According to Rosemary Ellen Guiley in The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits, the calling ghost phenomena is when a ghost of a dead calls the name of those who are living in order to get their attention (64).  Some legends suggest that if one should hear a calling ghost saying their name they should not respond, as some people believe that calling ghosts lead the living to their demise.  Likewise, other legends suggest that a stranger who calls your name may be a calling ghost in disguise, and one should not respond. Further, Guiley suggests that there is a link between the Sirens in Homer's Odyssey and the lore associated with the calling ghost.  In the Odyssey, Odysseus was warned that the song of the Sirens, nymphs that could sing away a man's mind, would make him forget about living and his life, causing him to eventually rot away and perish:

                                                                     First you will come
to the Sirens who enchant all who come near them. If any one
unwarily draws in too close and hears the singing of the Sirens,
his wife and children will never welcome him home again, for
they sit in a green field and warble him to death with the
sweetness of their song. There is a great heap of dead men's
bones lying all around, with the flesh still rotting off them. (Homer 99)

Odysseus has his crew plug their ears with wax so they cannot hear the nymphs singing as they pass from Circe's isle to Scylla, and orders that his crew restrain him, by tying him to his ship's mast-allowing him to hear the song of the Sirens, without succumbing to the song's power:

Therefore pass these Sirens by, and stop your men's ears with
wax that none of them may hear; but if you like you can listen
yourself, for you may get the men to bind you as you stand
upright on a cross piece half way up the mast, and they
must lash the rope's ends to the mast itself, that you may have
the pleasure of listening. If you beg and pray the men to
unloose you, then they must bind you faster. (Homer 100)

Some people believe that calling ghosts are the spirits of dead ancestors, attempting to get the attention of their living relatives, while other individuals believe that calling ghosts are spirit guides.  In Hawaii, there is a heavy belief in the calling ghost lore that suggests that calling ghosts are disembodied voices with the sole aim to catch their victims unaware.  According to lore, calling ghosts sneak up behind their victims and call out their name in an effort to get them to turn around, and it is believed that once the unaware victim turns around, they are subjected to severe illness and even death (Guiley 64).

Often times, people experience moments when they believed someone called their name and either no one is present at the location, or no one in the location at the time called out their name.  It is at such moments, one might wonder if they have experienced the calling ghost phenomena.



Sources:

Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. "calling ghost." The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits. 2nd ed. New York: Checkmark Books, 2000. 34.

Homer. Odyssey. Trans. Robert Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.
Calling Ghost
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