There’s a ghost that haunts Final Fantasy XIV, but only under specific conditions.
I haven’t seen it, myself, because the hunt involves a less than 1% chance of a virtual ghostly encounter. But if you try, on a rainy night in Eorzea, you might just spot the translucent spirit of an ill-fated NPC named Edda Pureheart. You’ll find her in one of three locations in Limsa Lominsa, Gridania, or Ul’dah, the game’s three major city-states where players gather to hang out and shout at each other.
Most reported sightings of this ghost seem to happen at Gridania, for whatever reason. That’s the one in the forest. The spot she appears at is in a little area behind the Carpenter’s Guild. A playground, mostly. If you wait around on a rainy night at about 2:00 a.m. Eorzea time, you might see her.
When she does appear, she’ll always be under a lamppost. Edda shows up in a translucent form, wearing all white, with her hands clasped together at her waist. She doesn’t react or move. She just appears for a few seconds and then vanishes.
There is one catch. Edda will only appear if a player has finished the dungeon Tam-Tara Deepcroft (Hard). It’s a major part of her narrative. Some say if you finish floor 50 of Palace of the Dead, she’ll stop appearing (for similar reasons), but there’s debate on that.
If you want to see all of Edda’s scenes, from beginning to dire end, check here. It’ll give you the why. In the narrative, Edda is a plucky healer you see when you first start your journey in Final Fantasy XIV. You’ll run into her party just outside the entrance to Sastasha, the game’s very first dungeon. Edda doesn’t do well, there, and she has trouble keeping up with the tank, who also happens to be her fiance, named Avere. Long story short, Avere eventually dies, Edda blames herself, and spirals into madness.
That was all in the base version of A Realm Reborn, which released in August 2013. Her ghost arrived later with Patch 2.3: Defenders of Eorzea on July 8, 2014, along with Tam-Tara Deepcroft (Hard). Palace of the Dead arrived two years later with Patch 3.35 on July 19, 2016.
The Hunt for Edda
The 1% chance of seeing her is not a lie. If you dig deep and try to find out when her ghost was first reported, that was probably sometime in 2015. That’s discounting anyone who might have seen her ghost and just didn’t register it before then, or never reported it. The existence of her ghost was revealed during the NicoNico Super FATE event that year, along with the odds of seeing her. Players were only told that there was a “<1%” chance of glimpsing an npc wearing white for a few seconds in any of the three city-states. At first, there was also a misunderstanding that she might have been holding a severed head, but that was not the case.
It took about a year from July 2014, when this ghostly easter egg was first added to the game, for chatter to heat up. Some people still camp out to see if they can spot her, but you never know if she’ll actually appear or in which city-state she’ll even decide to haunt. A 1% chance is very low, after all. The videos we do have of her ghostly sightings are rare enough.
Why, Edda, Why?
But why the city-states, and why under lampposts? Design-wise, it’s probably to give her a slight boost at being spotted. They’re semi-populated areas, but not so populated that a crowd of people are going to see her all at once. They’re sort of off-the-beaten path lampposts in areas a player or two might pass by. Enough that someone is going to see her sooner or later.
Her manifestation point in Limsa Lominsa, for example, seems to be just up the way from the aetheryte plaza, but I could be wrong. In any case, she’s within viewing distance of a nearby bench, where players can sit, relax, and shout at each other.
Her spot in Ul’dah is a little more obtuse. Tucked away in a corner by the chocobo porter, from what I’ve heard. That seems like a slightly less obvious area.
Folklore Connections and the Uncanny Factor
The ghost of Edda is a fun little easter egg, but there are qualities about her that root her in real world folklore and the uncanny. Some have pointed out that her appearances around 2:00 a.m. might be related to the Witching Hour. Well, the Witching Hour begins at 3:00 a.m.
Instead, walk over to Japan, where Final Fantasy XIV is developed, and consider the Hour of the Ox. This goes back to Chinese tradition involving double-hours that correspond to the Chinese Zodiac. The time between 1:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. is known as the Hour of the Ox. Like the Witching Hour, this is thought to be a time when the barriers between the world of the living and the world of the dead are the thinnest. The Japanese curse known as Ushi no toki mairi would be practiced at these hours for that reason.
Edda’s appearance as a ghost also tells us a little something about her folklore inspirations. She has most of the qualities of a Yūrei, a grieving spirit bound to the earth or specific locations by powerful emotional residue. These spirits also wear white and are translucent. I think Edda might fall into the category of an onryō or vengeful spirit, too, as she was an ordinary woman who suffered emotional abuse and betrayal before meeting a tragic end.
The fact that she also appears with only a less than 1% chance on a rainy night, and sticks around for a whole three seconds, points to the folklore surrounding both weather factors (rain being a conduit for paranormal activity) and stationary apparitions, or even environmental recordings. Though in the fictional Eorzea, we can probably settle on her being an actual spirit. A stationary fleeting apparition is just a manifestation that happens at a specific place without any interaction or movement. There are many, many reported cases of such things, but that’s getting into the paranormal weeds.
Edda herself is an uncanny character. She begins just as any other player in the game begins. When you first see her, she’s wearing the basic conjuror robes and that basic pointy mage hat. But as her journey continues, she slips into madness, and becomes something else entirely. A digital ghost that players to this day continue to hunt for.
Will I ever see Edda? Probably not. I don’t actually play Final Fantasy XIV. I did at one point, way back when Dalamud first began to fall, and then again when the game relaunched as A Realm Reborn. In fact, it was in the Tam-Tara Deepcroft that I remember listening to a live episode of Art Bell’s Dark Matter, and he was reading my ancient article on the Siberia recording. That was something. But also well before Edda began making ghostly manifestations.