Haunted mansion on Samoa Island, near Eureka, ca.
Posted on 10/30/2021 1:45:53 PM PDT by Twotone
But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” and they cried out for fear. —Matthew 14:26
I have always liked Halloween as a joke that’s hard to get. The joke, as I see it, is that death is something to smile about, even laugh about. G.K. Chesterton saw things similarly and wrote winkingly in his poem “The Skeleton”:
Death was but the good King’s jest, It was hid so carefully.
And that jest certainly is carefully hidden, especially to those in this “muddy vesture of decay,” as Shakespeare called our mortal flesh. It is difficult to understand such cosmic or mystic (or cryptic) humor, but I enjoy the challenge of it, just as I enjoy the challenge this shivering time of year poses with bumps in the night concerning those who have passed away. Dare we, as Catholics, say ghosts?
There is an idea about ghosts, about those uncanny spirit-like presences, that I have picked up in talking with old men in quiet rooms, and, to those willing to entertain some ghostly speculation with me, read on.
I work in a massive century-old brick building that used to be an orphanage. Many souls have passed through this place. Many have laughed, suffered, wept, and even died within these walls. It is one of those structures with secrets and memories. We all know places like this—places with an aura, that give a feeling, whether good or bad.
In our building, there is a very long, narrow, ill-lit, seldom-used hallway up on the third floor. This passage has a series of closets on one side and what used to be nuns’ cells on the other. Believe me, it looks as forbidding as it sounds.
(Excerpt) Read more at crisismagazine.com ...
Another relatively recent theory is that some older, "haunted," buildings may have toxic molds, or possibly used toxic building materials that may trigger hallucinations. Couple this with the planted suggestion that the building may be, "haunted," and there's little surprise they see something that adds to the myth.
All that said, I certainly do not discount events on the spiritual plane, and indeed, decades ago, while a student at Gettysburg College, I had one experience for which I can not muster a, "rational," explanation.
Interesting article.
I also had one or two notable personal experiences with no evident rational explanations. Like a window to somewhere briefly opened. One thing I know for sure: You can’t MAKE them happen, no matter how hard you try. They happen when they want to (or when God sees fit).
This author actually believes in ghosts?
It seems that some people are just sensitive to these things for whatever reason. I’ve spoken with a number of people that I knew to be completely rational and not given to story-telling or delusional fantasizing, and they’ve told really quite compelling accounts.
That being said, I’ve personally never had any experience of this sort, despite ample opportunity (working for several years at a facility that was reputed to be most haunted building in our metropolitan area).
Having lived with cats in the house for many years - I can say with some assurance, many supposed ‘hauntings’ are the nocturnal adventures of some bored feline.
I had a ghost encounter in the 1980s in my first apartment which was a basement in a house in Queens NYC.
I was sitting on my coach watching TV, “Moonlighting” was on which was an old show starring Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepard when all of a sudden I felt this hand squeeze my face, all five fingers as if someone pointed the palm of their hand at my face and put all five fingers on my face and squeezed as real as day whereas I screamed my brains out practically jump through the ceiling and ran out the door and down the block. No I wasn’t drinking or smoking wacky tabacky nor was I sleeping. Maybe a nerve got pinched and gave the sensation> I don’t know, but wow, it was as real as any real person doing that to me.
A few months later I was in my bedroom and heard someone pushing buttons on my microwave “beep... beep beep”, nobody was there of course and instead of flipping out I walked slowly towards the microwave and looked at the buttons. But it wasn’t a ghost. It was cockroaches inside the buttons shorting it out. Yes the place was that disgusting and I still used it to heat up food lol.
I’d love to hear your Gettysburg College story, Joe, if you’d care to share it here.
I’ve seen ghosts, several, different times, years apart. I was with three unbelievers on those separate occasions who to their dismay saw the ghosts too.
Unbelievers don’t believe in ghosts until they see one. Then, suddenly they’re a believer.
Telling people of spiritual or paranormal encounters elicits all kinds of joking, insults, and dismissals. I’ve heard a lot of them and have a few stories myself, that are quite pointless to publish. But there is more to the realm than the eye can see, most certainly. Spiritual mysteries.
Louie DePalma had tough cockroach living in his dispatch cage on Taxi.
I couldn’t help but think of that.
Take a ride alone in your car at night thru Niles Canyon Road...a lady in a flowing nightgown will apper in your back seat...heard this story dozens of times from 1950-1990s salesmen coning thru the canyon....
