Throwing in my two cents from having observed the fading ghost message spam for quite a while now. I'm wondering if it has to do with how many sims the ghost sim knew? Say Bob is fading, and knew 20 people, you'll get 20 messages that Bob's spirit is fading. But if Jane knew 3 people and Jane's spirit is fading, you'll only get 3 spam messages. I have no idea how this could be tested effectively beyond creating a town save with almost nobody in it (minimal, countable people a ghost can know). But yeah, it's a thought as to what's going on and why the number of spam messages can vary so much... plus, the longer a town stays active the more spam-per-fading I seem to get, which could also be an implication the dead sims met more and more people as the town expanded and more lots got played / more sims interacted before dying.
Edit: It could be *played* sims that have the ghost in their known-sims list, that are the reason for so much spam, as I can imagine unplayed townies should know enough other townies that the spam would be even more ridiculous than it already is... but played sims knowing the ghost would make more sense, especially as a town gets more and more play time (and this would theoretically include townie sims that previously-played households meet while you're playing a different household). Some townies are going to get more default interaction with played sims and thus when their ghosts fade, more spam appears as perhaps a means to try and make sure at least *one* active household gets a message, but it's all going to the player anyways so you get spammed. In my last play session I only had one sim in the household and still saw various numbers of fading-spam-sets go by as ghost townies kicked the bucket. I play with played household aging off, so the only reason my played sims would die is from things that aren't old age; in an aging-on game I can imagine the ghost-fading message would be more important but again, it's still spamming all players from the looks of it.
