No Ghosts?

[CHRISTINE77]

Samuel 28:3Now Samuel was dead, and all Israel had mourned for him and buried him in his own town of Ramah. Saul had expelled the mediums and spiritists from the land.

4The Philistines assembled and came and set up camp at Shunem, while Saul gathered all the Israelites and set up camp at Gilboa. 5When Saul saw the Philistine army, he was afraid; terror filled his heart. 6He inquired of the LORD, but the LORD did not answer him by dreams or Urim or prophets. 7Saul then said to his attendants, “Find me a woman who is a medium, so I may go and inquire of her.”

“There is one in Endor,” they said.

8So Saul disguised himself, putting on other clothes, and at night he and two men went to the woman. “Consult a spirit for me,” he said, “and bring up for me the one I name.”

9But the woman said to him, “Surely you know what Saul has done. He has cut off the mediums and spiritists from the land. Why have you set a trap for my life to bring about my death?”

10Saul swore to her by the LORD, “As surely as the LORD lives, you will not be punished for this.”

11Then the woman asked, “Whom shall I bring up for you?”

“Bring up Samuel,” he said.

12When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out at the top of her voice and said to Saul, “Why have you deceived me? You are Saul!”

13The king said to her, “Don’t be afraid. What do you see?”

The woman said, “I see a spirit coming up out of the ground.”

14"What does he look like?" he asked.

“An old man wearing a robe is coming up,” she said.

Then Saul knew it was Samuel, and he bowed down and prostrated himself with his face to the ground.

15Samuel said to Saul, “Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?”

It’s pretty obvious that this was the Ghost of Samuel. I thought the Catholic position was that there are no ghosts. People either go to Heaven, Purgatory or Hell. What’s up with Samuel?

 

[twb1621]

Samuel 28:3Now Samuel was dead, and all Israel had mourned for him and buried him in his own town of Ramah. Saul had expelled the mediums and spiritists from the land.

4The Philistines assembled and came and set up camp at Shunem, while Saul gathered all the Israelites and set up camp at Gilboa. 5When Saul saw the Philistine army, he was afraid; terror filled his heart. 6He inquired of the LORD, but the LORD did not answer him by dreams or Urim or prophets. 7Saul then said to his attendants, “Find me a woman who is a medium, so I may go and inquire of her.”

“There is one in Endor,” they said.

8So Saul disguised himself, putting on other clothes, and at night he and two men went to the woman. “Consult a spirit for me,” he said, “and bring up for me the one I name.”

9But the woman said to him, “Surely you know what Saul has done. He has cut off the mediums and spiritists from the land. Why have you set a trap for my life to bring about my death?”

10Saul swore to her by the LORD, “As surely as the LORD lives, you will not be punished for this.”

11Then the woman asked, “Whom shall I bring up for you?”

“Bring up Samuel,” he said.

12When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out at the top of her voice and said to Saul, “Why have you deceived me? You are Saul!”

13The king said to her, “Don’t be afraid. What do you see?”

The woman said, “I see a spirit coming up out of the ground.”

14"What does he look like?" he asked.

“An old man wearing a robe is coming up,” she said.

Then Saul knew it was Samuel, and he bowed down and prostrated himself with his face to the ground.

15Samuel said to Saul, “Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?”

It’s pretty obvious that this was the Ghost of Samuel. I thought the Catholic position was that there are no ghosts. People either go to Heaven, Purgatory or Hell. What’s up with Samuel?

This was the soul or spirit of Samuel and the Catholic Church has never denied the existence of either good or bad spirits – hence exorcisms.

 

[cheeto1]

I do not believe that it was the soul or spirit of Samuel, but another spirit.

