It is usually the lack of capacity of an organism and the higher faculties to respond to higher ideas and positive (or attractive) sense-impressions, that will lead a person to rebirth in the lower realms of existence.

Ghosts will be held in the sense-sphere realm due to a certain desire related to that sphere…they will occasionally still have certain sense-sphere perceptions and perhaps short instances of thought …these will keep them close to that sphere.

Hell beings on the other hand, will have lost all business altogether with what we usually would call the sense-sphere realm,…they lost their right to it…they will for the most part be kept in the spell of certain unwholesome resultant mind states, with instances of outside perceptions of exceedingly painful character.
For a person on the edge of falling into hell, there will be the (at least unconscious) recognition that there is nothing in the sense-sphere world that they could think of wanting them, while the facing of their own mind will be too shocking an experience to bear. Their senses thus dulled…seeking thus outwardly for an element that could hold (or stabilise) their mind they will be drawn to the coarsest of elements where there will be no outward sign of feeling and mind and life…