel)|Ultramarines]] novel ''Dead Sky Black Sun'', Uriel retreats from [[Cold-Blooded Torture]] to [[Happy Place|memories of his childhood home]], but is met there by his old mentor, Captain Idaeus, who reminds him that he would not have [[Take Up My Sword|appointed a coward as his successor]], and urges him to go back to the pain. Uriel assures him that he will not forsake his comrades.
* In [[Graham McNeill]]'s [[Warhammer 4000040,000]] [[Horus Heresy]] novel ''False Gods'', Horus is tempted by Chaos during a [[Dead Person Conversation]] apparently with the long dead Sejanus, actually with the just murdered Erebus.
* In ''[[The City of Dreaming Books]]'', Optimus either has a conversation with his dead mentor Dancelot, or hallucinates one as a result of losing his mind. Either way, he gets the advice he needs to avoid going insane.
* In the [[Backstory]] of Steve Parker's [[Warhammer 4000040,000]] novel ''Gunheads'', Wulfe was helped by a dead man, whose voice came over the vox just after he died and no one else could hear. At one point, his squad admit that they figured it out, and were hurt that he didn't tell them.
* In [[Neil Gaiman]]'s ''[[American Gods]]'', Mad Sweeney the leprechaun [[Attending Your Own Funeral|attends his own wake]], where he debates the interpretation of his life story provided by one of the other characters and tosses back a few glasses of whiskey. By the next morning, he seems to have shifted from [[Only Mostly Dead]] to [[Killed Off for Real]].
* This happens in ''[[The Lovely Bones]]'' when Ray realizes he's talking to Susie who posessed Ruth's body.
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* Also occurs in the other lost epics of the [[The Trojan Cycle|Trojan Cycle]]. Achilles dies in the ''Aethiopis'', then appears to Neoptolemus in the ''Little Iliad''. He appears a second time in the next epic, the ''Sack of Ilion'', and then appears '''again''' in the following epic, the ''Returns''.
* The entire ''[[Necroscope]] Saga'' is built on this, and the various ways the dead can be talked to, or forced to talk.
* In [[Robert E. Howard]]'s "[[The Phoenix on the Sword]]", [[Conan the Barbarian]] has a [[Talking in Your Dreams|dream conversation with Epemitreus]] "dead for fifteen hundred years" -- and—and comes back with a gift.
* In Jim Lehrer's ''The Franklin Affair,'' R, a (present-day) historian specializing in Franklin, goes to the house where Ben Franklin lived in London, and has an imaginary conversation with him, asking for advice on dealing with a dilemma involving Franklin's life. (He knows the conversation is all in his imagination.) What Franklin says is witty, sarcastic, and sardonic.
* Roxanne in ''[[The Inkworld Trilogy|Inkheart]]'' tells Dustfinger that she searched for someone that would let her talk to their {{spoiler|dead daughter}}, but that they were all charlatans.
* A running theme for the Takeshi Kovacs novels, starting with ''[[Altered Carbon]]''. Kovacs will remember a long-dead comrade and imagine them giving him tough-love advice.
* ''[[Warrior Cats]]}}'' is FULL of this trope, thanks to the setting of "[[Star Clan]]" which is the collective name of all dead Clan cats (except the worst ones). Spottedleaf's constant phophecy-giving to Firestar is the best example.
* In [[Devon Monk]]'s [[Allie Beckstrom]] novel ''Magic in the Blood'', Allie's father appears to talk to her.
* ''Speaking with the Dead'' short story by Elaine Cunningham (in [[Forgotten Realms|''Realms of Mystery'' anthology]]) explores some problems with this even in the world where such possibility is common knowledge.
 
 
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** Miles is unique, since he doesn't really converse with dead people: he just gets impressions of their last thoughts.
* In the second season, ''[[Dexter]]'' has one of these conversations with his brother, the Ice Truck Killer.
** The writers must like this trope--fromtrope—from Season 3 onwards, the "ghost" of Harry regularly pops up to give Dexter advice. And as Dexter learns, ignoring Harry's advice will usually lead to ... unfortunate outcomes.
* Caleb of ''[[American Gothic]]'' has these with his [[Spirit Advisor|sister Merlyn]] all the time.
* [[Veronica Mars]] spends much of the first season conversing with her murdered best friend Lilly Kane. Duncan, Lilly's brother, also speaks with her. In the second season episode "I Am God" Veronica dreams she's speaking to the victims of a bus-crash.
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** Though it's never clear if he was hallucinating or not: Bones remarks at the end of the episode that Booth couldn't have managed that escape by himself.
*** She also converses with the dead guy in the cemetery.
* ''[[The X-Files]]''. Deep Throat appears to Mulder in two seperate episodes after his death. On the first occasion both him and Mulder's father appear to persuade Mulder not to [[Near-Death Experience|give up his life]] -- Mulder—Mulder only speaks to his father, asking him if his sister is there (in the afterlife). His negative reply undoubtedly motivates Mulder to return to the land of the living and continue his search.
* ''[[Hannah Montana]]'' did this when some Loca Hot Coca leads to Miley having a cinderella dream where she's lost her voice and is no better than a house slave. Her mother comes back from the dead to talk her through it.
** It's also a [[Fridge Logic]] moment when you realise that she never actually drank the Coca her dad made for her. She takes the glass, puts it down and goes to sleep.
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* The live-action ''[[Witchblade (TV series)|Witchblade]]'' show had Sara do this regularly, usually with her deceased partner. A couple times she tried to solve a murder by speaking with ghost of the victim. They weren't as informative as she might have hoped.
* In ''[[Boy Meets World]]'', Shawn talks to his father a few times after he dies. It seems to be all in Shawn's head, though it's not made clear, since in the [[Grand Finale]] he's shown proudly watching over his boys before grabbing Rachel's ass, which causes her to look around in confusion since no-one was there to do it.
* ''[[Doctor Who]]'''s new series has had at least two episodes with this. Several people in [[Doctor Who/NS/Recap/S4 E8S30/E08 Silence in Thethe Library|Silence in the Library]] [[Ghost in the Machine|talk through their suits]] after being killed by the Vashta Nerada, and [[Doctor Who/Recap/S31 /E04 The Time of Angels|Bob]] mentions over the comm that the angels ripped out his throat.
 
