Smileys & Emotion · Emoji 0.6
👻Ghost Emoji
Basically, it just means "ghost" or “spooky.” People use it to lighten the mood or show they’re finding something a bit weird or funny.
Also searched as silly emoji.
The 👻 emoji represents a ghost or spirit.
- Unicode
- U+1F47B
- Released
- 2010
- Shortcode
- :ghost:
- Skin tones
- No
01 — Meaning
What does the 👻 Ghost emoji mean?
One character, many names — these are the wordings people actually type, all 13 of them.
People also look for it as silly emoji, silly face emoji, ghost face emoji.
02 — Platforms
Ghost emoji on iPhone, Android, WhatsApp and X
Vendors keep repainting this one. Counting the archived versions further down, the ghost has been drawn in 3 ways.
See the whole set the way each system draws it — iPhone emojis, Android emojis, WhatsApp emojis and Discord emojis.
03 — Copy & codes
Ghost emoji copy and paste
Tap any value to copy it. The emoji itself works everywhere, the escapes are for your code, and the shortcode Slack and Discord expect is :ghost:.
All emoji copy and paste →In your code
Pick the notation your language wants. They all resolve to the ghost, code point U+1F47B.
04 — How to type
How to type the 👻 Ghost emoji
No picker to hand? The ghost can be typed straight from the keyboard — the codes for that are below, one per system.
05 — Download
Ghost emoji PNG and SVG
Transparent PNG and SVG for thumbnails, decks and design files — one file per vendor, which makes 9. Artwork belongs to whoever drew it, so check the licence before commercial use.
Emoji PNG library →
Apple
Google
Twitter / X
Facebook
Microsoft
WhatsApp
06 — Combinations
Ghost emoji combinations
Ready-made combos built around ghost for bios, captions and comments. Tap to copy.
All combinations →Want two emojis fused into one sticker instead of set side by side? Emoji Kitchen does that with 👻, and there are more ready-made pairs in emoji combinations and aesthetic emoji combos.
08 — In conversation
What 👻 means from a girl or a guy
Who sent the ghost and what came before it change the reading more than the emoji itself does.
09 — Around the world
What 👻 means in other countries
Reads the same worldwide as a friendly cartoon spirit — the only real split is which context you drop it in.
Decorative, spooky-but-cute seasonal symbol with no deeper meaning attached to it
Shorthand for “I went quiet” or “I disappeared,” echoing the slang verb “ghosting”
Riskier choice here — “ghosting” implies ignoring someone, which reads badly to a manager
Before you send it: Safe for casual chat; skip it in a work thread where it could imply you dropped contact with someone.
10 — Apps
What 👻 means on TikTok, WhatsApp and Discord
The character is the same everywhere, but the artwork and the reading of it change from app to app.
12 — History
Where the 👻 Ghost emoji came from
This one is older than Unicode emoji: Japanese carriers were drawing it on their handsets years before the standard existed, which it finally joined in 2010.
Same character every time — U+1F47B never changed. Only the drawing did, and only because each vendor redraws its own set. Someone on an older phone still sees the older picture.
Long before Unicode had emoji, Japanese carriers shipped their own picture sets.
👻 existed there as
KDDI au E4CB, SoftBank E11B.
Those codes are why it survived into the standard at all — Unicode had to keep Japanese messages readable.
Ghost was approved as U+1F47B and shipped in Emoji 0.6 (2010). Emoji 0.6 is the original 2010 batch that came over from the Japanese sets.
Every vendor keeps its own artwork, so 👻 is redrawn by Apple, Google, Twitter / X, Facebook, OpenMoji, Samsung, Microsoft, WhatsApp, JoyPixels. The character you send never changes — only the picture does.
13 — FAQ