He was alive.
It had been one of his parents' inventions, something they were building to eradicate all ghosts in the area. They had been doing a dry run, seeing if the power conduits were in working order; Sam and Tucker had been visiting at the time, and all of them (plus Jazz, somehow) had gotten roped into helping Jack and Maddie make sure everything was running smoothly – essentially by knocking Maddie's lucky mug against something or kicking a computer. And then it had all gone wrong.
The firefighters and police were calling it a gas explosion, even though the marks and burns weren't anything like a gas explosion. No survivors, they'd said, digging through the rubble. Not possible for anyone to survive, they'd told the Mansons and Foleys.
And then they'd found Danny, caught between a section of collapsed ceiling and half-crushed metal shelving. He was coated in soot and dirt and was barely breathing when they'd found him. Danny was rushed immediately to the hospital, while the Guys in White had appeared in town looking into the explosion. Vlad had also come into town, ready to pay his respects to the dead.
Vlad had found Danny first. Had listened as Danny told him exactly what happened ("I didn't even think; I just went intangible on instinct while I watched them burn").
"It hurts," Danny had said.
"I know," Vlad had replied.
Except Vlad didn't know, would never understand the hurt and pain Danny felt. So he experimented, knowing the only way to get rid of the hurt. The only way to make all the pain stop.
And so he'd created the Ghost Gauntlets, and ripped his ghost half out. Had smiled as Phantom's fingers curled tight around his throat (Vlad's story had been wrong about the old man being responsible for ripping out Phantom).
His future had always been inevitable.