Ghost

Nobody actually finds this emoji frightening, and that is the point. The little sheet-ghost with its tongue out and cartoon arms is drawn to be goofy rather than scary across every platform, which is why it reads as playful spookiness — Halloween, something "haunted", a silly "boo" — far more often than genuine fear. Some vendors even give it a winking, mid-prank expression.

Its biggest modern job is a pun. "Ghosting" — vanishing on someone without a word, in dating or friendship or a job hunt — turned it into the emoji shorthand for the act, so a single ghost can carry a whole small story of someone who stopped replying. The gap between the friendly drawing and that slightly cruel meaning is exactly the kind of thing that makes emoji expressive: the picture stays cute while the usage does something pointed. Rendering is fairly consistent here — the white body reads clearly on most backgrounds — though it can disappear against a pale chat bubble, the one practical reason a ghost emoji might actually live up to its name and become hard to see.