Ghosts

<I apologize in advance for the long post>

This week the rest of the family is gone on a trip and I’m sitting alone in my living room in the dark.

My house is a big drafty house built in 1917. There are a lot of creeks and cracks, muted noises, and shadows. The ceilings are high and the basement is creepy with it’s crawlspace and a small earthen closet. But over all I would say that it feels more homey than haunted. However. There are two individuals that live with us that are not part of my immediate family that I’ve come to respect as part of this home… a mother and a young boy.

I know she is there when I go to my infant son in the middle of the night. I never really sense her approval or disapproval (except for one time), but I sense her. The little boy has come to visit me and I have pat him on his head on several occasions. I talk to them and let them know that they aren’t in my way. I haven’t sensed him for several weeks though, ever sense we had a third visitor. It is interesting to me how we turn off our ears and eyes to this kind of thing. It’s just dead people, that’s all. Yet our unconscious doesn’t want to face it so we ignore the sounds, the movements, the sensations. I’ve been trying to let my awareness broaden over the last few years. Unfortunately I have enough Hollywood influence in me that my progress is slow.

A couple of nights ago I had to turn on the light because there was some creaking on our floors and no one was up. I was scared and not happy about my fear. (I imagine that deep down they know that their presence makes me uncomfortable, so I think that they don’t make themselves known as much as they normally would.)

I have a lot of experiences and have come to understand the difference between my imagination and my sensations. However, skeptic that I am I am always accepting of the fact that this all could be in my head. I am ok with that.

So, the first point I’d make is that ghosts are just dead people. They are not the hollywood morphed version of humanity with altered states of moral reality. They are just dead people, like you and I…but dead. A friend of mine (madness)  likes those ghost hunter shows (I hate them mostly because they scare the sht out of me) where they look for ghosts and once the response they received when looking for a girl named Annie was ‘leave us alone.’ My Hollywood view drew a picture of something screaming out of the shadows in a threat. But a few days after this conversation I sensed the mother in another room and at the same time realized that it was just a plea (yes, I believe that the mother gave me this understanding). They don’t want the attention driven by money or fame. They just want to be left alone. It made complete sense. So in writing this know that I’m not seeking attention, but rather a conversation about it.

The second thing I’d like to say that if ghosts aren’t bound by physical matter then they aren’t bound by non-physical matter either, meaning that they pass fluidly though my thoughts. Just a thought.

The third thing is pretty complex. The more faith I have in ghosts, the more I sense their presence. It’s true. If you start actively believing in ghosts you will start to see and hear things. This flies in the face of religious individuals that claim that ghosts aren’t real but God is. Faith in god is the same. The more faith you have, the more you sense God’s presence. I’ve worked myself into a corner on this one. I don’t know how to differentiate the faith in God from the faith in Ghosts. They both seem to behave the same. And I’d like to say that your view of the supernatural has a direct reflection on your view of God, although I haven’t thought through how yet…or in what ways that reflection is bent or inverted. Like I said, Ghosts might be my imagination, and I am ok with that. For the athiest this is an easy one: both are elements of my personality, imagined by my own narcissistic drive for meaning (a drive that in my opinion, partially quantifies the idea of God)

What do you think. Real or imagined?  Call me crazy, I’m ok with that.  Oh, and and don’t tell me any scary stories. I’m a chicken shit when the lights go out.

I set myself a goal to take a picture of what ghosts mean to me.  I managed to do more.  I took a picture of what she means to me.  Dead but still beautiful….