Ghosts

Ghosts are oftentimes depicted as being of a human shape and size, although some accounts do mention animal shaped ghosts. Ghosts are usually described as shadowy, silvery, semitransparent or fog-like. Parapsychologists call the substance of which ghosts consist of ‘ectoplasm’. Ghosts do not have physical bodies like living human beings, but only what is believed to be their subtle or astral bodies.

Sometimes ghosts do not manifest visually, but in the way of other types of phenomena, such as spontaneous flipping of a light switch, the unexplained movement of objects, noises and the like, which all supposedly have no logical explanation.

Ghosts are allegedly non-corporeal manifestations of a previously living person. It is often believed that the spirit or soul of a person who has remained on earth after death. In some belief systems, ghosts may be the personality of a person after their death, and not tied directly to the soul or spirit of the person. Nearly every single culture since the beginning of time has carried stories about ghosts. These ghost stories vary widely across space and time, with disagreements as to both whether ghosts are just figments of imagination, part of reality, or what ghosts are at all.

Many of those who live in the West that believe in ghosts sometimes hold them to be souls that could not find rest following death and so linger here on earth. The ghosts’ inability to find eternal rest is often explained by unfinished business, like a victim that seeks justice or revenge after death. It is also said in some of thes cultures that criminals sometimes stay on earth after death in order to avoid Hell or Purgatory. Interestingly, mainstream Evangelical Christians and Protestants believe in the existence of the principles of Limbo or Hell, they do not believe in ghosts and generally attribute more violent ghosts to the actions of demons.

Some ghost researchers approach the entire subject of ghosts from a somewhat more scientific stance, seeking to locate correlations between recordable phenomena and the supposed presence of ghosts. People who follow this approach generally believe that ghosts are not actual spirits of disembodied souls, but instead are impressions of psychic energy that is left behind by a deceased person.

This way of thinking about ghosts classifies ghosts in the same category of unexplained phenomena as telekinesis, poltergeists, ESP and telepathy. Theories from such an approach often stumble across difficulties in explaining ghosts that appear to be sentient, like those which answer questions and react to specific actions fomr the people present. Yet this could possibly be that enough of a dead person’s psyche is imprinted on an environment that there is a left over likeness of their memory or thoughts.

In Asian cultures, many people believe that reincarnation exists. Ghosts are the souls that have refused to be ‘recycled’ because they believe they have unfinished business, similar in the West. Exorcists can either assist a ghost to be driven away or reincarnated. In Chinese tradition, beside being reincarnated, a ghost can also become immortal and a sort of demigod, or it can go to hell and suffer for eternity, or it can die again and become ‘ghost of ghost’.

Buddhist Samsara includes the idea of a hungry ghost realm where stentient beings in the realm are called hungry ghosts because of their attachment to the objects and desires of this world. Asuras are also referred to as ‘fighting ghosts’.

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