What's the "Truth" about Ghosts?

Someone posted a question on a web site asking about the "Truth about Ghosts." I wrote this reply.

Ah, what is "truth?" First of all, "spirits" of all kinds seem to exist in the stories of every culture, as far back as we can tell. And in every culture they take on their own, unique, characteristics, which generally reflect those of their culture. People have been having Spiritual experiences, well, forever, as far as anyone can tell.

Today, in the U.S. alone, surveys show that millions of people admit to having spiritual, paranormal or unexplained experiences, many of them on a daily basis. Yet the culture as a whole insists that these are all just stories, that there is no evidence that any of these phenomena exist. Well, that is true, if you ignore the testimonies of millions of people, and all the research over the past 100 years.

Consider this: Scientists have been looking for Dark Matter for about 100 years. They say that it makes up 96% of the universe. That includes you and me. So far, they've found exactly nothing. Zero, nada, zippity-do-da, nothing. Yet it's perfectly acceptable in scientific circles to talk as though it exists and spend millions to dollars looking for it. Yet those same people will go out of their way to ignore and discredit anything that might show evidence of something psychic, on the basis that there is no evidence.

It's understandable, I suppose. On one side, you have the materialists who blindly insist "there aint no such thing," and on the other, you have a gazillion religious and spiritual groups who all put their own particular spin on spirituality and the paranormal. Often these groups are at odds with each other, each insisting that their interpretation is the only correct one. So, even though most of the people in the world pretty much agree that there is Something Going On Here, in regard to spirits and the paranormal, the is no concusses on even the basic characteristics of what that Something might be. The poor researchers in this field have to take fire from every quarter: Not only from the materialists, but also from the religious/spiritual types who are afraid that the researchers will find something that contradicts their beliefs or might take some of the "mystery" out of their faith.

To be purely objective, there is plenty of empirical evidence that "ghosts" (or paranormal phenomena) exist, but we all know that almost nobody is completely objective around this subject. Do your own research: There is plenty to read about Near Death Experiences and all the phenomena around them, which, together with the reincarnation research of Ian Stevenson, strongly suggest that there is more the afterlife than "Science" currently wants to admit. Remember, science, by it's own admission, can only explain 4% of the universe, what's going on in the other 96% is completely unknown.

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And now for something completely different: I am going through some extremely difficult times right now, emotionally and financially. I don't know where I will be six months from now, in a lot of different ways. If anyone would like to meet, talk, visit, share a cup of coffee, that would be really nice as I really need to get out of my head. Thanks.