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[chris_v]

So I got myself a ghostly dwarf. I tried to engrave a slab for him, but I do not have the choice. He does not appear in the menu in the craftsdwarf shop when I try to engrave the slab. I checked the wiki and it said that you cannot engrave slabs for caravan guards. The wiki then gives you the "helpful" advice that the solution to this is to make sure you bury your caravan guards.

I am pretty sure that the dwarf in question came from a caravan. It says he is an axedwarf and I keep track of all my military dwarves and none have died.

So is there any way to get rid of him? Am I stuck with him for another hundred years? I cannot find his body, but I do see a lot of bodies of goblins that died in the same battle. The battle was by a murky pool, maybe he fell in the water? Should i try to drain the pool to look for his body. Or would it show up  in the water?

Is there

[Fire_fox]

I would try to drain some pools or just build some coffins and set the to bury people only see if one dwarf goes out to grab a body. If they don't you can try to drain the pools. Or you could look over the pond with "k" to see if he is there.

[chris_v]

I did find his skeleton! It is underwater. Has anyone tried to pick up things under water? It seems it is just 1 z level of 7/7 water. Do I have to drain that? Well I will give it a try.

[i2amroy]

If it is just a murky pool then you can simply dig out the edges of it until the water level drops to below 4/7 and then retrieve anything inside the pool before rain makes it fill up again.

[Urist McDwarfFortress]

You're dwarfs won't dive for the body, you'll have to drain the pool.  Do you have any nobles' chambers around?

[chris_v]

ARGH!!

The body disappeared!!! I don't know how or why... I dug a new large open pit by the murky pool and connected it with a channel to the murky pool. Then the water from the murky pool went into the new lake and lowered to about 4. Then I dug channels next to the body in order to create down ramps (i thought my dwarves needed down ramps to get to the body on the lower level). Then the "partial skeleton" disappeared, and all I was left with was the poor axedwarve's gear. I am not sure whether my digging of the channels did it or if it was the sudden draining of water.

What are the negative effects of ghosts? I am not sure if i should grit my teeth and bear it, or should i try to find an earlier saved game.

[FrisianDude]

Are you sure no-one picked it up for burial? Check the z-stock-screen ('corpses', way down below) if it's still around.

[FuzzyZergling]

Sometimes being moved around by water makes items disappear.

[Sphalerite]

Sometimes being moved around by water makes items disappear.

However, the disappeared items are still accessible to your dwarves, if they can reach the tile where the object was.

[chris_v]

I restarted an old save and fixed it. This time around I carefully dug channels at the edges of the murky pool to expand the pool, instead of doing a sudden draining as last time. I think the skeleton disappeared because it was moved by water. If I knew that the skeleton would still be accessible, I would not have restarted but this is too strange to even think about.

Anyway, I finally put the poor dwarf to rest. Thank you all for your help.

[Nivim]

[...]I would not have restarted but this is too strange to even think about.

:/  :\ What does this mean?

[chris_v]

I meant that the idea that the body may be able to be picked up even though it is invisible is too strange to consider, so I assumed that if I cannot see it, it must have disappeared.

[Grumbledwarfskin]

The missing body should show up in your stocks screen. You can designate it to be dumped from there, which is said to make disappeared items reappear...though given that they can dump stuff that's invisible, they can probably also bury him. If he had any nice armor/weapons, you might want to look for that in the stocks screen so you can unforbid it.

[Sawdust]

Anyway, I finally put the poor dwarf to rest. Thank you all for your help.

This was an interesting thread to read. Good work doing your best to let the tortured soul move on.  It was kind of like an episode of The Ghost Whisperer or Dead Like Me.