Okay so my ii ghost theory(s):
1. How do ghosts come to exist in the first place?
Ghosts happen when a character gets hit by the red line and crosses the finish line at the same time.
So I've been thinking that when a character becomes a ghost the order of events from the computers(mephone4s subconscious) perspective is:
Character Gets hit by the red line.
Deletion process begins and deletes data regarding the recovery of the characters physical body¹
Character crosses the finish line
character recovery is activated and completes
Deletion process finishes deleting the personality data and barring attempts to recover the character
with this order of events the character is attempted to be recovered with only half the needed data resulting in a glitched ghost character.
2. What are ghosts anyway?
Under my theory Ghosts are essentially formless globs of pure shimmer energy (though not a lot) that takes form based on the personality data of the character.
I think that the ghosts probably could manipulate what they look like if they felt the need likely including having legs.² the main reason they wouldn't would probably be because they look how they expect themselves to look so Changing their appearance would be difficult.
3. Why can't ghosts leave the area of the mansion?
I have 2 mini ideas for why this is:
1. The mansion creation theory
Basically this one revolves around mephone subconsciously recognizing the glitched characters to be ghosts and just putting them in the haunted mansion area for the challenge and ghosts can't usually leave the location they haunt so they're stuck there
Why can't they leave once mephone and the original mansion are out of the picture? No clue. My best bet on this one is it's ultimately up to the ghosts programming and maybe they could push their boundaries out with work or something? Idk
So in this theory mephone has a programmed grid over the inanimate Islands³ (or maybe the world idk) and since the ghosts are glitched characters instead of recovering to a chosen location they were recovered to default coordinates that overlap the mansion and can't leave due to some glitchiness due to not having a body that grant them mobility⁴
So yeah that's my ii ghost theory(s). Its mostly headcanons stacked on top of each other but I like it so im gonna stick with it
¹we know the physical body data and personality data is stored separately because of s3e8
²we know that with practice they can manipulate their bodies to be more or less physical at least. As we see bow operate a tv remote normally during s3e8 while knife struggles at first in s2e18(there are probably more examples)
³main inanimate island, the idiotic island's, s3's island and, indefinite island(though it is possible multiple of these were completely made by mephone)
⁴ bow is shown to be able to at least partially leave when possessing apple in s2e18
