Are Catholics allowed to believe in ghosts?

[theCardinalbird]

I’ve wondered about this. Does it conflict with any of our beliefs?

 

[1Lord1Faith]

Does it conflict with any of our beliefs?

No. I think there is a lot to be said on the subject, and how it has helped shape our faith. For example, Saul summoning Samuel. And Abraham wanting to visit his brothers after he died.

 

[bquinnan]

Believing in their existence, and even in their possible presence and activity on earth, does not necessarily conflict with our beliefs from what I understand. However, trying to summon or control them would be against our faith:

“All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to “unveil” the future.48 Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone.” -CCC 2116

 

[Mintaka]

Actually, it is okay, but it depends what you mean by “ghosts.”

The English word “ghost” covers a lot of territory. “Spirits” definitely exist, good and bad. The idea of ghosts as benign apparitions of the souls in Purgatory, asking for prayers or warning the living to repent, is also okay.

There is also the idea of demons infesting certain places or tormenting certain people, which is well documented. Such demons have been known to masquerade as damned souls, just to mess with people.

Shane Leslie’s Ghost Book was published back in the day by a UK Catholic press, and includes a lot of early Christian and medieval accounts of such things, along with theological backing of various interpretations. Very interesting.

 

[Mintaka]

The Life of St. Germanus of Auxerre includes some high quality late Roman haunted house stuff, btw.

Lots of demonic poltergeist harassment of monastic saints, too. But yeah, pretty clearly demons were doing it.

 

[AngelitaBaker]

When Jesus appeared to the Apostles after his resurrection, He told him he is alive, unlike a “ghosts” that you can’t touch. Jesus mentioning of a ghost made me believe that ghosts are real.

 

[bquinnan]

I think there is a lot to be said on the subject, and how it has helped shape our faith. For example, Saul summoning Samuel.

Remember, though, Saul was in a very dark place when he did this – he had driven all the mediums out of the land under pain of death but was now turning to one to serve his own selfish needs. Samuel is annoyed at Saul for doing so. Passages such as Deuteronomy 18:10 condemn divination, and even that same first book of Samuel implies that divination is an evil practice: “For a sin of divination is rebellion, and arrogance, the crime of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, the LORD in turn has rejected you as king.” (1 Samuel 15:23) Saul knew the will of God, but the whole point is that he kept doing what he wanted instead. While God apparently allowed Samuel to speak to Saul on this occasion, the story is not a license for us to turn to divination at our will.

 

[Entwhistler]

I suppose technically angels could be classified as ghosts.

 

[JamalChristophr]

There is, of course, Casper. Most everyone believes in him.

 

[gcshapero]

From my understand, many saints did believe in ghosts and many did not.

A ghost was not a soul wandering around. From what the Church has said before, they are souls in purgatory manifesting themselves in order to get us to pray for them.

The Church doesn’t require that we believe in them, but if we choose to accept them as true, we must understand what they are and what they aren’t so that we don’t fall into a pit of heresy.

 

[midori]

Padre Francesco Napolitano reported that in 1945 Fra’ Pietro, entering his cell at night, saw a young friar sitting on his desk, with the head down like he was meditating. He asked who he was, but he disappeared. Terrorized, he run to Padre Pio. Padre Pio accompanied him back to his cell and said: “That young friar is a poor novice who is serving his purgatory in this cell. But don’t worry he will not bother you again, and you will never see him again.”

Padre Pio reported to Padre Anastasio di Roio: “one night I was alone in the choir and I saw a friar cleaning the altar late at night. I asked him to go to bed since it was so late. He said: “I’m a friar like you. I did here my novitiate and when assigned to take care of the Altar, and I passed many times in front of the Tabernacle without making the proper reverence. For this sin I am in Purgatory, and the Lord sent me to you. You decide how much longer I have to suffer in those flames.”
I told him: until the Mass in the morning. He said “Cruel” and disappeared.
I still have a wound in my heart. I could have sent him immediately to Paradise, instead he had to stay one more night in the flames of Purgatory.”

At my old church, the current priest mentions that he’s encountered the priest who built that church— and who died back in the 90’s. I don’t know if the other priest is having to spend some of his purgatory at the church, or what— but it’s not my business; I just keep him in my prayers.

 

[shanishani7]

In my knowledge, if ghosts refer to the souls of human after death, the souls exist. Sometimes God even allow the Holy Souls in purgatory to visit the human/ relatives on earth, either to request for the mass held or prayers for him/her soul, or to deliver the message of heaven to the human on earth. But it’s all with the permission of God.

