How Did Casper Become A Friendly Ghost? - CBR

Since his days in publication with Harvey Comics, Casper the Friendly Ghost has always been viewed as a ghostly child who loves to make friends with humans. However, as the years progressed, fans began to wonder precisely how Casper became a ghost in the first place. While everyone knows that spirits are what occasionally come after a person passes, hints to Casper's death are never explained. Instead, the cartoons and comics focus more on his adventures and dealings with his strange uncles, the Ghostly Trio. That being said, there are some answers to Casper's origin.

Because Casper is just a boy, many had believed that the cartoon ghost died sometime when he was a child. From that idea, even more theories to the circumstances of his death began to emerge. The notion that he died as a child was born from an episode of his cartoon, "There's Good Boos To-Night," in which Casper befriends a fox that later passes. However, rather than crossing over, the fox returned as a ghost to continue spending time with Casper. To detract from the morbidity of the idea, Harvey Comics came up with its own view that changed the lore forever.

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According to the company, Casper was born a ghost to two ghost parents. Along with the change came an update to Casper's design that gave him a slimmer figure and feet. This avoided the notion that he was a deceased child and established ghosts as something separate from the afterlife. Casper was now looked at more like a creature akin to a goblin or other spectral beings thanks to the updated origin. While this idea worked for a few decades, his first live-action film resurrected the age-old theory of how he died -- and gave fans a different answer.

In the family film Casper, the friendly ghost is portrayed as the same fun-loving character that audiences have grown to adore. However, rather than his parents being ghosts, the film kept his origin grounded and explained that he was once a living child. The story of his death explains that when Casper was 12, he was out sledding too late one night and caught pneumonia. Eventually, he succumbed to his illness, and he chose to remain a ghost to be with his grieving father. The explanation is clearly more somber than what came before but helped to ground the character and the story.

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While this explanation confirms that at least one version of Casper came to be through natural causes, none of his other films ever brought it back up. As a result, Casper has since remained in a purgatory of his own where he was either born a ghost or became one after passing away at a young age. Fortunately, neither situation has negatively affected his cheery disposition.

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Even though Casper's film origin is more realistic and sad, his story hasn't been updated or retconned. So now, fans have the option to believe either the classic origin or the more recent one. No matter the version, Casper will always be a beloved Harvey Comics character. He also shows that positivity can always shine through whether a person gets their start from a happy or sad situation.

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