Two Ghosts in a Bottle Sold

These days you can get anything online, so it seems.  And one auction site based in New Zealand now has a seller that has put up two “Ghosts in a bottle” which have been posted online and will be sold to the highest bidder.  The posting has brought quite a bit of attention from potential buyers both locally and internationally, but many are telling those purchasing the ghosts to prepare for disappointment.

The two vials containing the ghosts are pictured in the listing with a rosary wrapped over the two small blue corked bottles which rest on a handkerchief.  The seller claims the actual spirits were plaguing their partner incessantly with a sort of ethereal negative energy that they bombarded the occupants of the house they were haunting with.  The problems within the house eventually got so bad, according to the seller, that last July they actually called in a spiritualist church who had them contact an exorcist.  After the incident, the exorcist found that there was not one, but two ghosts and confined them to two bottles which were then in turn given back to the sellers.

The seller has listed the ghosts as in “good” condition, and says that since the exorcism, there haven’t been any paranormal experiences in the house, leading them both to believe the exorcism worked and the spirits were now contained in the bottles.  They now claim to be happy that the experience is over and are eager to start over with their lives.

And it seems like the sale will give them quite a bit of money to do just that.  At the time of this article, the bid was up to over a thousand US dollars.  “I just want to get rid of them,” said the seller, “They scare me.”  The seller also indicated that since the holy water contained in the vials was actually what was keeping the spirits contained, the way to release the ghosts would be to set it out and let it evaporate in a dish, giving the spirits free reign of the location they were evaporated into.

It seems fairly likely this whole thing is a hoax, but in the event that it was conclusively discovered that there were spirits that could be contained in bottles, aside from those found in a pub, what regulations would there be for the buying and selling of them?  Imagine a world where after you died someone could force your soul into a bottle, and then sell it on the internet to whoever paid the most.  And what motivators would cause someone to pay so much money for the disembodied soul of another sentient being?  While some consider law to no longer apply to those who are no longer living, there is some precedent to the concept, though it may be difficult to draw a parallel.  When someone buys a haunted house, they are buying the location, but in the case of ‘Stigmatized’ properties, there are reasonable recommendations made to minimize the amount of ghostly activity present.  Selling a haunted house clearly is a case of circumstance.  The buyer is buying the house, not what’s in it.  But in the case of a ghost in a bottle, it’s quite clear the buyer is attempting to buy the soul of another non-consenting entity.  And that sounds like bad business.