However, sometimes the Evil spirits may pretend to be the souls of the passed.

So the “ghosts” that people always refer to actually do exist here, they are either the holy souls in purgatory or the evil spirits.

 

[XndrK]

From this article:

Peter Kreeft, a philosophy professor at Boston College, has written, “The dead often do appear to the living. There is enormous evidence of ‘ghosts’ in all cultures.”

Kreeft says that there is “no contradiction” between ghosts and Catholic theology. “Ghosts appear on earth, but do not live on earth any longer,” he says. “They are either in heaven, hell, or purgatory.”

Kreeft recalls the appearance of the dead Samuel to the witch of Endor in 1 Samuel, one of the most famous ghost stories in the Bible. When Samuel appeared, says Kreeft, “he was not on earth, though that’s where he appeared.” Similarly, “the angel of the Lord” that appears frequently in the Old Testament, which some theologians think was the preincarnate Christ, “is not actually on earth, but simply appeared to those that were,” he says.

“Ghosts confirm, rather than refute or disturb, Catholic theology of the afterlife,” says Kreeft. “Especially the very existence of a life after death, which is the main point skeptics dispute.”

I think Kreeft mentioned ghosts in passing in the Handbook of Catholic Apologetics and said that there are so many accounts of ghosts across so many cultures isolated from one another that (and I might be paraphrasing, but I think this is what he said) “to not believe in them, one would have to be either an idiot or a professor.”

 

[Cone]

There are no ghosts, only demons. Do not attempt to interact with them.

 

[Lost4words]

I believe what St Pio saw and said.

 

[Seagull]

In the book “ Way of the Pilgrim “
Some rich wealthy guy struck one his servants dead.
The servant’s ghost came back - and haunted him - every night.
Soon the rich guy was skinny and suffered from lack of sleep… tormented.

You’ll have to read the rest of it yourself -

So - witch of Endor raised up the dead ghost of Samuel -

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

Here is a ghost story involving a priest who’s cause is up for canonization:

Guest Column: Ghost Story - Crisis Magazine

 

[pianistclare]

He didn’t see ghosts. He saw demons. And they came to beat him up.

 

[midori]

One night in 1944 the friars heard loud voices coming from downstairs saying “Viva Padre Pio”. The superior Padre Raffaele da S. Elia a Pianisi told the doorkeeper
Fra Gerardo da Deliceto to let those people out and lock the door properly. Fra Gerardo went downstairs, didn’t find anybody, and the door was double locked as it was supposed to.
He went back to report. Padre Raffaele was puzzled and went straight to Padre Pio asking if he knew something.
“Oh! Those were soldiers who had died on the battleground, and came to thank me for their salvation.”

In 1922 Bishop Alberto Costa asked Padre Pio if he had ever seen a soul in Purgatory. “I have seen so many of them that they don’t scare me anymore.”

A friar testified: We were all in the dining room when Padre Pio got suddenly up and walked at steady pace to the door of the convent. He opened it and started having a conversation.
The two friars that went with him didn’t see anybody and started thinking that something might be wrong with Padre Pio. On the way back to the dining area Padre Pio explained.
“Don’t worry. I was talking to some souls on their way from Purgatory to Paradise. They came to thank me that I remembered them today in the Mass.”

Padre Francesco Napolitano reported what he had heard from Orazio, Padre Pio’s father. Orazio went to spend some few days with hi son in 1926. He was assigned the cell #10. When he tried to enter the cell, two friars stood in front of the door, not letting him in. He explained who he was, to no avail. When he made a step to force himself in, the disappeared. He was terrorized, and went to Padre Pio. “Dad, don’t get agitated, those are two poor friars in Purgatory. They have to serve their Purgatory in the spot were they disobeyed the rule of St. Francis.”

 

[BlackFriar]

It depends what “beliefs” you mean.

You are hopefully aware that “ghosts” have a parallel tradition with Christianity and many Christians come from cultures that had such pagan beliefs (eg the Celts).

Catholicism, like a body with minor diseases and parasites, can still live and thrive without cracking down on every superstition. Some parasites are actually healthy for us - so the minor superstitions that reinforce Catholic beliefs tend to be benevolently tolerated as long as they don’t get out of hand.

Belief in ghosts wandering the earth after death to resolve unfinished business has been recorded as of concern by Christian leaders from the beginning. There is even vestigial remnants of such belief in the New Testament (Matthew, souls rising from graves after Jesus died).
Look up the ancient belief in “Aerial Toll Houses”. Its an Eastern thing which keeps popping up as a fashion in secular European history as well (eg Victorian Spiritualism).