Most people fall solidly into one of three camps when it comes to this question: Are ghosts real? I have friends who are scientists and engineers who scoff at the notion, and consider anyone saying they've seen a ghost to be mentally unbalanced. The second group believes wholeheartedly in every ghost story or ghost story ever claimed. They are solidly on the Pro Ghost Bandwagon. I am in the third category. I believe some ghost stories, but not all.
I tend to not believe in anything I have not personally experienced. I make exceptions for friends of mine who I think are normal, rational folks who have experienced things they cannot explain. I have a friend who says she saw her dead fiancee sitting in a chair, big as life, and she talked to him. I believe her. I also personally know of a professional medium who talks to dead folks, and I believe she is the real deal - but not all are the real deal.
I have relatives who not only don't believe in ghosts, they wouldn't let their children read any children's books that feature ghosts or witches, because they think those types of stories promote evil, or Satan worship, or something. I've never been exactly clear on their objections.
How can you say Jesus died and rose from the dead, but you don't believe in ghosts?! I know Jesus was considered to be the Messiah, the son of God, and all, but he was human, too. So didn't he prove that humans can leave behind their mortal bodies and walk again?
Maybe you only believe in the ONE ghost, the Holy Ghost. Seems a bit irrational, though, to me.
My grandmother was as fine a Christian as any person ever born, but she believed in ghosts. When my grandfather died suddenly in 1972 she had to face life alone in a new house, in a little town they had just moved to a few weeks before. She had never lived alone. She was really distraught. One night she woke up and my grandfather was sitting there next to the bed, and it was so comforting to her. She realized he was always with her, just not always seen. You can say what you like, but she was a very strong, independent lady, and highly intelligent. If she says she saw her husband after he died, I believe her.
They were married for fifty years. He was the love of her life. He was always concerned about the welfare of his wife and children and grandchildren. So who's to say he didn't come back to see about her? Certainly not me.
left - a photo of my grandparents Wilma Butler Hasty and Bob Hasty pre-marriage
right - a photo of them as an older couple
My mother taught me to believe in things that seem unbelievable, like faith.
Think about it -- having faith in a god you cannot see or hear or touch seems awfully irrational, doesn't it? If aliens landed on earth and saw us worshipping a guy who said he was the human son of a God nobody could see or hear wouldn't that seem a bit nutty?
Years ago, after I finished college, Mom was upset with me because I told her I felt like I was an agnostic. She asked me to go back to church and act like a believer, which seemed really hypocritical, to me. I didn't want to fool with the whole "Fake it til you make it" thing. However, to keep her from being really upset with me, I did as she asked. I joined an Episcopal church in downtown Knoxville, and I sang in the choir. (It's far less awkward being a single person in a church if you have something to do, like sing in the choir.) I really didn't believe, at first, but as the familiar rituals and prayers came back to me [I had been an acolyte for years, and sing in the choir of our little suburban church for years] I slowly began to regain my faith.
When my father died, as I have often said, I was forced to confront the whole "life after death" idea because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to deal with my terrible grief. I knew instantly, though, that Dad had not left me at all, except in the physical sense. In the spiritual and emotional sense he was still there.
I truly understand that some people cannot make the leap, though, to believe in a god they cannot see or hear, or to believe in life after death. I totally get it. It's a lot to ask, those leaps of faith.
I think all people of faith, though, who have faith in some sort of deity, understand -- whether they want to admit it or not -- that if you can believe in another existence after death, you believe in ghosts, whether you like that word or not. My mom doesn't like it. She prefers "spirits" or "angels." Ghosts sound too silly, too trite, too Halloweenish.
If you are a Christian, though, you have to ask yourself why God wanted Jesus to rise up from the dead and walk out of that tomb?
What was Jesus doing there?
First of all, he was proving that the idea of death wasn't real. Jesus was a real man. He died.
He didn't stay dead, though.
ERGO: Death is not the end. Death doesn't mean a stopping of everything. Death is simply a transition. That's my opinion, anyway.
Let's take the opposite argument, that ghosts aren't real. Let's say that perhaps ghosts are just our brains tricking us into believing. Let's say ghosts do not exist at all.
Then how do you explain the soul? How do you explain that it says over and over in the bible that bodies die but souls don't?
I did a little research to see what I could find on this topic, like this blog. It seems that what traditional theologians want Christians to believe is that only the otherworldly things in the bible -- like in Dueteronomy where King Saul tries to contact the dead prophet Samuel -- are genuine. Anything else you hear about is demonic. Mediums and psychics are demonic, or in league with demons, is the idea.
I don't agree with that.
Of course, you can't really end an argument with me by quoting the bible. I think that's only one source, not the be-all end-all source. There is too much room for interpretation. Translating things from ancient Greek and Hebrew into modern English is tricky. I also think you have to read the bible in the context of the history and culture in which those stories were recorded.
If I were able to magically travel back in time to the 3rd century AD, to the time of the Council of Nicaea, and I had a working cell phone -- so I could show everyone how to use the phone, and do calculations, and watch cute puppy videos, etc. what do you think would happen to me? I'm pretty sure I would be crucified or burned at the stake as a witch, because they would have no way of understanding that cell phone. They would view it, and me, as evil and demonic, simply because they would not be able to understand it.
I think God means us to use our brains as well as our hearts.
I also think it's okay to "agree to disagree" when it comes to matters of religion. It's important to be respectful of everyone's ideas and opinions, however.
If someone had told me when I was 18 that I would one day carry around a tiny computer in my pocket that I could use to take photos, listen to music, call friends, and use as a computer, I would have been highly skeptical. Most computers were a hundred times larger than a cell phone back then and I didn't speak the computer language, Fortran.
The point about the cell phone and time travel is simply this, though: it's utterly magical to people who lived even in the recent past, like a hundred years ago. My father, who died in 1996, couldn't grasp the idea of the internet. He kept asking me, as he was dying, to explain the internet to him. He was never satisfied with my answers. Incidentally, 1996 is the year my son was born, and he never thinks about the amazing versatility of the smartphone.
Maybe twenty years from now I will be dying and I will be unable to process the idea of teleportation -- the ability to transport objects through time and/or space. My son may try to explain it to me and fail utterly, because my brain simply won't be able to grasp it. You can laugh, but that's not that far-fetched -- I was born in 1962 - a time when the VCR had not been invented yet.
Ghosts, though, totally won't freak me out when I am dying.
If you think I'm crazy, or not a "real" Christian, so be it. If you outlive me, though, expect to be converted when I come back to haunt you.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!