" In Old High German and in Old English, geist and gaest did not designate a revenant as geist and ghost do today, and scato, "the shadow, did not apply to phantoms. We can deduce from this that revenants were not evanescent: they were not images or mists, but flesh and blood individuals, which is confirmed by the Norse literature and the rare texts from other Germanic countries. "

― Claude Lecouteux , The Return of the Dead: Ghosts, Ancestors, and the Transparent Veil of the Pagan Mind