Early in their career, Ghost kept the identities of its members, especially frontman Papa Emeritus . Rumors circulated among fans, and some suspected that Tobias Forge was behind the makeup.
The rumors were confirmed when Nergal , from Behemoth , posted a selfie with Forge on social media in 2014 – see the image at the end of the article. In the caption, the musician wrote: “If you have ghosts… You have everything,” playing on the band's name. Subsequently, the singer had to confirm the identity, as his former bandmates were filing a lawsuit against him.
“Kristen [Mulderig, friend and manager] told me, ‘Don’t do that, please take it down [the photo]’,” he told Ultimate Guitar. “So I deleted the photo, of course, but it was too late… Look, to be honest, I’m pretty spontaneous when it comes to social media (…) Nobody manages my social media but me.”
He goes on to say that he uses the platforms as a way to showcase his work and parts of his personal life. "I show as much as I can. It's honest and real. And I probably didn't think twice before doing what I did."
“Of course I didn’t write ‘me and Tobias Forge’ in the caption, or anything like that. But I did write ‘If you have ghosts… You have everything’ and I think I gave too much away. You just had to Google it… His face was there. The rumors had been circulating for years and people were going to find out who he was.”
Nergal recounts that right after deleting the photo, he sent a message to Tobias to apologize, but Tobias replied, "Oh man... It's okay, it's all good. This was going to happen at some point, so fuck it."
Today, Forge performs under the persona Cardinal Copia and is working on the successor to Prequelle , released in 2018. Meanwhile, Nergal is preparing to release an album with the project Me and The Man and to reissue Behemoth's debut EP and the album And the Forests Dream Eternally (1995).
