Notes: I am entering Basket of Reeds in a writing contest that will not allow books that have been published, including on blogs, so...I might throw out another chapter or two, but cannot complete it. No matter what, it will be published next year (and mercifully proof- read) and I'll tell readers when that occurs. In the meantime, I will start another book in the book section in the next day or two, and will notify readers as such.
Also, Rooson has reminded me of the often strange occurrances in life that bespeak - even prove to the individual if not the world - that a higher power is involved in our lives. I have an essay in mind for that which I will post in Essays shortly (and tell the readers when that is done). I invite others to write of their own special experiences of this. Just as I invite others to write of their experiences of: Ghosts.
I have long promised a change from theology, although it is my meat and potatoes, and offer something here for at least a temporary change of venue. Thus my experience with ghosts.
I have a niece who claims that she has been talking to, and seeing, dead people since she was a little girl. She works as a nurse in a hospice, and you have to admit there does seem to be some coherency there. Many of the popular mediums claim to have seen the dead since childhood and I take it with a grain of salt. I have to say, I believe theoretically, but not actually. I also have a difficult time dealing with the ontological properties of ghosts: are they images from the past superimposed on the present? Are they the remnants of strong emotions carrying on into the future due to their intensity? Or are they really the heart and soul of the real individual, breaching the normally opaque wall between the living and the dead? My own view, both philosophically and in hope, is that once our body is gone, so are we - into at least a greater knowledge of the Absolute. There is lots of room for discussion here, but let me first relate my own minor experiences with ghosts.
Houses have always been at least symbolic of dead people's presence, and it is there where I think I might have found them outside of dreams. For instance, I lived in an old farmhouse as an undergraduate, my room being the one upstairs besides the door to the attic. Oddly, I can't ever remember going up there, although my housemates did, with tales of suicide from the rafters, but that is not the sort of presence I felt - and heard. Instead, every week or so, a very pleasant female voice would wake me up by simply saying my name. I would normally be spooked by this, but not by her; hers was a caring voice, not concerned with anything negative. A simple "Fred" would wake me up, always right on time, and actually give me a bright mood for the day. I kind of miss her.
In other houses, it was the feel that did it. For a few years we would meet with my wife's parents between our homes in a farmhouse in the mountains of south west Virginia. My wife then slept with our very young son in one room while I stayed in another - and was constantly bombarded by the presence of several ghosts. I don't recall ever seeing any, but perhaps I did - the presence in feeling was as actual as sight. They were neither good nor bad, but somewhat chaotic and frightening in that way. I did not sleep well. I loved the location, but was happy to not ever have to go back after we moved to Wisconsin.
There was also my present house. Entirely built by a retired contractor from Chicago, his dream home in the country, I do believe he came to see me now and again the first few years we were here. His widow was very nervous when she first showed us around, and made the odd statement, "the spirits are good here. Nothing bad or anything like that." And yet it seemed she wanted to get the hell out as fast as possible. I later understood why; it seemed to me that on the occasions when I took a nap in my upstairs study, the old man would come around and, without saying a word, let it be known that he was tired of my visit in HIS house. Very uncomfortable, but only in the upstairs study. After a few years he seemed to disappear, but my son, then in first and second grade, told me of a man-ghost who was hanging around in the barn. I believed him, because I had come to feel him there myself - just after he had left the study. The barn had been his rec-room where he pursued his hobbies of woodworking and mechanics. His last abode, I think, before he finally left. Not a bad guy, but a curmudgeon who liked his privacy.