If you believe in ghosts, think about this scenario. You have died, and are
spending eternity in heaven. It’s great! No sorrow, no tears, worshipping God
day and night. But now, a bad guy on earth says that he hereby summons
you away from paradise! You must go immediately, and obey his demands to
answer his questions. Well, o.k., you are a kind soul, maybe you helped someone,
and off you go, back to heaven. No big deal, after all, you have all eternity. I mean –
you were taught you had all eternity, but it turns out you had all eternity except
for this minor interruption. Now the next “day”, the same thing happens. Word gets
around how nice you are and now several people are summoning you every “day”!
See where I’m going? Your promised paradise has been taken away from you,
and you didn’t even do anything wrong! No I do not believe that God did this to Samuel…:nope:

 

[CHRISTINE77]

I do not believe that it was the soul or spirit of Samuel, but another spirit.

If you believe in ghosts, think about this scenario. You have died, and are
spending eternity in heaven. It’s great! No sorrow, no tears, worshipping God
day and night. But now, a bad guy on earth says that he hereby summons
you away from paradise! You must go immediately, and obey his demands to
answer his questions. Well, o.k., you are a kind soul, maybe you helped someone,
and off you go, back to heaven. No big deal, after all, you have all eternity. I mean –
you were taught you had all eternity, but it turns out you had all eternity except
for this minor interruption. Now the next “day”, the same thing happens. Word gets
around how nice you are and now several people are summoning you every “day”!
See where I’m going? Your promised paradise has been taken away from you,
and you didn’t even do anything wrong! No I do not believe that God did this to Samuel…:nope:

I agree. Also, I really thought that the Catholic Church denies the existence of spirits. Do you think it was a demon?

 

[twb1621]

I do not believe that it was the soul or spirit of Samuel, but another spirit.

If you believe in ghosts, think about this scenario. You have died, and are
spending eternity in heaven. It’s great! No sorrow, no tears, worshipping God
day and night. But now, a bad guy on earth says that he hereby summons
you away from paradise! You must go immediately, and obey his demands to
answer his questions. Well, o.k., you are a kind soul, maybe you helped someone,
and off you go, back to heaven. No big deal, after all, you have all eternity. I mean –
you were taught you had all eternity, but it turns out you had all eternity except
for this minor interruption. Now the next “day”, the same thing happens. Word gets
around how nice you are and now several people are summoning you every “day”!
See where I’m going? Your promised paradise has been taken away from you,
and you didn’t even do anything wrong! No I do not believe that God did this to Samuel…:nope:

I don’t believe in “Ghost” but I do believe in Spirits as does the CC.
Historically accepted interpretation
[12] Human beings cannot communicate at will with the souls of the dead. God may, however, permit a departed soul to appear to the living and even to disclose things unknown to them. Saul’s own prohibition of necromancy and divination (⇒ 1 Sam 28:3) was in keeping with the consistent teaching of the Old Testament. If we are to credit the reality of the apparition to Saul, it was due, not to the summons of the witch, but to God’s will; the woman merely furnished the occasion. ****

Do you not believe as the CC.?

 

[CHRISTINE77]

I don’t believe in “Ghost” but I do believe in Spirits as does the CC.
Historically accepted interpretation
[12] Human beings cannot communicate at will with the souls of the dead. God may, however, permit a departed soul to appear to the living and even to disclose things unknown to them. Saul’s own prohibition of necromancy and divination (⇒ 1 Sam 28:3) was in keeping with the consistent teaching of the Old Testament. If we are to credit the reality of the apparition to Saul, it was due, not to the summons of the witch, but to God’s will; the woman merely furnished the occasion. ****

Do you not believe as the CC.?

Ah, so I was wrong. Where is this quote from?

 

[Peter_Dawson]

Hi, Christine.

There are ghosts, whatever a “ghost” is. I have photographed them 3 times. Here is one of the pictures. It was taken at about 10:30 p.m. in Magnolia, New Jersey, in front of a gravestone (the white overexposed mass on the right).

View attachment 5795

Those aren’t reflections from water on the camera lens. The lens was dry. In fact, those are actual orbs. I happen to believe that what you are looking at is something nearly impossible – the same orb in about 10 different positions in one camera flash.

Getting such pictures is relatively easy. Anyone can do it if you know how.

 

[dancny]

Orbs.

uh huh.

