Untangling Ghosts and Spirits: Exploring the Unknown Afterlife

Memo One: COVID

Due to the Novel Coronavirus, and COVID-19 disease I’ve cut back on aspirations. During this down time, while working from home, I am brushing up on my skills, and adding to my knowledge.

The existence of ghosts is not scientifically proven. Actually, most paranormal experiences are rooted firmly in the physical world, caused by the laws of the physical universe. That may never change. As an honest investigator, I would do you a disservice to try to tell you otherwise.

We have all seen the fictional Ghost Movie which is Based on Actual Events, or Based on a True Story. This assurances of validity, to suspend your disbelief, beg other questions: are the events because someone had ingested some hallucinogenic, was the subject of the story suffering from a mental disease, was it a confidence game to gain some form of fame and notoriety, or was the story concocted to cover us some other crime.

When it comes to Ghost Stories, with our limited understanding of the paranormal in the current era, this becomes a religious, or faith based, perspective based on subjective belief.

I believe in Ghost because I have had many experiences which are not caused by the list of possibilities I have mentioned above. 

Ghosts are not the spirit of the dead. Ghosts are a manifestation of intense emotion in a given location, or so I believe. This is all subjective. 

They are also the effect of long term occupation by a single individual in a certain physical location. They could very well be demonic as warned of, and passed down, by the oldest of religions. Even the pagan religions have stories of evil spirits, and demons.

If you have a different belief concerning the origins of ghosts. It is no better, and no worse than my understanding.

I am open to alternative theories, and will work on the premise that ghosts are a figment of human imagination, or the way to explain something which happened, and it is not fully understood.

Memo Two: Haunted Cemeteries 

Why would the spirit of a dead person hang around where the body is decaying into unused organic chemicals? There is probably a potential hypothesis stating that the modern mortuary is under scrutiny, and protestation by the person’s spirit that the corporal is held in perpetuity. The ghosts are protesting that the corps rots in a vault.

Pleasant Ridge Cemetery

We have all heard stories of haunted cemeteries. I can attest that, subjectively, there is spectral energy in the sited location. However, is that the spirit of people long ago buried there, the emotions saddened by the savagery of war, or the power of suggestion? If one is told there are ghosts at a place, they may believe in the ghost because they are told they should believe.

What if I say, as I did with the 13 Steps Cemetery (also known as Pleasant Ridge Cemetery outside Palo, Iowa), that I don’t think it is haunted. Would I then be a spoilsport for not supporting the local Iowa myth? I am sure that Iowa’s Department of Natural Resources would love for my denial to go viral. The DNR is responsible for upkeep of the site.

Where the Souls Are

There is another theory that disembodied spirits like to spend eternity where they were happiest.

If that is true, why are there haunted cemeteries?

The living person probably never spent time at the location of their burial. Wouldn’t it be more likely that the spirit would visit, or revisit, a site of play and wonder? Most of the sites which are considered haunted do not fall into those two categories. Winchester House, La Isla de las Muñecas, even the White House would not really be classified places of joyfulness.

In support of this idea, along with the idea of Ghost loving dance, is another incident which I had in 2012 in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, just outside of Chicago.

As of right now there is no proof of the existence of Ghost let alone the motivation for them to occupy one site over another.

That is what we are trying to do.

Memo Three: Ghost and Spirits

Over the course of our investigation, some people are asking if we believe in ghosts, or are ghosts real. The answer is simple: we don’t know. 

A ghost is the image of the person who once lived in a specific location, and their emotions imprint on the physical structure. 

We discussed this in our working hypothesis above. 

The spirit which survives after death has rendered the physical being inanimate, is not necessarily a ghost. 

This leads us to the question: are spirits real, do spirits exist, and ultimately is there life after death? The short answer is: yes. 

I’ll expand on this as time progresses, but suffice it to say, death is not the end.

To be Continued