Do you have unexplained perceptions?
What We Believe
“Modern people don’t believe in ghosts”, seems a reasonable statement except for the fact that many do. Most who do believe probably won’t admit it. We all feel things and occasionally perceive things we can’t explain. We may or may not dismiss the experience.
Myths and Reality
In writing the Gaia’s Majesty Trilogy I had to address support of a fantasy and deal with what I did and did not believe. We do not have definitive evidence of the existence of ghosts or spirits although it is widely debated and many believe in various forms.
In most circumstances I would probably say I don’t believe in ghosts or spirits except for the fact that I do. It’s just that I can’t provide a good explanation. But let me tell you how my belief was enhanced.
Innocence
After graduate school my wife and I brought our new baby girl to the Baltimore area. We wanted to live in the country and found a country home to rent. It was a lovely one hundred and twenty year old three story stone house situated in the middle of a three hundred acre farm. We fell in love with it at once.
All was quiet for awhile. But soon in the evening we found our dogs often would suddenly sit up and look at the doorway into the hall. Both of us often felt something, a presence in the hallway. There was an attic on the fourth floor. The door had a hasp with an angled piece of wood firmly placed in it to hold it shut. The problem was the piece of wood was often on the floor and the door often stood open even after we had recently secured it. Our daughter was still and infant and we tended to have no visitors.
Seeking Evidence
At last we sat one evening and asked general (not leading) questions to each other. We concluded we were feeling someone was walking from the attic down the stairs to a small study near the living room. There was no perception he went anywhere else. Yes, it was clearly a he.
Finally I asked the owner about the history of the house. There were a lot of details but the most interesting was the history of renters who either loved the house or who fled for some unexplained reason. We felt the presence was somewhere between benign and positive since we loved the house. We also assumed if you did not love his house you would feel uncomfortable. We learned to simply accept the presence.
Our Conclusion
Then it came time to leave to go to a home we had purchased. As we were preparing to move, in the evenings the dogs went crazy barking at the hallway. The long and short of it was that we felt our unseen friend was drawing closer. There were a lot more details, but that’s the outline. It felt like someone was there and he didn’t want us to leave.
Our new home was even older and we felt no presence in the house. Outside was an entirely different matter. I’ll talk about that in a future post.
Do I believe in ghosts? I have to confess I do, although I don’t know what they really represent and why we can or cannot perceive them. And when it came to writing fiction, I could not dismiss the importance of involving a spirit world. I can’t dismiss the spirits either.
Do you have a clearcut belief one way or the other?