I believe in Spirits. I believe in heaven, hell and purgatory. I do not know what form places take and it may be hell for someone to walk among the living and have no contact with them. Who knows? If there were no spirits the church would not have the above mentioned referance in the CCC and there would be no exorcisims. But orbs? Probably dust in the air.

 

[CHRISTINE77]

Hi, Christine.

There are ghosts, whatever a “ghost” is. I have photographed them 3 times. Here is one of the pictures. It was taken at about 10:30 p.m. in Magnolia, New Jersey, in front of a gravestone (the white overexposed mass on the right).

View attachment 5795

Those aren’t reflections from water on the camera lens. The lens was dry. In fact, those are actual orbs. I happen to believe that what you are looking at is something nearly impossible – the same orb in about 10 different positions in one camera flash.

Getting such pictures is relatively easy. Anyone can do it if you know how.

Hi Peter!

Did you have other manifestations when you took these pictures? Any sounds or feelings? Did you see the ghost or just your camera?

 

[CHRISTINE77]

I don’t believe in “Ghost” but I do believe in Spirits as does the CC.
Historically accepted interpretation
[12] Human beings cannot communicate at will with the souls of the dead. God may, however, permit a departed soul to appear to the living and even to disclose things unknown to them. Saul’s own prohibition of necromancy and divination (⇒ 1 Sam 28:3) was in keeping with the consistent teaching of the Old Testament. If we are to credit the reality of the apparition to Saul, it was due, not to the summons of the witch, but to God’s will; the woman merely furnished the occasion. ****

Do you not believe as the CC.?

I found this:

Q. What does the Catholic Church have to say about ghosts?

A. The ghosts that inhabit haunted houses, graveyards, or any other place may indeed be real entities and not always the figment of imagination.

However, the popular idea that they are the spirits of human souls who have died and are trapped here for some reason is not possible. They are much more likely to be demons disguising themselves as the “ghost” or spirit of a human being for the purpose of leading people away from the true faith.

here: bfhu.wordpress.com/2008/11/20/does-the-catholic-church-believe-in-ghosts/

So I was right. They are demons disguising themselves as souls.

 

[cheeto1]

I don’t believe in “Ghost” but I do believe in Spirits as does the CC.
Historically accepted interpretation
[12] Human beings cannot communicate at will with the souls of the dead. God may, however, permit a departed soul to appear to the living and even to disclose things unknown to them. Saul’s own prohibition of necromancy and divination (⇒ 1 Sam 28:3) was in keeping with the consistent teaching of the Old Testament. If we are to credit the reality of the apparition to Saul, it was due, not to the summons of the witch, but to God’s will; the woman merely furnished the occasion.

Do you not believe as the CC.?

May I ask where this historically accepted interpretation comes from?
God may permit an angel to appear to someone, but He has promised the faithful
heaven, not “summons duty on earth”.

 

[CHRISTINE77]

May I ask where this historically accepted interpretation comes from?
God may permit an angel to appear to someone, but He has promised the faithful
heaven, not “summons duty on earth”.

He’s right though. See my source (the whole article) above. If God allows it, a spirit can talk to you. The Catholic Church seems to have it all covered.

 

[gookykookypig]

Both Ghosts and Spirits are real

 

[Peter_Dawson]

Orbs.

uh huh.

I believe in Spirits. I believe in heaven, hell and purgatory. I do not know what form places take and it may be hell for someone to walk among the living and have no contact with them. Who knows? If there were no spirits the church would not have the above mentioned referance in the CCC and there would be no exorcisims. But orbs? Probably dust in the air.

Hi, dancny.

You don’t know, and you probably would not believe, the full story. Here is the full story.

Use a digital camera set for full flash. Take the picture in the dark. Take the picture when you are tired, because tiredness attracts them. The best places to take the picture are places where great sins or crimes have been committed, and graveyards. If you are taking the picture for a virtuous purpose, you can control the orbs with prayers. For example, I asked God to force the orb you see there to pose for me. It did. (I think that it is 1 orb, and not several different ones, because this orb has an odd telltale “tag” on its underside.)

