I don’t like telling people I believe in ghosts for a couple of reasons. Firstly, belief implies faith, which implies a lack of proof – and I’ve seen and experienced enough proof to last several lifetimes. Secondly, the term “ghost” is so vague as to be nearly meaningless. One person thinks it means one thing, another person thinks it means something else, so when you say you believe in ghosts, you really have no idea what you’re telling the listener (or reader). What I will tell you is that I have experienced phenomena that often fall under the heading of ghost. I do not “believe” in them any more than I believe in grass, or cars or trees. They are simply facts of life. You don’t waste energy believing in the existance of grass, do you? So why would I waste my energy believing in ghosts (or whatever-they-ares)?
My mother, on the other hand, she believed in ghosts. My mother was a “ghost repellent.” She deeply regretted it, too. She believed me when I said that I saw and experienced things, but never saw them herself. For example, once when an actual “haunting episode” (for lack of a better term) was in progress in my current home, I went to her house (she lived right next door), brought her over to my house to show it to her, and while she was there, it disappeared. As soon as she left, it resumed at full force. She always wished she could see and experience what I was seeing, but she never could. Even I couldn’t see the ghosts when she was around. But she wasn’t an angry disbeliever. She wanted to see. Never did.
Many, I’d even go so far as to say most, of the things that get called “ghosts” are simply what I refer to as tape recordings. As many people have pointed out, we are all made of energy. It does not disappear, you cannot destroy it, so where does it go when we die? I has to go somewhere. When a traumatic event happens in a location, that energy can often imprint like a tape recording on the environment which then plays back occasionally. Those are no more sentient than characters on a DVD. They can manifest as hot or cold spots, a scent of perfume or decay, a feeling of dread, or a visual or auditory playback of the event. The whole “lost soul” kind of ghosts that you see in movies are actually incredibly rare. But there are a lot of different causes for a range of phenomena that all get lumped in to the category of “ghost.” The word is so nebulous (like a ghost, you might even say), sometimes I just gloss it over by telling people I don’t believe in ghosts, not because they don’t exist, but because the term is too vague.
I’ve seen, touched, spoken to, been spoken to by, fed, banished, smelled, been terrified by, been comforted by, and laughed with different “ghosts” over the years. Some of them were malignant, some neutral, some good. Some sentient, most not.
The house I live in now is “haunted” by at least two entities, one of which is a cat I call “Spook” who just hangs around and does normal cat stuff and is completely unaware of me or my living, corporeal cats. Both I and several of my cats have seen him, though. He’s quite harmless. The other “whatever-it-is” in my house is malignant, but usually dormant. I’ve seen some nasty flare-ups on occasion such as burning smells, objects moving when no one touched them, choking one of my friends, and a hot rather than a cold spot. I don’t believe that it was ever human, so I don’t like using the term “ghost,” but it gets lumped into that category by the careless. I believe it was invited in by a previous tenant.
And yet I have to say that I consider myself a skeptic. If I hear a story of a haunting, I tend to want evidence rather than anecdotes – mostly because I have seen evidence in the past, and therefore know that it IS out there to be seen, and therefore I expect it. I’m willing to see it, mind you, I’m very open-minded about that. But I do rather want something a little bit better than someone’s word. I don’t expect you to believe my stories simply on my word. Why would you? Just because I am telling the truth doesn’t make my word proof. After all, I could have been delusional when I experienced all those things. I don’t think I was, but then, it’s all subjective, right? One man’s ghost is another man’s hallucination. You can only judge based on your own empirical evidence, as can I. In my experience, “ghosts” exist. Your results may vary. And that’s fine.
Josie leBeau ~ One Writer's Journey 