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There are a number of other ghosts at Hogwarts who aren't the well-known "house" ghosts, such as Professor Binns and Moaning Mertle. We know there are a lot more, as a lot turn up to Sir Nicholas' death-day party.

So, who are all these ghosts? Were they all former teachers or students at the school?

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    Is there any evidence to suggest that all of the ghosts at the Deathday party were from the school? I always got the impression that they weren't, and some of them (such as the Headless Hunt) had travelled from elsewhere to attend. May 14, 2012 at 9:00
  • I'd agree there - the ghosts at the deathday party could well have been from outside the school. I just assumed at least some of them were from the school.
    – Nick Shaw
    May 14, 2012 at 9:22
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    The Gray Lady is the daughter of Rowena Ravenclaw, so while I don't think she was a student or teacher, he certainly is related to Hogwarts. Similar is true about the Bloody Baron. We know how Nick got beheaded but I don't know whether he studied at Hogwarts: scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/14587
    – b_jonas
    May 14, 2012 at 16:47
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    @Izkata - Nope. He's a spirit of chaos. NOT a ghost (meaning a remaint of living person) Mar 10, 2014 at 1:47
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    Lupin stated in the deathly hallows that practically all British witches and wizards are educated in Hogwarts so anyone who comes up from kent would probably be an ex-hogwartsian Oct 7, 2017 at 14:24

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I agree with Anthony Grist -- I think many of the ghosts who were at Sir Nicholas's Deathday Party came in from other places.

In Philosopher's Stone, as Harry is waiting to be Sorted, "about twenty" ghosts appear, including the house ghosts (as an FYI, here the Fat Friar confirms he was indeed a Hufflepuff while at Hogwarts -- this is all in chapter 7, The Sorting Hat). However, at Sir Nicholas's Deathday Party, it is described as having "hundreds" of ghosts in attendance, plus Peeves the poltergeist.

Now Peeves would not have been a student anywhere, for poltergeists do not spawn from the spirit of a person who has died, like a traditional ghost; a poltergeist is an evil or malevolent energy that forms from negative or tumultuous feelings or vibes from a living person. Peeves is a bit of an exception, for he is corporeal. Traditionally, poltergeists are not (they knock on things and make scary noises, and seem to exhibit the most activity in relation to one specific person whose energy the poltergeist is feeding off). So Peeves could not have been a spirit that had once been a person.

There may have been ghosts in attendance who were older than Hogwarts and thereby would not have had the chance to attend. Some of the ghosts were nuns. At least one was a knight (with an arrow through his head). One female ghost was a (wailing) widow. Of course the Headless Hunt was made up of the ghosts of those who had been decapitated, who shared a love of hunting (Chamber of Secrets - chapter 8, The Deathday Party). Sir Nicholas was a member of the royal court during his day (Tales of Beedle the Bard) So, there's a brief summary of the occupations of some of the ghosts we meet in the books.

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    Having just re-read The Deathday Party chapter from Chamber of Secrets, I concur that most of the ghosts in attendance were from outside the school (the wailing widow "coming all the way up from Kent", as Sir Nicholas says). So I guess my question is reduced to the other ghosts who inhabit the school, to which I guess we have no canonical information - oh well!
    – Nick Shaw
    May 15, 2012 at 8:20
  • @Nick. "coming all the way up from Kent"... maybe. Harry comes all the way up from London each year, so I'm not sure it's definitive one way or the other.
    – gef05
    May 16, 2012 at 4:58

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