Waited a few turns. Went back down. Ghost still there.
Kited ghost away from stairs and into a corner of the level. Pulled last tele scroll (after too much trouble with orc warriors already.)
Landed in a big, wide open space just to the south smack along a side of the floor with a hungry ghost, pack of ogres, some odd animals... Kited them around madly looking for a narrows to escape. Fired off wand of clouds a couple times.
Ghost caught up with all the ruckus that made.
Kited it back to the stairs, fled up, got caught with a hungry ghost in tow, fought that and other things on the level above.
Came down and tried to fight the player ghost with random potions and heroism. Treeform and berserk were all very nice, but was still losing with only a dagger of (useless) venom in hand. Barely escaped back up from that.
Came down again later and the player ghost was a couple spaces off, but had been joined by a centaur. Polymorphed it into a lindwurm. Led the both of them around the floor some more and nearly got smashed by killer bees following along plus a two-headed ogre, wyvern, some more later coming from the unknown other direction. Lots of steam breath on the worst offenders, wand of clouds v. the bees and more orc patrols in there, throwing poisoned tomahawks and stones, heroism... Very fortunately scooped a couple scrolls of recharging off the floor along the way. Ended up dragging the very last of them up a whole two levels just trying to keep ahead of newcomers too.
Finally found some axes of electrocution and after all that desperation have started leveling them up. Not many consumables but after a lot of up and down and skipping through D:7 in both directions, alive with a moment's peace (and quite a bit of training) on D:8.
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Edit: Posting this one in CiP just because so happy to have gotten through that part!