In the middle of the night I was sound asleep, until I got this weird sensation throughout my mind that made me feel like I was being watched and awoke. When I sat up I noticed an average-looking man standing in the darkness of my bedroom. Frightened, I grabbed my blanket, moved closer to the wall, and followed the man with my wide-open eyes. Eventually, he made his way into my half-open closet door. I ran to turn the light on faster than a wimpy kid who punched the tough guy in school. Unlike most people would, I went straight to the closet door; when I opened the door, I found nothing. It’s easy to assume that I didn’t get too much sleep that night. I am not positive what happened during that mind-puzzling night, but I think the man I saw was a spirit that, for some reason, wanted to see me. I've never seen the man since, but I will always remember my encounter with him while lying down to go to sleep for the night. Despite what skeptics say, spirits, or ghosts, exist and can negatively impact the lives of everyday people.
After someone dies, he/she can continue to live in his/her subtle-body. The subtle-body, the soul, mind, or emotions, is every part of a human excluding the person's physical body (What Are Ghosts). The person can then wander the earth after he/she has already passed away. “Ghosts are people who died at some point but didn't fully cross over” (What to Do). To avoid the terrible reality of being stuck on earth for eternity, one can participate in certain religious affairs or just simply perform some good deeds. The chances of becoming a ghost, or spirit, will lessen if one: does “spiritual practice, has a low ego, or has less personality defects” (What Are Ghosts). “Ghosts cannot influence or take them in...
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One of my personal favorites is the ghost of Wood Hall. This apparition takes on the image of a little boy. Numbers of Wood Hall girls have seen him. Erica Gray and roommate Ashli Webster deal with this ghost all the time. When asked about the paranormal occurrences in their room, Erica said, "Pretty much every night, he flicks the channels on the TV and turns the lights on and off. Every once in a while he types random shit on the computer... I don't care though as long as he doesn't try to rape me or something. [laughter]" They aren't the only ones who have seen this little boy. I've even had my own instances of cold chills in my 75-degree room, flickering lights, and even a quick glimpse of a child standing at the end of a dark hallway at 3 in the morning.
The book, What’s So Super About the Supernatural tells of well known stories about poltergeists. A poltergeist is a noisy or high energy ghost who might perform violent activity. A young girl by the name of Tina Resch lived in Ohio and is known to be a poltergeist. “No ghost was ever seen or heard on camera; however when the camera was inadvertently left running, the tape showed Tina surreptitiously pulling over a lamp” (Gardner). The evidence was found after people were reporting the activity. Newspaper reporters went to the scene to check out the action only to find evidence of Tina throwing objects violently around the house. Another example of proof that ghosts exist goes back to a case involving a poltergeist in England. An eleven-year-old boy by the name of Matthew Manning performed several violent actions that his dad had noticed and reported. Gardner writes, “ On one occasion, Matthew’s bed was thrown about and left leaning at an angle against the wall” (Gardner). These examples are not the only reported cases regarding ghosts and paranormal activity. Many stories about the supernatural have been told and passed down for several generations. Spirits are even mentioned in well known religious books that have been passed down for hundreds of
Every year when the temperature starts dropping and the leaves begin to get crisp, many ghostly tales resurface themselves for another round of terrifying anyone who is unfortunate enough to be in earshot of their horror. Many nightmares, uneasy looks into the dark, and scary reflections could be avoided if this simple question was answered: is the existence of the paranormal just a figment of the human psyche, or is there significant evidence that proves otherwise? The answer is no. There is not any proof that any such “undead” walk among us. This can be disproved by debunking some of the bogus evidence out there, examining some of the most common “paranormal activities,” and understanding the sensory part of our brain that triggers these fears.
Karr-Morse, R., & Wiley, M. S. (1997). Ghost from the Nursery. New York : The Atlantic Monthly Press.
Stacy’s Journal of the Paranormal. Pages 32-35. Volume 31. Issue 4. Published by Awesome Publishing. September 2011.
The afterlife can be described as the belief that an essential part of an individual's identity or the stream of any consciousness continues to show after the death of the physical body. In African culture and religion, life does not end with death, but it continues in another realm. The concepts of "life" and "death" are not mutually unique concepts, and there are no clear dividing lines between the two. Death does not end the life or change the personality of that individual, but it does cause a change in its conditions. This is expressed in the concept of the term ancestors. Ancestors are people who have died but who continue to live in the community and communicate with their families in reference to many African cultures. Death is usually
www.theatcoghost.com--A site detailing directions on how to see the ghost with an accompanying message board in which individuals recount their own experiences of attempting to witness the ghost.
The word “ghost” originates from the Aged English word “gast,” and its synonyms are “soul, spirit [good or bad spirit], existence, breath,” and “demon” (etymonline.com). In the book, The Woman Warrior, that is, ironically, subtitled as Memoirs of a Girlhood Amid Ghosts, the author, Maxine Hong Kingston, uses the word “ghost” as a metaphor to typify her confusion concerning discovering a difference amid reality and unreality – the difference that divides her American present that prefers and her Chinese past that her mother, Valiant Orchid, filters into her mind across talk-stories that steadily daunt her to cross her established bounds. Ghosts, in the book, change reliant on point of view. Anybody whose deeds deviates from what is satisfactory in one area is a ghost according to the associates of that society. To Chinese people, like Valiant Orchid, Americans are ghosts. On the supplementary hand, Chinese are ghosts according to Chinese-Americans (including Kingston, who finds her past loaded alongside frightening Chinese ghosts). For Kingston, Ghosts, however, are not always scary; in fact, a little of them enthuse...
What would be the cause of these mysterious situations? Would it be your imagination, a hallucination, a ghost?
Ok. One night my sister and I were at my father’s house. He lives in Kingsville on 10 maybe 9 acres of land in this [small pause, looks at ceiling] I wouldn’t really call it a farmhouse, just a kind of small house out there. The previous person who lived in the house was supposedly shipped to an asylum, for, you know, normal stuff [pause] schizophrenic or something. My sister and I were at the house one night and we were cleaning up the house while my dad was on some sort of job out of the state and my step mom was at work in the hospital. We were doing our stuff, and then the power flickered, and came back on. We didn’t think anything of it. Then, outside of the door, we heard a noise, kinda like a dog barking, but like, just enough not so that we knew it wasn’t. So, we hear this noise, and start to get fre...
With the recent technological advances, ghost hunters have been able to find more ghosts and search better than before. Embracing this new technology can provide us great insight into the world of the ghosts by showing us how strong they are, what kind of energy they use, and how they look like. Science has given ghost hunters the technology, now ghost hunters can apply it to their trade.
For years, ghosts and poltergeists have been a part of our popular lexicon. From stories told around the campfire, to motion pictures like The Haunting, to books like the Scary Story series, everyone has heard a good ghost story or two. Many people claim to have actually been party to a few supernatural experiences themselves. But for as long as we have told these frightful stories, science has been attempting to explain them beyond the typical bump in the dark.
Are ghosts real? That is the question that most of society deliberates day after day. The true definition of a ghost is a soul or spirit of a deceased individual that can appear in visible form or other manifestations to the living. Ghosts are of the most common paranormal belief in the world. Most people believe in ghosts because of a personal experience, whether that was seeing or sensing an unexplained presence. Who wouldn’t want to believe that our beloved family members are looking for us?
Cheung, Theresa. The Element Encyclopedia of Ghosts & Hauntings. Element Encyclopedia Series. Unknown: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 2008.