Posted: Apr 7, 08 2:59pm
The belief in some higher level of consciousness or spirituality that humans attain upon death fulfills a psychic need. This belief is found in nearly all cultures throughout the world. The ceremonies and funerary practices that accompany death are designed to express each cultures belief in the "hereafter".
Spirits and ghosts represent our belief in a separate dimension to which we transcend upon death. The mysterious forces that make floors squeak and cause us to see apparitions in shadow, are compelling for the reason that as terrifying as it would be, we would all love to see a ghost.
A ghost would confirm everything. A ghost means there is someplace to go to when we die. According to folklore, to keep from wandering the earth for an eternity and haunting succeeding generations, we must live our lives according to certain principles, and avoid certain traps.
A review of the reasons cited for hauntings might give us a glimpse into this morality play. We find jilted lovers, Romeo & Juliet pairings, dead children, and a host of other familiar themes. We see the consequence of someone who chooses a lonely vigil rather than to remarry someone else. She paces up and down on a windswept sea-side outcropping of land waiting for her fiancee to return from the sea. The moral is: If your husband goes out for groceries and hasn't come back in a couple of years, maybe you need to move on with your life.
Ghosts are here to stay, and our best defense against them is to understand where they really come from. It's your desire to feel that this isn't all there is, and that you are a part of something on a cosmological scale, more important than you seem here on earth.
Some interesting ghost stories here:
