How are there ghosts?

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Montie_Claunch

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How can there be ghsots? Shouldn’t they be in Hell, Purgatory, or Heaven?
 
Are there even ghosts? As far as I know the chruch has never said one way or the other.

However that being said I have heard enough reliable people who have had enough encounter ‘ghosts.’ The apostles themselves mistook Jesus for a ghost when he walked on water.
Matthew 14:26:
When the disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear.
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I have two personal theories (and I can’t stress the word personal enough.)

They could be demons or images sent by Satan.

They could be people in purgatory.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1472:
To understand this doctrine and practice of the Church, it is necessary to understand that sin has a double consequence. Grave sin deprives us of communion with God and therefore makes us incapable of eternal life, the privation of which is called the “eternal punishment” of sin. On the other hand every sin, even venial, entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures, which must be purified either here on earth, or after death in the state called Purgatory. This purification frees one from what is called the “temporal punishment” of sin. These two punishments must not be conceived of as a kind of vengeance inflicted by God from without, but as following from the very nature of sin. A conversion which proceeds from a fervent charity can attain the complete purification of the sinner in such a way that no punishment would remain
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Purgatory is not a place, rather it is a process. From the very nature of sin an unheathy attachment to created things, maybe created things of this world, is formed. We are going through purgatory here in our lives on earth, perhaps people passed away are still attached to many of these earthly things and need to purge their unhealthy attachment from them.

Of course it the previous is just speculation, but if you want you can do pennance for the Church Suffering to help alleviate and shorten the “time” any soul spends in purgatory. If they’re ghosts or not you’ll still be doing worlds of good.
 
Another possibility is that they are simply some sort of leftover energy that is attached to a specific place that replays like a tape when conditions are correct. “Ghosts” in the strict definition do not interact with the enviroment or living people and do not appear to be intelligent or aware. There are other “entities” that do interact with the enviroment (moving things around, making noise) and with people in a sometimes frightening manner which could be anything from unknown powers of the human mind to genuine demonic activity. The theories are many and varied but the question is not “do they exist” but “what are they”?
 
I think they are one of three things.
  1. They are a hoax
  2. Some natural phenomenon
  3. Demonic spirits
 
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ByzCath:
I think they are one of three things.
  1. They are a hoax
  2. Some natural phenomenon
  3. Demonic spirits
Click to expand...
I agree
 
Ever notice that the most reliable and well documented incidents involving “ghosts” never involve in-depth personal interaction? I think that’s because ghosts aren’t really spirits at all, but rather some other kind of phenomena. Perhaps they are a kind of “memory” of people or events, but not the people themselves.

I can’t explain how it is, nor do I think that these things are certainly real, but if they are that’s what I think ghosts are. I don’t believe that they’re the spirits of the dead at all, more like a “photograph” or “video” that persists through a period of time in the natural world.

I just really, really want to see one! To me it would be like seeing a meteor shower, but rarer. They don’t frighten me in the least, espescially since I’ve seen no real evidence that they are indeed spirits. I don’t believe the “ghost speakers” for a second, since I can do the same things they do to “read” people; it’s a very normal and natural skill, nothing the least bit supernatural (and it’s a LOT of fun at parties :rotfl: )

Peace and God bless!
 
We are used to the old biblical structure of the world/universe where heaven is someplace up there and hell is somewhere down below. I think that heaven and hell are co-terminal with the material world/universe and that the Saints and Angels are very close to us. Scott Hahn in his book “The Lambs High Feast” speaks of the Saints and Angels being gathered around the altar at Mass and of the previledge we have of being allowed in this holy presence when we attend Mass. At my son’s wedding Mass a couple of years ago I saw my parents(dead for some years now) looking on from kind of a balcony, They looked younger than I remember them and I couldn’t see them for very long, but I am quite sure they were there. I checked with the Ask an Apologist Forum and as I recall was told that such things do happen and that the Church does not say otherwise, but teaches that we are not allowed to try and take the initiative in trying to communicate with the dead through seances and such as it would lay us open to possible contact with spirits of evil and the dangers that might occur from that…
 
My apologies the Scott Hahn book is “The Lamb’s Supper” not The Lamb’s High Feast. 😃 .
 
I lived in a hundred year old house that was um…odd. Weird things happened. Was it haunted? I don’t know. I racked my brains for logical explanations and could never come up with any. We lived there for three years and things got so weird that we sold the house.

Are there such things as ghost? I don’t know. Perhaps one day science will give us a nice logical expanation for what we call the paranormal. I hope so.
 
all human souls have either heaven or hell as their immediate destiny. maybe a stop in purgatory. They do not dwell on earth. But demons pretending to be human spirits do.
 
It is completely possible that ghosts exist. They are the saints in heaven and the souls in purgatory. Peter Kreeft said once that going to heaven will probably be like a baby entering the world. For the Babies entire life he longs to enter the world, only to find out he was already there. In the same way, we may see our time on earth as part of heaven. Therefore, spirts may be in heaven and on earth at the same moment. Therefore, dead saints in heaven (and possibly the souls going through purgatory) may visit us.
 
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trumpet152:
It is completely possible that ghosts exist. They are the saints in heaven and the souls in purgatory. Peter Kreeft said once that going to heaven will probably be like a baby entering the world. For the Babies entire life he longs to enter the world, only to find out he was already there. In the same way, we may see our time on earth as part of heaven. Therefore, spirts may be in heaven and on earth at the same moment. Therefore, dead saints in heaven (and possibly the souls going through purgatory) may visit us.
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I do not think this is consistant with what the Church teaches.

Saints can not visit us without some reason and being sent to us by God.

The Ghost that I have heard of have nothing to do with anything other than haunting. It is said by many that they are here becuase they, for some reason, could not move on to the after life.
 
well about the attachment thing, I can share a ghost story that proves that…

there was a family that moved into a house where a little girl from the previous family died.

whenever the family went near the well that was in their backyard or something they would hear sobbing and images of this little girl.
this was going on for weeks. One day the man of the house was checking out the well, he decovered a teddy bear in the well so he pulled it out.

I can’t remember what he did with it, but after that the sobbing was gone and the little girl left.
you see the girl was attached to the teddy bear and couldn’t leave earth without it.

Purgatory is very much like suffering, to be able to let go is not easy, to leave a familiar place and go into God’s kingdom can be quite hard and scary for many.

In my opinion, if you build a good relationship with God while on earth, you are least likely to be afraid and more ready to be in his presence and meet him face to face.

But also I read on a internet site lately that ghosts can also be devils angels there to fool us…

Evanescence
 
Now, I am not sure if I can explain this properly, but here goes: there are some things which, in the proper context, are not ghosts, but rather are just imprints left on a place or object that someone leaves behind. You might call them as “footprints”, if you will. These are not ghosts or entities, but are really just that: imprints left behind, maybe because the place holds a special attachment to that person. That is why we’re told to let go of our emotions before we leave a place, because they can leave an imprint there, especially in places that we’ve grown attached to.
 
Padre Pio once saw a “ghost” of a priest cleaning an altar in his church. He asked the ghost what he was doing and he told St. Pio that during his life he had not taken care to clean the altar so part of his purgatorial purification entailed making up for what he had failed to do. Down in St. Augustine, FL, my family went on a ghost tour and the guide told us that the staff in this one restaurant often came in to find their dishes and cleaning had been done for them though the building was locked. It rather reminded me of that. The moral of both stories, kiddies, is that cleanliness really IS next to godliness. 👍
 
I think they are either people in purgatory or they are demonic spirits. The testimony of many Saints has lead me to this conclusion.
 
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