My View on 'Ghost'

Halloween is coming. The Ghost season is getting popular year by year for commercial reasons. For the background of Halloween, certainly here will provide more information than I could possible write, what I want to talk about is my then and current views on ‘ghost’ .

Human beings have general curiosity for things that we don’t know. When I was a kid, certainly ghost is one of them. What we heard from adults or peers was that the livings have body and soul. When they died, souls still exist without the body, and they are defined as Ghosts! We were told that ghosts are supposed to go somewhere – hell, heaven, reincarnation. If they stick around because they can’t go elsewhere, they just don’t wanna leave, then they usually are not good spirits. I.e. they want to take revenge of someone who hurt them when they were alive, or wanna make someone die to become their ‘replacement’, so they can leave. With our fear of the pain that we may suffer when we are going to die, and so much unknown after death, certainly we were scare when we were kids. Many ghosts were described as scare beings with amazing abilities, like they can fly; go through walls, possessing bodies, etc. When we were kids, we just don’t want to see them by any chance, so any religious things or practices that can repel spirits were learned and heard. Such as holy cross (but later on we thought that it is more for dispel vampires), biblical texts, Buddhism hymns, holy water, etc.

Also, any thing that related to ghost were found scary by kids, like cemetery, funeral, even just dark places. I remember that with our kids, we would ran into some places which were perfectly fine during the day, but it would be very dark at night. We might hold an electric torch and ran there to ‘explore’. When someone in the front suddenly shout ‘Ghost’ (though he didn’t see anything, just wanna scare younger kids behind them), we would just turn our back, ran and scream at the same time. It was very silly but we did feel scare at that time. Some kids may even fall on the ground and those ran the slowest will even cried hysterically.

Then, there were ghost stories, supposed to be ‘real’ life ghost encounter stories, ghostly places, urban legends, ghost movies, etc. All became things that were fascinating and became part of our youth culture. Of course, nothing is scarier than ghostly matters that are close to home, like the death of our love ones or even neighbors. The worst were occurrences of murders or suicides near our homes, thank God that didn’t happen. Otherwise, it will be very difficult to deal with. You know, back then, there were no social workers or shrinks to help kids to deal with post-dramatic symptoms that were caused by those kinds of death. Even if they were available, it would still be tough on kids.

Well, as I grow and learn more things, I found that many things that the livings do are hundred times scary than ghosts. Also, while accepting the concept of karma, I believe that if I did something back in my past life, then I will need to pay back somehow, whether seeing a ghost, having to deal with a ghost or else, that will come if it supposes to happen. There are more important real-life things that need to be taken care of. So, ghosts became more a pastime as a topic in conversation, or just one of the paranormal matters that I’m still interested in, but just no time for.

Would I be scare to see a ghost? I’ve never seen one for real myself, I think I would be a bit scare and anxious the first time, it will depend on the environment, but I wouldn’t be too concern about that. I think I would simply take it easy as if I see a stranger on the street. The only different thing is that the ghost was human before, so he/she will know what we are capable and going through as human, we can’t claim the same thing. So, they have their own way to live, so do we. Something likes that…..