Ghosts Are a Reality

Ghosts are a fascinating subject. I know they’re out there. I’ve “experienced” one.

My Ghost

I grew up in an old adobe house in Chimayo, New Mexico. It was built in the typical way most old adobes were. It started with a single room and as family grew and finances permitted, rooms were added around the first, the result being that some rooms had four doors, one in each of the four walls. Not an important fact, but just so you have a setting.

There are various innocent, yet if experienced in the right context, creepy happenings that can lead one to at least ponder the existence of ghosts or other paranormal beings. We’ve all had the slightly unnerving experience of a sheet subtly settling on our bed in the middle of the night, seemingly without any rhyme or reason.

That wasn’t what happened the night I “met” my ghost.

Once, my morning bed-making ritual inadvertently lifted a corner of my mattress and box spring up onto the metal frame, and upon turning over in bed that night, they plunked themselves back down into position. My immediate, blood curdling scream brought my father in full fight mode.

That wasn’t what happened that night either.

That night, I was fast asleep on my side, with the sheet pulled up over my head like a cocoon. Suddenly, I felt “someone” on the opposite end corner of my bed rise from the mattress . . . at least that was what the movement felt like. The movement was enough to wake me from a deep sleep. I remember thinking, still in the haze of sleep, that perhaps my mother had been sitting there and decided to leave, which would have been most unusual. Without thinking, I uncovered my head and looked down towards the opposite end corner of my bed. There was nothing there. Nonplussed, I turned to look through the doorway of my room behind me, through the adjacent room, to see if the French door to the living room was alight, a sign that at least my parents were still up. It was dark. Then I turned even further to look at the clock on my nightstand only to see that it was late at night, 11:00 p.m. or so. My parents had long been in bed.

Very suddenly, I was fully awake. I remember diving under the covers, shaking like a leaf. I can honestly say that that was one of the scariest moments of my life. What had just happened?! What on earth was I supposed to do about it?! If I told my parents about it, what were they supposed to do about it?! I remember thinking, “Oh god, I have to stay here in this room with ‘it’ for the rest of the night!” I finally fell asleep from exhaustion.

Now for all of you who are rolling your eyes and have decided that this was just the imaginings of a silly young teenager, the story doesn’t end there.

A Guest Meets My Ghost

Prior to coming to New Mexico, we lived in California and my father had been a draftsman for the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. He did his job well. So well that his former boss asked him to do contract work for her. During this process, she came to stay with us in New Mexico. I, of course, was turfed out of my bed and relegated to a camp bed in the adjacent room. Now, you have to understand, my father drafted topographic maps of the bottom of the ocean that eventually made their way to the Navy, and so it goes without saying that his boss was a very serious, scientific type. She spent the night in my room in my bed without a peep. But the next morning, she rose early and asked my mother as she was cooking breakfast if there had been an earthquake the night before, a rare occurrence in that part of New Mexico. No, my mother hadn’t felt an earthquake. Well, she said, very matter-of-factly, something in that room had obviously not wanted her there because the bed had been shaken so forcefully that she had almost been tossed to the floor.

My mother, bless her, didn’t tell me this until years and several houses later. It turns out that my room had belonged to the older gentleman of the couple who had sold my family the house. He had died there. I am very thankful that he apparently liked me.

So What Are Ghosts?

First, what are ghosts? Are they an energy? Are they the visible souls of past humans? Does everyone have the ability to be a ghost when they die, or do some of the dead just choose to be ghosts . . . or are some souls forced into ghostly servitude? And if so, why? A quite common belief is that a person who lived an “unfinished” life comes back as a ghost to complete that which was not finished. Or, if a person met with a particularly sudden or violent end, their ghost will wander until justice for their death has been served. How is it though that even ghostly cars, trains and ships have been reported?

Second, why is it that there are different types of ghosts? Some ghosts can be seen but cannot, or choose not to, make contact with our physical world while others can, and do, show themselves by manipulating their surroundings? Some can speak or create a noise whereas others are simply hazy apparitions? Others appear as shadows or orbs of light while a few reveal their presence only with a particular fragrance?

Third, what does it say about our concept of time that someone from centuries ago can still be present if only in ethereal form? One of Britain’s most persistent and ancient hauntings, still seen today, is of a Roman soldier who patrols the causeway between the Essex coast and Mersea Island.

My research on the topic of ghosts expectedly leaves more questions than answers. There is apparently no scientific evidence to prove that ghosts do exist and hence many skeptics use this as “proof” that they don’t. Well, I, in particular, don’t need proof and so evidence aside, the fact that there definitely is something out there only opens the door to myriad of questions about what we consider to be reality and our concept of time.

Maybe today we don’t have any real answers, but won’t it be fascinating when we do?

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Photo credit: Stephane O, CC BY 2.0, via flickr, http://www.flickr.com/photos/63044581@N00/43283392

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