Hey, since you’re a ghost, can you give me your opinion on this question I have?
Say a guy dies at 32 and becomes a ghost. 16 years pass. Should that ghost be considered 32 or 48? I mean, they stopped aging, but they’re still around.
I'll admit that I don't exactly have a solid answer to this myself, haha. My own age is... pretty complicated. I died just before my 16th birthday, it's chronologically been 42 years since I was born... but I was also trapped for around 10 of those years in a place where time seems to flow at around 1/10th the speed, so those 10 years felt like 100. So, there's arguments for me to be 16, 42, or 132.
In the end, I just kind of... use the number that feels right to me. Maybe that's a cop-out answer, but... it's what I do. That's why I call myself "22-ish?", despite that not being any of those numbers. I figure that, even if I stopped physically aging at 16, that doesn't mean that I haven't had the opportunity to grow and mature mentally. I guess I'm just... doing so at my own pace now, you know?
In practice that tends to mean that I'm only really "growing up" during the time when I feel safe. Or, at least, that's what I tell myself as the reason that those 100 years shouldn't count towards my age... but maybe I'm just in denial about being 132 years old, who knows?
I know that my '22' number isn't perfect in all respects anyway, considering there certainly are some ways in which I seem like an 'old lady'. I probably wouldn't be able to figure out a Rotom Phone if one were handed to me, for example. So I guess there are some contexts where it's more useful to use chronological age, and others where it's better to just use the number that feels right.
I know that my answer might not be super useful to you if you're trying to figure out how to talk about one of the ghosts that you see wandering around or whatever. But... I don't think there should be any harm in just asking them what number feels right to them...? Of course, you know your own situation better than I do, so... I dunno. That's my take on it, you can do what you will with it.