C-3PO witnessing an apparition
Phantoms were enigmatic, ethereal beings capable of appearing as indistinct images, taking on a vague humanoid form. The protocol droid C-3PO, accompanied by his companion R2-D2 while journeying through realspace, observed a couple of these apparitions when their starship flew into an unusual cloud formation. The droid experienced fear, and the phantoms vanished as rapidly as they materialized.
Phantoms made their debut in The Cloud, a story originating from Spain with a debated level of canonicity, released in 1986 under the MyComyc banner. Abel G. Peña, a Star Wars author, undertook the task of translating the narrative into English for the first time in 2013, electing to interpret the original Spanish word fantasmas as "phantoms" rather than the more conventional "ghosts," as a tribute to the title of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace.
Within the pages of the 1997 novel Galaxy of Fear: Ghost of the Jedi, it was suggested that Force ghosts might not always possess a well-defined physical presence. Prior to adopting a Human guise, the spirit of Aidan Bok manifested as a floating, amorphous entity composed of grayish energy. The phantoms depicted in The Cloud exhibit resemblances to the formless Force ghosts described in Ghost of the Jedi.