February 23rd, 2012
Open Question: Isn’t it a little too glib and easy to say that everyone who’s seen a ghost was just imagining it?
Or that because primitive human tools can’t record something, it doesn’t exist?
I used to be one of those people, but a friend’s encounter made me begin to rethink things. I remain a staunch atheist, and don’t necessarily believe that ghosts are of “divine” origin, but I certainly believe that there’s are things in the universe science hasn’t worked out yet.
My friend is a cab driver. A few years back, he was driving under an old railway bridge, now converted to a road. As he approached, a female figure materialized… he slammed on the braked, but it was too late. However, instead of the body toppling over the car, the vehicle went THROUGH the body. Upon stopping, he turned around to see the figure still stood in the road, now turned to face the car. The figure then flew directly upwards into the air. My friend is in his mid 20’s, married with a son, and is one of the most well-balanced people I know, but I had no option to conclude that he’d temporarily lost it. What I hadn’t considered was the testimonial of the elderly gentleman, who was the customer that night. He relayed the exact same story, and was more than a little shaken up about it.
In 2010, I saw a documentary about a house in the Isle of Wight, where three families had lived, and all had encountered activity there. All reported the sounds of voices at night, objects moving on their own, and most chilling of all, “black masses”… a thick black mist vaguely resembling a human form, which accosted them at random times. I sat there and watched three separate families give testimonials, all of whom had fled the house, and all of whom were visibly disturbed by their experience there. Just too real for me.
Finally, I read about a mental hospital in Britain, demolished in the late 80’s. There was no sighting as such, but the case is still eerie. More than a decade after the hospital’s demolition, dozens of residents in the community were disturbed when they heard the hospital’s familiar siren call (to signify an escaped patient), sound late at night. Given that the hospital stood in an area surrounded by expansive woodland, there was no possibility of it being from a nearby vehicle or such, especially when long-standing residents and former employees at the hospital knew the siren call so well. Two male residents were so baffled that they approached the hospital grounds with a torch, only to find upon the few stray bricks and unpowered streetlighting that remained of the hospital.
So, when multiple people, multiple families and entire communities have witnessed the same thing, can it really be put down to imagination? I think not. Thanks to these cases, and a few others, I lost my arrogant opinion that humans knew everything years ago.
