Do you believe in ghosts/spirits?

With the television hype, it’s truly hard to develop an understanding of the paranormal, and the on-going quest of many to either prove or disprove the existence of ghosts/spirits. Paranormal research teams spring up daily and vast amounts of evidence/data to uphold their claims are presented to the world as proof of the existence of “something else out there”. But if you do believe in ghosts/spirits, you are no longer the minority.

For many in the field, like myself, it is a personal quest to understand things we have seen, heard or experienced. My first actual viewing of a ghost/spirit was at the age of five. We had moved into an old house that was a part of the underground railroad at one time, hiding out Union Soldiers during the war. Bear in mind that I knew none of this at the time. Shortly after moving in I was playing in a room upstairs and tripped a panel that opened a small hidden enclosure. Just big enough for one person to hide in. There sat a Union Soldier. Fully dressed, bleeding and holding a rifle. To this day I remember his blonde curls, vivid blue eyes and the fear on his face when I opened that panel. I can only assume, by the amount of blood on his chest that he died while hiding there.

My later studies into metaphysics, mediumship and psychic experiments resulted in additional oddities that I could not explain. I had little doubt in my mind that there was indeed “something else out there”. But what, and why? Those were the questions that I couldn’t answer.

Skeptics and debunkers are quick to bash any evidence/data presented as fake, or explainable, or simply not scientific because it cannot be reproduced under certain conditions. And yet the belief in ghosts/spirits is not new. Even biblical references are made. In fact, in the New Testament, Jesus has to persuade the Disciples that he is not a ghost following the resurrection. Luke 24:37-39. Clearly that would not have been necessary if none had existed. In a similar vein, Jesus' followers at first believe him to be a ghost (spirit) when they see him walking on water.

Many accepted theories of actual activity have now been debunked. Take Orbs for instance. Many are no more than dust particles, bugs and/or reflections from the camera. I’ve seen some really beautiful ones on movies when the camera hits the light just right. But are all Orbs non-paranormal? Can a dusty room contain hundreds of orbs one minute, and absolutely none under the same conditions a day later? And what about the completely milky white solid orbs? Are they also dust? Bugs? I’m not sure. And I’m not totally willing to write off every orb figure as non-paranormal just because. Having visited the New Port Aquarium I saw many new species that until now had never been discovered before. Is it possible that some of these drifting orb shaped oddities are simply a different life form? Not, per se, a ghost or spirit, but simply something that until now our cameras and camcorders were not sensitive enough to pick up.

Matrixing has also provided a plausible excuse for the vast majority of photos out there. Shutter speed. Double exposures. Light effects. Smoke. Fog. Mist. In fact, so may plausible excuses that I rarely take photographs anymore. And if I do, I always take a series of three. If something is in one, and not the other two, then possibly it is an anomaly and bears more investigation. If it’s in all three, then the odds are that there is something perfectly normal causing the appearance of an anomaly.

I would call myself a skeptic believer. Having seen it with my own eyes, I can’t dispute that something exists outside of the “reality” I know. What? Why? Well, those are questions I haven’t found the answers to yet, so until that time—I’ll keep researching.