Ghosts – there are a lot of unanswered questions about them. I cannot say whether they are real or not because I have never encountered one, but I do believe they exist. There are many theories to explain what ghosts are and why they exist. Bear with me for a few paragraphs and I’ll explain why I believe.
Ghost sightings typically fall into one of two general classes by temperament. The apparitions themselves are either images of a family member or loved one, or appear as the other extreme in the form of demonic apparitions. The two classes represent the extremes of love and hate, in general terms.
Religious believers claim that ghosts are beings that are either temporarily or permanently displaced between worlds, that is, between heaven and hell. They are seen as shadows, hazy figures, or full-figured, floating apparitions. The one thing that most, if not all, encounters have had in common is that ghostly apparitions of people are most commonly a person who died within a few days or weeks before the sighting. Not two or three years later, but shortly after their unfortunate demise.
This immediately begs the question, could a ghost sighting be a manifestation created by a person’s mind? Maybe, I don’t know. What I do know is that the mind is a very powerful instrument. Most people think of the brain as a huge memory chip, but the brain can do and does so much more. Your brain tells you when you’re hungry or cold. It tells you what you are looking at, or hearing, or smelling. The brain can decipher, store, and develop senses of everything. What I mean by this is that while it acts like a memory chip taking in everything that we go through second by second, it also has the ability to tell us everything else about our lives. So is it hard to believe that this enriched organ can create a person in front of us so lifelike and real that we can hear them, smell them, or even touch them?
My theory makes even more sense when you consider who typically sees these ghosts. In the love class of ghosts, the loved ones are usually the ones who see a close relative that just died reappear as a ghost. But with the hate class, there are the murdered individuals coming back and haunting the murderers in the form of a ghost. If you ask me these sightings sound an awful lot like dreams or nightmares. These dreams or nightmares are scientifically known as manifestations of the brain while you are sleeping or cognate.
However, as I stated above, I do believe in ghosts and here is why. Where does the human body get its spirit, its soul? There are speculations of god or some higher power that gives us our soul, but I am a firm believer in the old saying, “believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see.” I don’t know about you, but I remember hearing this phrase a billion times while I was growing up. If this saying is true, then technically, no one can answer the question regarding where the soul comes from. Have you ever witnessed a human soul entering a human’s body? I have never seen it. I have two children of my own and I never saw this miraculous being touch my stomach or a light come down from the sky giving my children their souls. But I was in the delivery room giving birth to them and nothing happened there either. The higher power or god, have you ever seen him? I haven’t had this experience either.
There are hundreds of examples I can give you, but the point is more important. The point is that people get souls and no one can answer how, where, when, etc. It is not possible to answer these questions, but you can believe one way or the other. So, is it hard to believe that this soul that comes from somewhere mysterious can stay after the human body is gone? Not to me, in fact, I think it is more believable than half the unexplainable theories and phenomena I have read about.
Many people believe that these ghosts are in limbo on earth waiting on reincarnation. Scientists have tried to justify the belief of ghosts by saying that the human soul can have a strong psychic energy that will not die with the body. This energy is left behind, even if the soul is not. Other people believe that the person was so attached to the world that when their body died, their soul refused to depart with it, thus resulting in the soul stuck wondering the earth. I don’t know which theories to give merit to if there are any. The only thing I can tell you is that I believe in them.
I find it very easy to believe that the mind can create apparitions from our memories or fears and project those to us as reality. To explain ghosts, we may have to explain reality. For me, reality is what my mind tells me it is. I trust my senses and my mind’s interpretation of them. So I’ve never seen a ghost ”“ but if I do, I will still believe.