The Hulk Has A Surprising Power You Never Knew About
In the comics, the Hulk has the ability to see ghosts as well as some other abilities that border on the psychic.
The Hulk has something in common with Haley Joel Osment’s character in The Sixth Sense — he sees dead people. That’s right: while we tend to think of the Green Goliath’s powers resting solely in his fists, one of the Hulk’s lesser-known abilities shown in Marvel Comics is that he can see ghosts. He has some other interesting powers as well, that arguably border on the psychic.
One of the earliest examples of Hulk being able to see ghosts comes in 1972’s Incredible Hulk #147, when the Hulk is able to sense and even traverse an entire town of ghosts. It turns out to be something of a weakness in 1997’s Incredible Hulk #456 when the hounding he endures from the ghost of his dead father is partly what convinces him to endure a procedure that makes him a servant of the X-Men villain Apocalypse. Another way this perception manifested was in Hulk’s ability to see Doctor Strange’s astral form in 1971’s Marvel Feature #1
Along with the Hulk being able to see ghosts, he has occasionally been shown to have strong resistance to psychic assaults. One example is in 1972’s Marvel Feature #3 when the psychic blasts of the alien Xemnu have little effect on him, and the same proves true in their rematch in 1974’s Defenders #12. In an instance that unfolds much more elaborately, Banner’s fractured psyche proves much more difficult to maneuver for the mutant Cable.
To be fair, Marvel writers have tended to not be particularly consistent with this aspect of the Hulk. Other characters like Jean Grey or Onslaught have proven more than capable of either incapacitating the Hulk psychically or even taking over his mind.
We don’t know if Hulk’s ghost-sensing ability is at all tied to what has proven to be an uncanny sense of direction that includes but is not limited to, being capable of always finding the spot where the gamma bomb that unleashed him was detonated. In 2001’s Incredible Hulk #33, for instance, he’s able to intuitively jump across the ocean, knowing exactly where to find small atolls so he doesn’t plunge into the water.
In the first Sentry miniseries, we learn Hulk can see a different kind of ghost — a person who isn’t dead, but who everyone else has forgotten. The series tells us that Bob Reynolds, aka the Sentry, was once the world’s most famous superhero, but everyone has forgotten him. For some reason, the Hulk is the only one who remembers him.
Most of his more cerebral abilities have never been fully explained, but as far as the Hulk being able to see ghosts, this is almost certainly the result of what we learn in Al Ewing’s game-changing Immortal Hulk series. Among other things, in the comic we learn that the gamma energy that powers the Hulk comes from the One Below All, aka the devil. This connects the Hulk to a much more supernatural origin, and to the afterlife itself.
