I've never actually been ghosted but in my early 20s, I had applied to a company doing something to do with processing geographic data from for NASA as a contractor. It sounded really cool and I heard about it from a guy who worked there who was the brother of an acquaintance and reached out to me to ask if I was interested. We went out to lunch, talked it over, and then followed up by email, and he put me in touch with their HR department. They asked my availability over the next couple weeks for an interview and I gave it to them, and they never responded. I followed up and got nothing. Then about a month later, they emailed me apologizing and explaining that they had just been so busy. I wrote back and again got nothing in return. This happened over and over for about 6 months. They'd email apologizing, I'd respond, and they'd ignore me. Then there was another six month pause before I got one last big apology and request for availability which I never responded to. In hindsight, I probably should have politely told them I was no longer interested after the first gap but I was young and really wanted to say I did work for NASA.

Anyway, I never attributed any kind of malice to it, just poor management and poor candidate handling. I suspect that's often the case, especially with smaller start ups with likely overwhelmed employees wearing many hats. If anything, it's good signal that it's maybe not a great place to work. Imagine how they treat the people who work there if that's how they treat candidates.