Haunted Houses – The Ultimate Adventure?

This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge, hosted by Long and Short Reviews. Check out other bloggers at this week’s post.

Would I stay in a haunted house?

Would you?

Do you believe in an afterlife? Do you believe in ghosts?

When I was much younger, the idea of ghosts scared me, but I suspect that had a lot to do with seeing too many scary movies when I was too young to be watching such stuff. I don’t know that I really believed in ghosts at the time, but I really didn’t like the idea for a long while.

I’m pretty sure I went through a phase of not believing in them during my teen years.

Once I became active in the evangelical church, my views shifted. As far as I remember, the Nazarene Church doesn’t clearly speak on the idea of ghosts. My experience was that most Nazarenes claimed ghosts didn’t exist. But there are verses in the Bible that refer to ghosts, so I’m not clear why Christians would say ghosts weren’t real. Recall that when the disciples saw Jesus walking on the water toward them in Mathew 14:26, they thought he was a ghost. I’m not a theologian or a student of Bible-era languages though, so I’m not sure how accurate that translation is.

My thinking during my Christian days was that ghosts weren’t necessarily bad, but they weren’t good. I had the perception that God didn’t do ghosts, and that they only existed because of some action by Satan. That thought probably had no basis in reality or dogma, and I can’t recall where it came from.

But as I’ve deconstructed and deconverted, my thinking has shifted. I’m at the point now that I know that I don’t know much about the spiritual world. There may well be different planes of existence and different forms our body or soul take along the way. It’s reasonable to me to think that if angels and demons exist in a spiritual realm, then ghosts and other spirits could also exist.

It’s easy for me to imagine that certain kinds of deaths could cause the spirit of the dead person to become “stuck” or trapped in between worlds. Why? Because if we have a soul that’s not directly connected to our body, something that can travel to another world after we die, then why can’t it travel to other places besides heaven and hell (and purgatory if you believe that)?

So there are my thoughts on the basic idea of ghosts. Yes, I believe that the spirits of dead people could appear in the physical world we living people occupy. I think that if they appear in the living world, these spirits can affect people and animals and things in this world.

Having said all of that, would I visit or stay in a haunted house?

You bet your butt I would.

I have a small adventurous streak where I want to try lots of things at least once. If ghosts exist—and like I said, I’m not convinced they don’t, and I’m not convinced they’re evil—then I think it would be incredibly cool to experience contact with them.

I’ve got no reason to be scared of them. Legend says that the main reason a ghost would try to harm a living person is because that person harmed or otherwise wronged the ghost when they were alive. I’ve never killed anyone, and of all the people I know who have died, I don’t think I wronged any of them, especially not enough to make them want to come back and hurt me.

I’d be fascinated by the idea of someone remaining in this world after they died. My never-ending curiosity about Story would drive me to learn all I could about the person.

What was their life like in this world before they died?

What caused them to stay behind? Could they ever break away from this world and go on to the next?

Could they travel freely between worlds or planes or whatever?

Do they want to?

All of that truly intrigues me. Imagine coming across a spirit who lived hundreds of years ago. Wouldn’t it be amazing to sit and talk with them? Can you imagine being able to talk to someone who lived through the American Revolution? Reconstruction?

I’m exploring the idea of ghosts in one of my works-in-progress, working title Ghost of Innocence. Oklahoma wrongfully executed Keith Vincent for a murder he didn’t commit. Now he’s got to clear his name. It’s been an interesting time as I try to figure out what ghosts can and can’t do in and to the living world. I think it’s going to be the first of several stories that explore the supernatural. That’s the advantage of branding myself as Writer | Unfocused: I can write about almost anything.

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