(new save/fully updated/no mods)
I just started a brand new save and there are already 13 souls (dead Zois)?
That shouldn’t be possible.
Also the souls make 1/3 of the whole population? That’s ridiculous -.-
Did you take this screenshot right after loading into the world for the first time? If that was the case, the game might’ve just been busy generating new zois as random population. For me this used to take quite some time usually, hence the high percentage of deaths 
That’s strange. Maybe it has something to do with ghost gameplay, like making sure there are certain ghosts to creep our zois out even though the world is brand new. But I’ve noticed that the number of deceased zois in this window is quite bugged lately too.
Someone a few weeks ago mentioned that there were far less families than before…
Speaking of the non-used families “sitting on the bench” to be used if any lot open or from player interaction.
Now I clearly remember more families in that list myself from my Bliss Bay pre-0.3.0 days.
Maybe those souls are the “deleted” families ? Maybe the devs simply killed them instead of deleting them outright in case they would be needed in the future ?
All I remember from Bliss Bay when they changed the age groups and senior started at 90 with an insane chance to die each day (including upon hitting the stage) is that there would be a huge death wave in the first 2-3 days then it would re-stabilize. If you had kids, you’d hear lots of crying at the schoolyard from the grandparents who died.
I’ve noticed that too, that souls have increased a lot, I think after the appearance of ghosts. Before I had at most 2/3 souls in the game.
This is the current situation of Bliss Bay, the save file I’ve been playing since March. However, I haven’t seen a single ghost yet, so I started to wonder if they don’t appear in old saves. But they’re all NPC souls.
This instead is Cahaya, a save file started 2 days ago, where I’ve mostly just been building.
In the creator gameplay I’ve watched over the last few months I’ve seen that ghost zois aren’t visible when playing as a living one. So it’s completely normal that you haven’t seen a ghost yet. It’s pretty funny when you witness ghosts creeping around in your home though. You can’t really see them but your zois react to, e.g. the bathtub filling up without anybody in it, etc. 