魂灵 is more colloquial / dialectal than the standard
灵魂 (línghún), with the same characters reversed. Lu Xun's classic story 《
祝福》 (The New Year's Sacrifice) opens with the desperate question 「
一个人死了之后，
究竟有没有魂灵的？」 ('Does a person have a soul after they die?') — this is the line that made the word literarily famous.
