Saints and Sinners: Science vs. the supernatural, part 2
The Bible doesn’t have much to say about ghosts — except the Holy Ghost.
But there is a passage in the New International Version (NIV) in which Jesus speaks of ghosts. It comes after his resurrection. When the disciples saw the risen Lord, they were startled, “thinking they saw a ghost.” Jesus reassures them by saying, “A ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.”
While most people are inclined to dismiss ghost stories as superstitions, Archie Matson, the clergyman-author of “The Waiting World: What Happens at Death” (Harper Collins, 1975), stated in his chapter on ghosts: “I was once sure that there was nothing in these ‘superstitions’ (as I called them) for an intelligent person in a scientific age.”
Matson, a retired Methodist minister, decided to examine some of the “evidence” for ghosts. After studying experiences involving ghosts in the lives of people “whose integrity was beyond question and who also had a reputation for sound judgment,” Matson concluded that ghosts “demonstrate that the deceased are very much alive, still care for friends and relatives, know what is happening to their loved ones and want to help.”
In his book, Matson related seven stories of manifestations of ghosts. Each appearance had a purpose — such as giving a warning of impending danger or bringing comfort and assurance that the departed is safe and happy in their new existence.
He concluded that ghosts may be proof of life after death.
Another author, Susy Smith, stated in her book, “Prominent American Ghosts” (World Publishing Co., 1967), that “there are those who will tell you that an apparition is actually originated by the person who sees it — a hallucination that is the result of nerves, alcohol or too much pizza. It is more often a person who has not seen a ghost who says this.”
The reason some people can see ghosts and others can’t, Smith said, is that certain people are more psychic than others.
“Yet ghosts do appear,” she said, “to a great many people in a great many places. They have brought true information too many times to attribute them to imagination or mass hallucination.”
Parapsychologist Hans Holzer wrote in his book, “Ghosts I’ve Met” (Ace Publishing, 1965): “I am convinced there is indeed another world where life continues to function on a mental basis. There is a non-physical component in human personality that transcends the grave.”
One story that came to the attention of the Society for Psychical Research in London, which investigates claims of communication with the dead, concerned a college professor who returned to his room one night after a lecture and saw an apparition of his father at the foot of the bed. The older man was dressed in overalls and had two pencils and a pair of pliers in his pocket.
The next morning the professor got a telegram from his brother informing him that their father had died the previous night. He was told his father’s death had occurred while he was fixing the car. He was dressed in overalls and had two pencils and a pair of pliers in his pocket.
The society was inclined to regard the professor’s experience as authentic.
As you read here last week, to reduce the opportunities for cheating, the society requires mediums to blow through their lips while conducting a seance. It is impossible to blow and speak at the same time.
Another test mediums must pass is the “light bulb test.” A wooden box containing an electric light bulb is rigged up. A tube protrudes from the box. When the medium blows through the tube, an electric contact is set up that lights the bulb.
If the blowing stops, the light goes out. If you still hear voices, you can be sure you are dealing with a ventriloquist and not with somebody who is in touch with the “other world.”
(George Plagenz is a syndicated columnist.)