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Off The Fence: Ghost stories will always exist whether or not ghosts actually do
Susan Thompson
for Smoky River Express
Halloween comes from an ancient Celtic pagan festival of Samhain, which could be seen as a festival of the dead.
On Samhain the border between this world and the afterworld is supposed to became thin, allowing both the spirits of a family’s ancestors and other, more harmful spirits to pass through.
Costumes and masks might originally have been meant to scare off the bad spirits, while the spirits of deceased family members were welcomed. No wonder ghosts are such a big part of Halloween.
Personally, my fascination with ghosts extends year-round. I’ve read my fair share of ghost stories in my life, and I can’t get enough of TV shows featuring paranormal investigators. These brave people go sit in supposedly haunted buildings at night in the dark and try to catch evidence of the paranormal using all kinds of high-tech equipment.
Sometimes the things they record are genuinely spooky, like disembodied voices, or furniture and cameras that seem to move on their own.
The sceptical part of me knows it’s easy enough to fake any supposed evidence paranormal investigators find. Spooky voices could be made by people off camera. Moving furniture could be moved by fishing line or other means. People have been faking ghosts for a very long time, even back in the Victorian era when seances were all the rage, and a TV show wouldn’t be very entertaining if nothing ever happened.
What the investigators do find doesn’t tend to be very scientific, since it’s more in the realm of personal experiences and not necessarily anything that can be replicated. I’ve never seen anyone actually catch a full human image on camera, either.
Nevertheless, I find I’m still spooked and fascinated with the idea. I think it’s probably because a fascination with what happens to us when we die is natural. Human cultures always have some idea of an afterlife of some kind, since it seems so inconceivable that we simply cease to be.
In many ways, I’d actually rather ghosts didn’t exist. Never mind fire and demons. Being stuck on earth as a ghost sounds like hell to me.
I don’t want to think I might be trapped on earth when I die, still here but invisible and unable to communicate with my friends and loved ones. I can’t think of anything lonelier than that.
Some people think ghosts are here because they are unable to understand what has happened to them, or are trapped by some terrible event or regret, living out the worst moments of their lives over and over again. I find that profoundly disturbing too, especially where the supposed ghosts of children are concerned.
Meanwhile, as I write this, I’m sitting in the Smoky River Express office in a house that’s 90 years old this year. This is the oldest house in Falher and I can’t help but wonder what this house has witnessed in its time. Imagine the human dramas that have unfolded here throughout this building’s life, as it’s served as everything from a farm house to a vet clinic.
If these walls could talk, what would they talk about? If someone took a tape recorder and sat in the attic of this house in the dark at 3 am, would they record voices from the building’s past? What would they say?
Ultimately, I think that’s what is so fascinating about ghost stories. They are actually stories about us, about the things people do and the things they care about in life.
Just like religions all over the world, they also offer the hope that we continue to exist, even after we die.
That’s why as long as there are people, there will likely be people who see and believe in ghosts.
As for me, I probably won’t stick around at work too long after dark.
Happy Halloween!
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