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The "ghosts of Halo" were a phenomenon where unidentified, glitched players seemingly joined out of nowhere on multiplayer matches that occurred during the times of Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo: Reach.

Overview

The "ghost" players tended to behave bizarrely and possess odd features, but the most common traits are their lack of gamertags, not showing up on the scoreboard, sometimes being invulnerable to damage and erratic movement.

While sightings of "classic" ghost players--visible but abnormal in behaviour--are rare and cannot be consistently reproduced, a unique form of ghost player can be produced in Halo: Reach's Forge by severely overburdening the game engine in an already-laggy environment.

History

Halo 2

The first mention of a "ghost of Halo" was on April 11, 2005, when a person who went by the username Anti Noob uploaded a video about "The Ghost of Lockout" onto Mythica.org, a website that formerly hosted Halo videos during the franchise's early days.

The video showed Anti Noob and another player, The Underdogg, playing on the Halo 2 map Lockout when a third player joins the match while The Underdogg was AFK. This player didn't appear on the scoreboard and moved around without walking animations. While this player was able to consistently kill Anti Noob and The Underdogg with plasma grenades, Anti Noob was unable to damage the ghost back by meleeing them.

Anti Noob posted the video onto the High Impact Halo forum, where it sparked a long debate about its authenticity. Anti Noob stated that the broken walking animations is a glitch that they were able to replicate, yet they didn't know the reason why it occurred. The "ghost" player revealed themselves as Auronkiller7, who joined Anti Noob's game and couldn't hear him through the in-game voice chat. This was corroborated by looking at Anti Noob's game stats for this particular multiplayer match on Lockout through Bungie.net.

Another notable mention of a "ghost" in Halo 2 was in 2006, when Halo machinima clan HollywoodHalo posted about their encounter with the "Ghost of Turf"in May 2005.

While the group was filming a video on the map Turf, a player called Dagg3tt joined their game and exhibited similar behaviours with the Ghost of Lockout, such as sliding around the map without walking animations and lacking a visible gamer tag. While the match dealt with lag and other glitches, a second "ghost" player joined the game, and both it and Dagg3tt fought until one of the ghosts was killed.

Aside from these two viral encounters, and despite the technical theories behind the glitched players, the phenomenon spread across the Halo community as an urban legend, and other people started reporting their own encounters with ghost players in their multiplayer matches, especially on Lockout and Turf.

Halo 3

This glitch returned with the release of Halo 3, as videos sprung up of "ghost" players acting similarly with the previous game's ghosts. A well-known example is the "Ghost of Blackout" by ProjectModStudios, another Halo group. Utilising Theater mode, a player joined with the familiar lack of gamer tag and appearance on the scoreboard, as well as sliding around without walking animations. A new trait of ghost players is that you can't attach the Theater camera onto them. In this case, the ghost player was not invulnerable. Another encounter is the "Ghost of Sandtrap" by Generalkidd, wherein a ghost player joined a modded Forge game for a second before disappearing a second later. He noted that the game was extremely laggy, and that it may have played a role in this glitched player.

Halo: Reach

The "ghosts" of Halo: Reach differ from the previous games in that they only appeared in Forge. Unlike previous ghosts, these players appear on the scoreboard, albeit dead. Other players are unable to see the actions of the glitched player, even when they use vehicles and equipment such as the Jetpack, where the vehciles simply slide around the map without its animations, and the Jetpack fires up while remaining on the ground. This glitch can be readily replicated by overloading the Forge map, after which a random player in the lobby becomes the ghost player.

Encounters with the "ghosts of Halo" decreased in frequency by the time of Halo: Reach and the games developed by 343 Industries as glitches become less mystified over time, and the network issues that led to ghosts become less common.