 
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* ''[[The Family Circus]]'' occasionally has the angelic visage of the children's late grandfather visiting their still-living grandma.
* Tia Carmen in ''[[Baldo]]'' occasionally has conversations with her dead husband.
* In ''[[Jump Start]]'', Marcy's widowed mother decided to remarry, and expressed the hope that her late husband wouldn't object. His spirit appeared, wearing wings, reminded her that it'd been sixteen years since he died, and said now he could rest in peace.
 
 
== Radio ==
* The entirety of the ''[[Torchwood: theThe Lost Files]]'' radio play "The House of the Dead" is this, between [[Tear Jerker|Jack and Ianto]].
 
 
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== Video Games ==
* When [[Perfect Run Final Boss|Andross]] attempts to take Fox down with him at the end of [[Star Fox (series)|Star FoxFOX]] 64, Fox's father James appears to lead him out of the exploding base.
** [[Only Mostly Dead|Then again, maybe...]]
* An explicit power of the protagonist in [[Planescape: Torment]].
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* Arkantos in ''[[Age of Mythology]]'' fights his slain enemies in his dreams at the start of the campaign. Athena comments on this before [[Talking in Your Dreams|giving him a warning]].
* Tearjerkingly averted in Iji. She talks to Dan as if he's still alive after his death.
* [[The World Ends With You]] The characters are [[Dead All Along]] however shops have special marks to allow the characters to bypass their usual [[Invisible to Normals]] problem for [[Dead Person Conversation|dead person transactions]]. Never really taken advantage of in the plot because only one shopkeeper actually knows this and he's been dead who knows how long.
* Both subverted and played straight in ''[[Eternal Darkness|Eternal Darkness: Sanity's requiem]]'': at several points, characters have conversations with the ghosts of other characters. The main protagonist Alex is regularly visited by the ghost of her deceased grandfather Edward. Turns out it's the main antagonist Pious Augustus in disguise.
* Doctor Kyne from ''[[Dead Space (video game)|Dead Space]]'' holds conversations with his late wife. {{spoiler|[[Heroic Mime|Isaac]] doesn't have too much to say, but as it turns out, his conversations with Nicole also turn out to be this.}}
* ''[[The Adventures of Sam & Max: Freelance Police|Sam and Max Freelance Police]]'': the ghost of Momma Bosco is plain for everyone to see and talk with, likewise the specter of Mr. Spatula -- butSpatula—but Mr. Spatula is a [[The Speechless|speechless]] fish whom only Sam seems to understand.
* If [[The Hero|Celice]] waits by the water on Chapter 10 after [[Anti-Villain|Alvis]] has been killed in ''[[Fire Emblem]] 4: Genealogy of the Holy War'', he will have a conversation with the ghosts of his deceased parents, Sigurd and Diadora... who tell him that nothing was accomplished by the Emperor's death, and the war is not over before giving him a Life Ring.
* [[The Hero|Sgt.Baker]] in ''[[Brothers in Arms]]'' talks to the ghost (or hallucination) of Private Leggett
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== Visual Novels ==
* Towards the end of Kirari's normal route in ''[[Kira Kira (visual novel)Kirakira|Kira Kira]]'', Kirari appears out of nowhere and follows Shika around, forcing him to deal with his pent-up grief and allowing him to write a song about her. There's a heavy amount of [[Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane]] and [[All Just a Dream]], as Shika psychoanalyzes himself constantly and decides he's probably going crazy, but considering the whole incident with [[Spirit Advisor|Guitar-kun]] that occurred previously in the route, it's not hard to believe at all.
* Tohno Shiki of ''[[Tsukihime]]'', in the fundisc Kagetsu Tohya, there's an extra movie, Drinking Dreaming Moon, where Shiki talks with his adoptive brother, the real Tohno SHIKI (the other was at first a Nanaya). In the talk, SHIKI says it may be a [[Dead Person Conversation]] or [[All Just a Dream]], depending on what Shiki believes. In he end, though, it's revealed to the [[Visual Novel|player\reader]] that it WAS [[Dead Person Conversation]], complete with [[Demoted to Extra]]-Satsuki complaining he couldn't see her and barely heard one sentence she said.
 
 
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** There's also the scene of Belkar talking with Lord Shojo in his fever-induced dream.
* On ''[[The Last Days of Foxhound]]'', characters had conversations with Big Boss and The Sorrow. Of course it's more people reading from Sorrow's textcards.
* ''[[Bard]]'' has [https://web.archive.org/web/20140501090349/http://barred.smackjeeves.com/comics/869169/chrisper/ this] convo between [[Gender Bender|Chris Curran]] and [[Our Centaurs Are Different|Vas]].
 
 
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[[Category:Our Ghosts Are Different]]
[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]
[[Category:Dead Person Conversation{{PAGENAME}}]]
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