Do you think that I was able to restrict a bunch of “dust particles” to one gravestone?

 

[Peter_Dawson]

Hi Peter!

Did you have other manifestations when you took these pictures? Any sounds or feelings? Did you see the ghost or just your camera?

No other manifestations. It was dark. I had my digital camera. I set it for brightest flash. I was tired. It was a graveyard. Those are optimum conditions. I prayed for God to make one “pose” for me. I snapped the shot. There it was.

 

[cheeto1]

He’s right though. See my source (the whole article) above. If God allows it, a spirit can talk to you. The Catholic Church seems to have it all covered.

O.K. the author of your article is b fhu? is that a person?
It states that a spirit from the dead can only be summoned with the permission
of God. Naturally, and trees can only grow upside down with the permission of
God. Has God ever given permission to a person to summon the dead? On the
contrary, He says He doesn’t allow it. And on the story about the rich man and
Lazarus that was quoted, they conveniently left out verse 26: And that is not all. Between you and us there is fixed a great abyss, so that those who might wish to cross from here to you cannot do so, nor can anyone cross from your side to us.

 

[cheeto1]

Peter Dawson. perhaps you would enjoy instead the Catholic Charismatic movement. The power of the Holy Spirit is greater, and is not attracted by tiredness and crime.

 

[Peter_Dawson]

Peter Dawson. perhaps you would enjoy instead the Catholic Charismatic movement. The power of the Holy Spirit is greater, and is not attracted by tiredness and crime.

I did what I did to try to get articles on the subject published.

I represented about 2,000 criminal defendants, so I had easy access to premises “dirtied” by persistent sin and serious crime. Those premises are jammed with ghosts. So, I took the pictures, and there they were.

Actually, ghosts may just be a morally-ambiguous or negative manifestation of a vehicle intended for the prayer process.

In effect, success in the Charismatic Movement might be a successful use of the same phenomenon.

I currently succeed very well with prayer.

God always answers.

 

[NHInsider]

I agree. Also, I really thought that the Catholic Church denies the existence of spirits. Do you think it was a demon?

The Church does not deny the existence of spirits, quite the contrary. (Catechism 328)

but (2 buts, actually)

1. there is a difference between a ghost, which is the diembodied spirit of a deceased person and an angel (or demon, which is a fallen angel) which is a spirit that never had nor was created to have a body, although it can take on a visible appearance in order to communicate with the physical world.
2. there is a difference between saying that the Lord can and may send either a soul or an angel to manifest itself to someone and saying that we can summon them. In fact, Scripture explicitly prohibits the summoning of the dead (Deut. 18:11) - it is a measure of how far from the Lord Saul had wandered that he went to the witch in the first place. And yet - the Lord allowed Samuel to appear (although Samuel was pretty cranky about it . . .)

Manifestations of spiritual beings could conceivably be either demonic or, perhaps, a glimpse of a damned soul (who knows what hell may be - Dickens is not the only one to suggest that the souls of the damned are condemned to wander without rest. I believe the only doctrine of Hell that is de fide is that it exists and consists in complete separation from God.

My personal belief is that what we perceive to be ghostly presences may be a kind of “psychic snapshot” - a natural, not supernatural phenomenon caused by some form of energy but one that we do not (yet?) understand. (Before you dismiss the idea, consider for a moment how many things we now do understand to have natural causes which in times past could only be explained in supernatural terms. And what makes us think that we have NOW exhausted the extent of potential knowledge about God’s creation?)

Finally, to the person who worried about whether God would allow someone’s time in Heaven to be interrupted by summons from earth - once we are in eternity we are not limited by space or time. So the guardian angels of children are constantly beholding the face of God, even though they are “ever at our side” (Matt. 18:10) And the saints witness our race and cheer us on, and we can ask them to pray for our needs, and it does not compromise their time of worshipping the Almighty.

 

[twb1621]

Ah, so I was wrong. Where is this quote from?

The New American Bible on the Vatican Web Site.

vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/__P7M.HTM