I'm going to start by saying this may be much simpler than me and my, enraged at the time, friends made it. So I'm playing the thief. Three of our six are in a temporary alliance and have managed to land on the same tile, the woods middle region. The player before me manages to take ones last life while in a different space. The killed player was playing the ghoul had three raised followers and two actual followers when he died, the poltergeist and maiden. So on my turn I used teleport to go to the woods from the oasis. I took the maiden as a left behind follower, and used my ability to take a talisman from one of the other players there.

So the questions that came up;

If followers are left behind by a dead player are they considered encounters again.

If there is a player on a space with a left behind object , wherein this case they were there before it dropped, are you able to encounter that character and take the item.

Also didn't check to see if this was asked but what happens to the ghoul's raised followers when he dies as no one else can really make use of them.

First things first. - Cards that become followers (from the FAQ): "If a character is forced to ditch or leave a card that has become a follower, the follower must be discarded instead."

Cards that are left behind on a space (for whatever reason) will be encountered as per normal rules. - However, to answer your question, if you want a dropped object on a space but chose to encounter a character on said space, you are encountering the character, not the space and therefor can not take an object from that space. -- You can, however, chose to encounter the space and ignore the character on it.

As for your example - you would've had to take the poltergeist with you as well, if you chose to encounter that space. (And if you do this, no Talisman stealing for you. So that actually was a wrong move.)