Ghosts

I visited Knox College last week, as there were signs on the freeway indicating a Lincoln-Douglas debate took place there.  While there, I got to talking with a student there, who told me about ghosts on campus.  One of them, she had heard.  She was working I guess in the kitchen, and kept hearing a young woman crying on the stairway.  She went up and down, looking, and could see anyone.  She was told by a woman working there that “that’s just Andrea”, Andrea being a young lady who had been murdered there two years prior.

Now, obviously she may have been lying to get attention.  It happens.  But I have heard similar stories from dozens of people, who had no obvious motivation to lie.  The point I want to make is not about ghosts, per se: the evidence is in my view overwhelming.  We have a physical theory–quantum physics–which accounts for them, and copious empirical evidence.

The point I wanted to make is how SAD it would be for a young woman, looking forward to life, to have her life taken so suddenly and violently.  From what mediums gather, when you die, your mental and emotional life is virtually identical to what it was.

People ask the question: do ghosts exist or not, but seldom try to put themselves empathetically in their position and ask “how can I help you?”  I haven’t seen it.

I will add, too, that pain has long been a theological problem.  Let us posit, with the Christians, that our souls are infinite.  Let us add, with the Hindues and many others, that we live repeatedly.  What if a thousand lifetimes is just a blink of the eye, in the grand scheme of things?  What if the life of Earth itself is just two blinks?  How can any temporal pain, even the worst, matter in such a scheme, if most time is spent pleasantly?

I have touched that rough topic before, but not from precisely that angle.

Food for thought.  Please chew consciously and carefully.