Disclosed herein are various exemplary systems and methods for linking entity references to entities and identifying associations between entities. In particular, a method for identifying an entity from a plurality of entity references, each entity reference being linked with a separate ghost entity, is provided. The method comprises the steps of comparing an entity reference of a first ghost entity with an entity reference of a second ghost entity to determine a match probability between the entity reference of the first ghost entity and the entity reference of the second ghost entity, linking the entity reference of the first ghost entity additionally with the second ghost entity and the entity reference of the second ghost entity additionally with the first ghost entity when the match probability is greater than or equal to a match threshold and repeating the steps of comparing and linking for one or more ghost entity pairings possible from the ghost entities. The method further comprises determining, for one or more entity references linked to a ghost entity, a score for the entity reference based at least in part on a match probability between the entity reference and a value representing the one or more entity references linked to the ghost entity and identifying the ghost entity as an actual entity based at least in part on one or more scores for the one or more entity references linked to the ghost entity.