ghost bullet

English

Noun

ghost bullet (plural ghost bullets)

1. (weaponry) A bullet that is shot by an unseen assailant or one that cannot be seen or heard when it is shot.
   • 1966, Victor Jeremy Jerome, The Paper Bridge, page 118:

     […] not see them— ghost-bullets flying.

   • 1970, The Arab World - Volume 16, page 2:

     […] a 'ghost' bullet from a resisting gun strikes an innocent American tourist; a bomb explodes and the faces of four young school-girls smile defiantly at their Israeli jailer.

   • 2005, Amy Lignor, The Heart of a Legend, page 6:

     A shot screeched past her head from the west, like a ghost bullet seemingly shot from the large gap of El Capitan itself.

   • 2024, Terry Hayes, The Year of the Locust, page 121:

     I planned to fire what are known as "ghost bullets” —ones that nobody at the intersection would even see or hear .

2. (weaponry, ballistics) A bullet that cannot be found or that is untraceable through ballistic testing.
   • 1964, Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, page 412:

     Let us assume that this 'ghost bullet' idea is correct. Let us write an equation which relates the distance the ordinary bullet travels with the direction of the recoil of the gun and the amount of recoil, assuming that a ghost bullet does travel off at some strange angle each time.

   • 2012, Douglas Corleone, Last Lawyer Standing, page 304:

     And the ghost bullet allowed me to introduce new depths of police corruption.

   • 2014, Anthony Reed, Freedom Time, page 224:

     In a later account of his attack in Jamaica, Brathwaite claims his assailants shot him with a "ghost bullet,” going so far as to narrate his own death in “I Cristobel Colon.”

   • 2018, Sarah J. Maas, Catwoman: Soulstealer, page 76:

     He didn't find anything on the bullet. Not a trace. A ghost bullet.

3. An imaginary bullet.
   • 2011, Nicole Pickens, Fictitious Tales for the Children of God, page 40:

     Since nightfall he's bracing himself for the hallucinations he knows are soon to come. Crickets offer their resonant chorus, but they don't drown out the sounds of ghost bullets whistling in the air.

   • 2016, Susan Joyner-Stumpf, Whisper Into the Dawn, page 134:

     we are animals dodging ghost bullets in our dreams

   • 2018, Divya Kumar, The Shrine of Death:

     How to tell her he'd felt the ghost bullet slam into his heart, and had known Rahul would kill her?

   • 2019, Jennifer Bernard, Mine Until Moonrise:

     But how could she stop a bullet that was no longer flying? How could she stop a ghost bullet?

4. (folklore or fantasy) A supernatural bullet that wounds or kills a person, especially one that is shot by a supernatural assailant.
   • 1968, Wolfram Eberhard, The Local Cultures of South and East China, page 195:

     People believe that a beast shoots "ghost bullets" when they ford a stream in Sihch'uan at any time except the winter months .

   • 1972, Dossier, page 111:

     The leaves were used in the removal of ghost bullets " (supernatural objects that were shot into people by ghosts).

   • 2010, Megan Derr, Lilacs, page 24:

     Pushing Teddy off, ignoring the part of him that mourned the loss—not the time, dumbass, not the time, ghosts were kind of a big fucking deal—he scrambled to his knees and looked at where the ghost had tried to put a ghost bullet in his brain.

   • 2012, Ray Cummings, Murder in the Fog:

     "Somebody shot the doctor," the big police sergeant said. "It wasn't a ghost bullet; it was lead.

   • 2017, Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden, Hellboy: An Assortment of Horrors, page 105:

     It was a ward against ghosts, but he was pretty sure it wasn't going to stop a ghost bullet.

   • 2020, Kenneth Robeson, The Squeaking Goblin, page 66:

     He ain't shootin' ghost bullets, neither. Here's his slug.

5. (fantasy) A bullet that can hurt a ghost or undead creature.
   • 2010, Scott Nicholson, Drummer Boy: A Supernatural Thriller:

     Hardy wondered what happened to you when you were hit with ghost bullets. Did they only kill ghosts, or could they work on the living, too?

   • 2017, David Boop, Straight Outta Tombstone:

     All we have are ghost bullets —and as you saw with Mild Bill, ghost bullets do just fine against the undead.

   • 2018, Kevin J. Anderson, Services Rendered: The Case of Dan Shamble, Zombie PI:

     “How could you get hurt?” I asked. “You're not even corporeal.” “That gunslinger has ghost bullets,” Sheyenne said.

6. (figurative) Something nonphysical (such as words, actions, or memory) that causes physical or emotional damage.
   • 2013, William M. Alley, Rosemarie Alley, Too Hot to Touch: The Problem of High-Level Nuclear Waste, page 126:

     He spoke of radiation as "ghost bullets.” These bullets were deadly if mishandled.

   • 2014, Steven R. Boyett, Mortality Bridge:

     A ghost bullet in the heart, but he didn't hesitate.

   • 2021, Martín Prechtel, Rescuing the Light, page 101:

     Even when the physical cause of an illness has been removed (e.g., the infection, the bullet taken out of a wound), the ghost fright of the illness-making-moment remains spiritually petrified in the body as a ghost bullet until our soul can cause our body to molt in such a way as to make that moment well again.

Related terms

• ghost gun