The Shadow
Dreaming of ghosts: meaning and interpretation
What has not quite left
Something from the past, or from you, still present without a body: a memory, a guilt, a loss or an unresolved fear.
Symbolic reading
Dreaming of a ghost, a shadow at the foot of the bed or a presence you cannot see usually speaks of something that has not quite left: a memory, a relationship, a guilt, a part of you left half-finished. It is frightening because it has no clear shape. If the ghost was moving things, that matter still shapes your days; if it was trying to tell you something, you may already know what it is. It is not a visit from beyond: it is your psyche asking to close something.
Jungian key
Jung wrote that the spirits of dreams look a lot like complexes: contents with a life of their own that split off from consciousness and come back uninvited. The ghost belongs to the Shadow. It stops frightening once you ask who it is and what it came for.
Ask the presence what it wants. What gets named stops haunting.