Do You Believe In Ghosts?

The paranormal fascinates and scares me at the same time. Because I don’t understand it, I am reluctant to get too close to it. Like a snake that might bite. I’m fascinated with shows like Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures. Yes, I realize those shows are probably so far from reality and heavily scripted that it’s unreal, yet the thought of someone communicating from beyond death intrigues me. If any of the claims on Ghost Adventures are real, then I suspect Zak Bagans got a little too close and is now dealing with the consequences of messing with something he didn’t understand. He claims an evil entity followed him home from one of his investigations. If that can happen, then I don’t want to get anywhere near an evil entity and I certainly don’t want to provoke it.

For the record, I don’t believe in ghosts or apparitions as popularly defined. I don’t believe that a soul is somehow stuck between heaven and earth, restless until he or she finds a way to move on. Okay, I know I probably just offended someone, somewhere, but please allow me a moment to explain. I believe there is a supernatural realm where things happen that we normally can’t see, hear, touch, taste, or smell. A barrier or veil keeps us humans from seeing into that realm. If we could experience everything that happens there, I don’t think our human minds could absorb the overload of stimuli.

Yes, I believe there is a higher power that I call God, and I think sometimes He allows the veil to part so an individual can see more than he or she would normally see, and when that happens, the person experiences something paranormal that simply cannot be explained by human definitions of normal. We humans have tried to explain the supernatural or the paranormal with our limited understanding, because we like to explain everything and we are arrogant enough to think we can.

Recently, I asked my friends on Facebook if they believed in ghosts and if any of them would mind sharing their experiences with me. Many replied in the comments to the status, and a few replied by private chat. I promised I wouldn’t relate their stories unless they gave me specific permission, so I won’t give details here. What surprised me was how many people in my small group of friends had had an experience and how similar so many of those experiences were.

Many people have lost a loved one, sometimes unexpectedly, and experienced the peace of having their loved one communicate with them from beyond death. I have no doubt these experiences are real. There were too many to deny. Can a loved one communicate from beyond death? Why not? If a higher power can pull back the veil of the supernatural, why can’t He also allow someone’s loved one to break through the veil to give the person left behind some comfort? Many people who experienced this felt great comfort from being visited by the person he or she loved so dearly and missed so much.

Are there other paranormal experiences that can’t be explained? Certainly, and although it helps us humans to define the experiences, I’m not still not convinced the paranormal can be explained by the popular definition of ghosts. I still believe the unexplained is simply that: unexplained.

My own experience? When I was first married, I lived with my husband in a ground-floor apartment with a sliding glass door that faced the parking lot. He often worked the night shift and I of course worked days, so there were many times I would go to sleep alone in the apartment. Countless times I would wake up and find several people I had never seen before floating above the footboard of my bed dressed in the clothing of the late 1800s. They never spoke, but I knew somehow they were my ancestors and they were watching over me because I had never lived on my own and sleeping in the apartment by myself terrified me. Once I knew they were there, I would fall back to sleep, comforted that I was being guarded. Can I explain this experience in rational terms? No. Do I believe I wasn’t dreaming? Yes. I experienced this many times, the experiences stopped when we moved to a second floor apartment, and I’ve never experienced anything like it again.

So do I believe in ghosts? Not really. Do I believe things happen that can’t be explained? Yes. And even though, I don’t believe in ghosts per se, I still find it fascinating to read about the paranormal and fun to write ghost stories.