For none of those incidences do I have a shred of proof - how could I? How do you prove that a sensation is something, or even that you had a certain sensation? Even less satisfactory for proof is the arena in which I have met "ghosts" the most - in dreams. There they were invariably of relatives, and they were not normal dreams. Everyone must know what I mean: there are the normal dreams of rapid-fire anxieties and snips and pieces of lived experience and chronic desires and feelings of inadequacy or power - and then there are the others. Some bring knowledge as if from on high; others bring dead people. There are dreams of dead people that are just dreams, but then there are dreams of dead people that follow different rules. They are not chaotic, they are not mixed with other impertinent actions. They are different and you know it. I will mention three:
A really intense one was of my uncle who had recently died of cirrhosis of the liver from excess drinking. I was a freshman in a dorm room, and when he came to me, he immediately woke me in a fright. But he did not leave with the dream. Instead he loomed up as a white spirit before me and scared the crap out of me. I had woken up but he would not leave! I was too afraid to have gotten a message, if one had been intended. I think now that this was what is called a lucid dream, the type psychologists usually come across in UFO abduction cases. That is, they are dreams that appear in every way to be real. They are deemed unreal by observers who might be there at the time and know better - but usually they are deemed unreal by people who cannot believe in what was experienced. A dubious comfort.
Another was of my grandfather a few months after he had died. I was nine then - one of the most momentous years of my life, although I didn't know it at the time - and he had recently died of lung cancer. The last time I had seen him, he was white as a ghost and out of it from pain killers, with my very upset grandmother getting money out of the bank downtown. I was on my bicycle then with a friend, and had been very impressed with the severity of the situation. In the dream, I was standing before the church across the street from the bank with my grandfather. The two of us had walked in, and there before us was a huge, glorious round stain-glass window glowing with direct sun light. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, but when I turned to my grandfather, it suddenly occurred to me to ask him if he was dead. Why yes, he said, and before he could go on, I panicked and woke up.
The third was with my father who had died of a long illness in old age a few months earlier. I found myself with him in his car, he driving on a winding road on a beautiful fall day to the U of Connecticut, his Alma mater and the place that he loved the most. It was all very pleasant, when at one point when we were going up a hill I thought to ask him the same question - you're dead, aren't you? This time I wasn't afraid, and I heard what he said. "Yes. I won't see you again, but everything's all right." I forget for now the few other words he said, but quickly I was outside the car watching him drive up the hill and out of sight, into the sun that had just risen above it. The feeling was good. I was happy when I awoke.
And so are my ghost stories, none very impressive and certainly none proof of after body existence. Yet when I wrote them, especially the last, the hair stood up on my arms and neck, not for fear but for...what? Something extraordinary and out of this world? That's what it seems and that's all I can know for sure. More later - and perhaps some of the reader's experiences as well. FK
Also, Rooson has reminded me of the often strange occurrances in life that bespeak - even prove to the individual if not the world - that a higher power is involved in our lives. I have an essay in mind for that which I will post in Essays shortly (and tell the readers when that is done). I invite others to write of their own special experiences of this. Just as I invite others to write of their experiences of: Ghosts.
I have long promised a change from theology, although it is my meat and potatoes, and offer something here for at least a temporary change of venue. Thus my experience with ghosts.
I have a niece who claims that she has been talking to, and seeing, dead people since she was a little girl. She works as a nurse in a hospice, and you have to admit there does seem to be some coherency there. Many of the popular mediums claim to have seen the dead since childhood and I take it with a grain of salt. I have to say, I believe theoretically, but not actually. I also have a difficult time dealing with the ontological properties of ghosts: are they images from the past superimposed on the present? Are they the remnants of strong emotions carrying on into the future due to their intensity? Or are they really the heart and soul of the real individual, breaching the normally opaque wall between the living and the dead? My own view, both philosophically and in hope, is that once our body is gone, so are we - into at least a greater knowledge of the Absolute. There is lots of room for discussion here, but let me first relate my own minor experiences with ghosts.
Houses have always been at least symbolic of dead people's presence, and it is there where I think I might have found them outside of dreams. For instance, I lived in an old farmhouse as an undergraduate, my room being the one upstairs besides the door to the attic. Oddly, I can't ever remember going up there, although my housemates did, with tales of suicide from the rafters, but that is not the sort of presence I felt - and heard. Instead, every week or so, a very pleasant female voice would wake me up by simply saying my name. I would normally be spooked by this, but not by her; hers was a caring voice, not concerned with anything negative. A simple "Fred" would wake me up, always right on time, and actually give me a bright mood for the day. I kind of miss her.
