Yeah I saw that rumour, I never believed as there are so many holes, by the way regarding the snowboarding line - I may be wrong but I always took that to mean she was meant to die a bit later, still die, just later. Probably in the crater - however this is just my speculation I have seen some sort of evidence I might be right, but it's not concrete enough.
I thought as much, at least he was honest about it.
I wrote this "ghost" of as a glitch long before many others did. Mainly because you can see her on disk 1, so I always figured it was a coincidence that this happened. However the debug room suggests that something was originally meant to happen, but obviously taken out of the game. I seriously doubt this had anything to do with reviving her though, I reckon it was meant to be a "respect" thing, like in FFVIII you can (SPOILER)see images of Raine in Winhill, these don't do much, just memories of a character made visible to the players eyes, and yes the "Ghost" was indeed supposed to appear after her death only. Anyway my theory is that it was meant to be a ghost originally, it just ended up appearing too early.
That is correct, which is why I never believed that she could be revived, although I hoped she could be at first, I realized after my 6th or so playthrough, that stopping her dying/reviving her would completely destroy the passion of this game and the character Aeris her self. Although I was always sad to see a likeable and very powerful character go, I think she's better off dead.
Oh, and the reason no one thought to use Phoenix downs is because they don't revive people from the dead, when your HP reaches zero you are not dead yet, just seriously injured. That is how the others are able to revive you. However you probably all die eventually after game over, as there is no one there to save you. Basically there in a state where if they don't get help (Phoenix downs) they're dead.
This is what happens when (SPOILER)Gaulf dies in FFV he goes "below" zero so phoenix downs are useless.