Cavendish writes, “Modern occultism brings in the notion of the astral corpse. When a man dies his body remains on earth, but in his ‘body of light’ – a replica of the earthly body made of finer and subtler material – he goes to the … astral plane. His soul eventually mounts to still higher planes, leaving the (astral body) as an astral corpse. Just as the earthly body retains enough innate life force to grow its nails and hair for a time after death, the astral corpse retains a faint spark of life. It has an intense desire to live again … and can be attracted back into the normal world either consciously by necromancy or sometimes unconsciously. It can then absorb enough life-energy from living creatures to prolong its shadowy existence almost indefinitely. Some occultists believe that Spiritualist seances really summon not ‘spirits’ but astral corpses.” What can Creator tell us?

This is a misconception that arose from a state of confusion in not discerning the difference between a human spirit residing within the lower astral plane and a lower-order spirit being one of the dark fallen angelics you call "spirit meddlers." These spirits will not announce their pedigree and so are easily confused among others that are simply experiencing a lowered vibration, making them primitive and sometimes hostile and in a corrupted state, and they will resemble the spirit meddlers in their ability to cause trouble for the living. Once a spirit leaves the body, it is essentially the energy of consciousness in a transitional state and, as a function of vibration, will be compatible or incompatible with the environment it inhabits, depending on location and whether there is a state of impairment holding that spirit back from being able to journey to the light and complete a transition fully with a return home to the heavenly realm. On first emerging, the vibration is of a lower nature because the person has been spending time as a physical being and their consciousness will have the lower vibration of physicality. Once freed from the body, there will be more flexibility but there must be an intention, held by that consciousness, for a higher vibration to come about in order to traverse to higher levels of the astral realm. That will not necessarily happen spontaneously, depending on the state of mind of the emerging spirit. Some transition quite quickly, particularly when in life they are adjusted to the idea it is time to leave the physical and return home, and there is a strong expectation they will be met by divine beings and that all will be well. But if in a state of fear, uncertainty, or confusion due to illness or mental aberrations, the emerging spirit, in being disoriented, will have a lower vibration and may well have difficulty transitioning further. These trapped earthbound spirits are encountered by psychic mediums and then will be representing a lower order of consciousness that is clearly dysfunctional, and this leaves room for many theories and speculation about the meaning of it all and the origins. Spirits do not have their normal memory bank any longer because that was tied to the physical body via the brain connections. When the body dies, the consciousness is set free but may well be disconnected from the life experience and there will be an impairment of memory and even awareness that death occurred in many cases. Spirits trapped in the lower astral plane that are human will often have soul yearnings of one kind or another. This provides a kind of agenda and a restlessness making them seek a safe harbor of some kind and they will often interact with humans, to whatever extent they are capable, to get their attention simply by wanting a sense of companionship, as a normal human attribute, but this will have to be experienced intuitively rather than through the normal physical senses of sight, hearing, touch, and so on. Spirits are not necessarily well-equipped to do that, and this can lead to a worsening of things with despair, discouragement, and a decline in wherewithal to deal with their dilemma. When such spirits are connected to by psychics, they will often get the merest outlines of the human being they truly represent. It is very much akin to someone attempting to interact with a stroke victim who has had severe neurological damage. As such, victims may not be able to communicate at all, or remember who they are, and may lack the ability to see and recognize others, and so on. So this is a complex picture with many, many variations but little true understanding of the dynamics, and that has naturally led to false assumptions and categorization of phenomena based more on conjecture than true understanding.