I’d like to hear about it also.
There was the show Haunted History that I liked.
Haunted mansion on Samoa Island, near Eureka, ca.
Back in the early 80s I was walking up the stone steps above Harper’s Ferry on my way to Jefferson’s Rock.
I looked up to see a monk coming down the steps and moved aside so he could pass.
I said something to my then-boyfriend and when we turned to look at the monk, he made a right turn and went into the old church.
Went on up to the rock and hung out for a bit and on the way down, I stopped to look the church.
It was not open at all and there was no door where he went in but I could see that a door of some sort had been blocked in, at some point.
Pretty much just shrugged and went on with my life.
Decades later, someone told me I’d seen the “ghost monk” and didn’t even know it.
It was hardly even dusk so who would expect such things.
St. Peter’s Catholic Church, built in 1830, was the only church in Harpers Ferry to survive the war. When troops on Maryland Heights would shell the town, the priest at St. Peter’s, Father Costello, a British subject, would hoist the Union Jack up the steeple. Fearful of an international incident, both sides spared the church, which was also used as a hospital. Visitors have reported seeing an old priest going down the path beside the building, of an evening, turning and walking through the wall as though it were a door.
Yep, that was exactly what I saw happen yet I totally “missed it” ;D
From a scriptural approach:
So it seems to me, based on the prohibitions in using a medium, that in general, God does not want people talking to the dead or angelic/demonic beings. But there are exceptions.
We're told instead to ask God directly for wisdom. Ephesians 6:18 and even contrasts asking God vis asking mediums. Isaiah 8:19 And when they say to you, “Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter,” should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living?
Praying to dead saints for intercession might be an exception. Not being catholic, it's not something I've ever done. But neither do I look down on those that do. '
This is a good list of scripture dealing with mediums. Scripture on Mediums and psychics
My grandmother said that she dreamed her dead husband PawPaw appeared to her and said, "Don't worry I'm coming to get you." 3 months later she passed peacefully in her sleep.
My mother said Dad and her saw Pawpaw once walking between the house and the garage. But didn't seem to notice them.
Possibilities:
Yep. I believe we don’t know even a tiny fraction of what is really going on.
I’m in a bible study group & we’ve been talking about these things lately. My family has had encounters with some who have passed. I think a lot of the biblical strictures against mediums & such is it’s hard for the average person to discern what may be an evil entity. Best to shun all such encounters than allow a gullible individual to be taken in by one of Satan’s minions.
Interesting article.
Also occurred to me the disciples were willing to believe Jesus walking on the water was a ghost.
Meaning they already had believed in such things, because it was already heard of in their time.
Jesus didn’t make a big speech to them about there’s no such things or at least that is not recorded for us to hear. But the important stuff is supposed to all have gotten recorded.
I’m thinking maybe Jesus didn’t correct them that there’s no such things because there ARE such things.
Caligula the 3rd Roman Emperor it was said was seen all over Rome after his death and there are stories that he still haunts a palace on Palatine Hill. Roman historian Suetonius claimed Caligula’s ghost remained behind to haunt his Imperial Gardens.
lol yep that’s NYC for you. That whole area is absolutely infested with cockroaches, they are literally everywhere in every building. Even the richest most expensive townhouses or condos get them.
Years later I moved to Sunnyside Queens and we had this drunk lady who lived on the top floor and one night she put chicken in the oven and went to the bar and of course she forgot about it and a fire broke out.
Well when the fire dept came and put out the fire with water, all the water went behind the walls and when it fell down to the first floor it flushed out all the cockroaches behind the walls onto the floors. The stairs were absolutely covered in them, millions and millions of cockroaches, it was horrific, it smelled like the worst kind of rotten urine you can imagine.
Even rats are all over the place. I use to walk to work from Sunnyside to Greenpoint Brooklyn around 4am which was a hell of a hike, and I would see the garbage bags on the sidewalk moving from all the rats.
When Trump called Haiti “a sh*thole”. I felt like writing to him “Dude, look where you are from!! NYC! There’s no bigger sh*thole than NYC on earth!”
I’ll bet anything even Trump tower has a cockroach issue but I can’t even imagine what it’s like now under this idiot DeBlasio especially today when he’s firing sanitation workers who don’t get the vaccine.
I interned for Ghost Adventures in their first season going into season 2, when I first started in Hollywood. The stories I could tell when cameras stopped rolling..
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