Desouled: a desouled, dispirited body.

Once upon a time, a man named Toby had a wife and lover named Samantha. When Samantha died, she went to Heaven. While God was helping her get settled into the mansion He had prepared for her, Toby was left grieving on Earth.

In his grief, Toby turned to a demonic spirit named Ti'lak, whom he knew from his time practicing Wicca. He begged the demon to resurrect Samantha so that her soul could return to her body and she could be with him again.

But it did not work the way Toby expected.

The problem was that Ti'lak could not bring a soul back from Heaven. He was not even allowed into Heaven because of what had gotten him cast out in the first place. As a result, he could not return Samantha's spirit or soul to her body.

Instead, he animated the body itself.

He jump-started the brain and restored bodily functions, but he never returned Samantha's soul. Her spirit remained in Heaven, completely separate from what Toby now saw walking around before him.

The body retained all of Samantha's memories, but its behavior was strange. It acted almost like an alien trying to imitate a human being. It knew it was Samantha, remembered Samantha's life, and possessed Samantha's memories, yet its mannerisms, body language, and behavior felt fundamentally wrong.

Despite being soulless, the body operated with its own agency.

In reality, Toby was spending time with a body that had been separated from its soul—a desouled, dispirited body. It functioned similarly to how an atheist might imagine a human body functioning: as a purely physical organism acting independently.

Within the story's universe, however, this was abnormal. Every other human being possessed a body, soul, and spirit working together. The soul served as the source of life and consciousness. This was the only body that no longer functioned that way.

Technically, Ti'lak was animating a dead body—something akin to Frankenstein's monster, though without combining multiple corpses.