The Sims 4 Ghosts Explained, From Why You Want To Turn Into A Ghost ...

How to turn your ghost back into a regular Sim

As fun as it can be to have a ghost in your Sims' household, there are some good reasons for wanting to restore your dead Sims to life. Neither family members nor the deceased themselves are ever quite able to get over the loss: living loved ones still become sad when interacting with the ghost's grave marker, and the deceased themselves have the unique option to mourn for their own lost life.

Also, ghosts can get kind of distracting after a while: even putting aside their tendency to idly possess household appliances, it can just look a bit weird to have a ghost residing alongside their living family, all of whom are still presumably growing and ageing. Ultimately, you (maybe) wanted that Sim to live a good, long, happy life, right?

Bringing a ghost Sim back from the dead is no easy task: it can be done, but it usually takes a special show of dedication.

There are two methods of restoring a ghost to life in the base game, and two more have been introduced in add-on content:

Ambrosia: Ambrosia is a food that can be prepared and fed to a ghost Sim in order to resurrect them. However, it can only be prepared by a Sim who has achieved Level 10 in both the Cooking and Gourmet Cooking skills; and requires some extremely rare ingredients: a Death Flower, an Angelfish, and a Potion of Youth.

The Book of Life: A Sim who has the Poetic reward trait (granted for completing the Bestselling Author aspiration) can take preemptive measures to protect their loved ones from a ghostly purgatory.

Poetic Sims have the ability to write The Book of Life on a computer; once written, the book can be bound to another living Sim using the 'Capture Epic Saga' interaction. From then on, if the target Sim dies and becomes a playable ghost, they can use the book to restore themselves to life. (Note: The Book of Life cannot be bound to Sims who are already ghosts, or to its own author.)

Wishing Well: A ghost can interact with the wishing well object and choose to wish for 'Life'. If they succeed, they will either be restored straight away; given a serving of ambrosia; or given the ingredients to craft ambrosia, which will require the same skill levels set out above. (Requires The Sims 4: Romantic Garden stuff pack.)

Dedeathify: A spellcaster who has achieved the rank of Master of Untamed Magic can use the Dedeathify spell on a ghost to bring them back to life. (Requires The Sims 4: Realm of Magic game pack.)

Resurrection cheats: If the officially sanctioned in-game methods are beyond your Sims' reach - or if you want instant results - you can bring a playable ghost back to life using cheats instead.

After opening the cheats console and turning testingcheats on, enter 'traits.remove_trait {cause of death}' to instantly return your Sim to the land of the living.

For example, if some cruel person lured a Sim into a swimming pool and then blocked all the exits until they drowned, entering 'traits.remove_trait drown' on the active ghost of said Sim would immediately undo that terrible fate.

If you don't know or can't remember a Sim's cause of death, don't worry: you can view their death trait in their Simology panel. And as always, be sure to save your game beforehand.