Is JS jacques's ghost?

[Dante]

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[Tinuviel]

If Jacques is alive, and drugged and imprisoned, then the drugs would have certainly worn off after Olaf died and no one was there to administer them. Then couldn't he have figured out a way to escape, much like the way Violet, Klaus, and Sunny did in TVV?

[Dante]

In canon, we don't really know why Olaf would drug and imprison Jacques rather than simply murdering him, and everyone seems very certain that he's dead, including Jacques's own sister - but as a hypothetical situation, then sure, there's every chance that Olaf could have smuggled Jacques out of the Village of Fowl Devotees and placed him in the power of an allied villain.

[M David Steel]

the way lemony writes "its a day I wish I could forever erase from the snicket calendar" implies his death, and they had to make sure he was dead before accusing of murder

I think the J.S was Justice Strauss especially considering her role in the penultimate peril

[Dante]

At the very least, the people who would care most about Jacques's death think that he's dead, and those people are his siblings.

[A comet crashing into Earth]

I'm a bit puzzled by this suggestion - it does get revealed who J.S. was, unless you're not talking about the J.S. from TPP?

[Dante]

Not all the J.S.s are quite accounted for by Justice Strauss and Jerome Squalor's explanation; we never learn who was the J.S. lurking in the Hotel Denouement basement (which was probably Jerome), or which J.S. sent Mr. Poe for the Baudelaires at the end of TGG (which is more suspect).

[Hermes]

I think the basement one is indeed Jerome. There seems, though, to be a villainous JS (this from Sir, who was invited by him to the cocktail party); this may be Olaf, using the name 'Julio Sham'. And there may be a third heroic JS, since Charles also mentions someone with those initials, who isn't obviously obviously either Strauss or Jerome.

Some people, I think, feel that there must be another JS, because Strauss and Jerome began finding messages addressed to JS and responding to them - these, therefore, can't have been intended for them in origin. But I think those messages could have been meant for Jacques, sent before people knew he was dead. Then, when volunteers started getting replies, they may have gone on writing to JS without knowing exactly who it was.

[Dante]

It's possible that many volunteers didn't fully understand who "J.S." was, either, much less that it might have been used to address multiple individuals.

[M David Steel]

Sir was an intresting one actually, just gave me a thought now you mention him, it could be his initials, as he said no one could pronounce his name

[facelesscreature]

This theory is a nice idea, but I believe Jacques is dead. After the events of TVV, Lemony doesn't imply any reason to believe he is still alive. The initials "JS" could mean Jerome Squalor or Justice Strauss. However, it is unclear who Quigley sent the telegram to because Jerome and Justice Strauss show up in TPP to comfort the Baudelaires.
As for ghosts being real in the books: possibly.
In TEE, when the Baudelaires come out of the secret passageway, the mailman believes that he is seeing ghosts.