In other houses, it was the feel that did it. For a few years we would meet with my wife's parents between our homes in a farmhouse in the mountains of south west Virginia. My wife then slept with our very young son in one room while I stayed in another - and was constantly bombarded by the presence of several ghosts. I don't recall ever seeing any, but perhaps I did - the presence in feeling was as actual as sight. They were neither good nor bad, but somewhat chaotic and frightening in that way. I did not sleep well. I loved the location, but was happy to not ever have to go back after we moved to Wisconsin.
There was also my present house. Entirely built by a retired contractor from Chicago, his dream home in the country, I do believe he came to see me now and again the first few years we were here. His widow was very nervous when she first showed us around, and made the odd statement, "the spirits are good here. Nothing bad or anything like that." And yet it seemed she wanted to get the hell out as fast as possible. I later understood why; it seemed to me that on the occasions when I took a nap in my upstairs study, the old man would come around and, without saying a word, let it be known that he was tired of my visit in HIS house. Very uncomfortable, but only in the upstairs study. After a few years he seemed to disappear, but my son, then in first and second grade, told me of a man-ghost who was hanging around in the barn. I believed him, because I had come to feel him there myself - just after he had left the study. The barn had been his rec-room where he pursued his hobbies of woodworking and mechanics. His last abode, I think, before he finally left. Not a bad guy, but a curmudgeon who liked his privacy.
For none of those incidences do I have a shred of proof - how could I? How do you prove that a sensation is something, or even that you had a certain sensation? Even less satisfactory for proof is the arena in which I have met "ghosts" the most - in dreams. There they were invariably of relatives, and they were not normal dreams. Everyone must know what I mean: there are the normal dreams of rapid-fire anxieties and snips and pieces of lived experience and chronic desires and feelings of inadequacy or power - and then there are the others. Some bring knowledge as if from on high; others bring dead people. There are dreams of dead people that are just dreams, but then there are dreams of dead people that follow different rules. They are not chaotic, they are not mixed with other impertinent actions. They are different and you know it. I will mention three:
A really intense one was of my uncle who had recently died of cirrhosis of the liver from excess drinking. I was a freshman in a dorm room, and when he came to me, he immediately woke me in a fright. But he did not leave with the dream. Instead he loomed up as a white spirit before me and scared the crap out of me. I had woken up but he would not leave! I was too afraid to have gotten a message, if one had been intended. I think now that this was what is called a lucid dream, the type psychologists usually come across in UFO abduction cases. That is, they are dreams that appear in every way to be real. They are deemed unreal by observers who might be there at the time and know better - but usually they are deemed unreal by people who cannot believe in what was experienced. A dubious comfort.
Another was of my grandfather a few months after he had died. I was nine then - one of the most momentous years of my life, although I didn't know it at the time - and he had recently died of lung cancer. The last time I had seen him, he was white as a ghost and out of it from pain killers, with my very upset grandmother getting money out of the bank downtown. I was on my bicycle then with a friend, and had been very impressed with the severity of the situation. In the dream, I was standing before the church across the street from the bank with my grandfather. The two of us had walked in, and there before us was a huge, glorious round stain-glass window glowing with direct sun light. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, but when I turned to my grandfather, it suddenly occurred to me to ask him if he was dead. Why yes, he said, and before he could go on, I panicked and woke up.
The third was with my father who had died of a long illness in old age a few months earlier. I found myself with him in his car, he driving on a winding road on a beautiful fall day to the U of Connecticut, his Alma mater and the place that he loved the most. It was all very pleasant, when at one point when we were going up a hill I thought to ask him the same question - you're dead, aren't you? This time I wasn't afraid, and I heard what he said. "Yes. I won't see you again, but everything's all right." I forget for now the few other words he said, but quickly I was outside the car watching him drive up the hill and out of sight, into the sun that had just risen above it. The feeling was good. I was happy when I awoke.
And so are my ghost stories, none very impressive and certainly none proof of after body existence. Yet when I wrote them, especially the last, the hair stood up on my arms and neck, not for fear but for...what? Something extraordinary and out of this world? That's what it seems and that's all I can know for sure. More later - and perhaps some of the reader's experiences as well. FK
RSS Feed