Are YOU a Ghost Virgin?
originally published October 12, 2010, on a site that no longer exists
A three-year-old girl walks out of her bedroom where her baby sister sleeps. Their mother is in the living room and wants to know why her little girl is not in bed. "There's a man in my closet," the child explains.
The mother panics. They live on the south side of Chicago in an old dilapidated building that is in such disrepair that one day it will be demolished. She cannot just grab her daughter and leave – she has to rescue her baby.
The mother, her whole body trembling, grabs a knife with a serrated edge and tiptoes into the bedroom. She cautiously maneuvers her way to the closet and reaches out to it with the knife twitching in her hand.
Her heart pounds in her chest and thumps in her ears. The door creaks slowly open and she adjusts her eyes to the darkness.
What she sees is – an empty closet – the man is not there. The likelihood that he jumped out of the window is slim. They are three levels up.
I don't remember that day. My mother does. Vividly. I was the three-year-old who claimed to have seen the man in my closet. Was it a dream – or was it a ghost?
Even before that experience, and especially after I experienced a ghostly presence one night as an adult (explained in this article, Touched By a Ghost – click the link if you want to read it), I have believed in ghosts. Never once did I discount the possibility that spirits existed, because once I discovered in a science class that energy never died, and that we all move, breathe, think, and exist due to energy, I have believed that a part of me – a part of all of us – never dies. http://bit.ly/1kLRovD
Because our spirits live on, who's to say that some of us don't continue to live – on Earth?
Even so, I know of several people who, at one time or another, did not believe in ghosts, among them some ghost hunters who run their own ghost hunting television programs. They didn't believe in ghosts – until – they encountered them.
If you have never believed in ghosts and have never had experiences with ghosts, you are a ghost virgin. Oftentimes, not until somebody experiences ghosts do they become believers in ghosts.
So many people disbelieve what they watch on ghost hunting programs, because they think the only reason these shows are on television is for the ratings. I understand how they feel. Sometimes those of us who view the programs barely detect the words the ghost hunters claim to hear, and the ghostly apparitions appear to be nothing more than smoke.
With all of the digital alteration programs available, modifying videos is not only possible, it's probable. Why should anybody believe anything they see anymore?
Eager to hear or see proof, though, we tune in to these programs and listen carefully. We watch like hawks the images that appear before us. Like pregnant couples who attend the ultrasound of their first baby and stare at the monitor saying, "Yeah, I see it," then leave and cry in each other's arms because they didn't want to admit to the technician that they couldn't recognize their own baby, we cannot always decipher what appears before us.
What would it take for you to believe in ghosts? A hand on your shoulder when you are alone? Whispering in your ear when nobody is near you? I have experienced both, and I guarantee you that just because you can't see spirits doesn't mean they aren't all around you.
Until the day you first hear a ghost, see a ghost, smell a ghost, or feel a ghost, you will remain a ghost virgin. I'm sure some (if not most) of you would prefer it that way.
