Ghost encounter?

[Murfreesboro]

My 3 adult kids and I spent last week in Texas, 3 nights in Austin, 1 day in San Antonio, and 2 nights in Corpus Christi. We drove, two days there and back, so, 8 days in all. Austin was a family reunion, and the other two cities were just a little add-on of our own.

The last night in Texas, in Corpus, my younger son spoke out in the wee hours of the morning and said, "There's a person in the room with us." (He and his bro were sharing one bed, and my daughter and I the other.) The room was dark, but I could see that everyone was in bed, so I figured he was just dreaming. However, he insisted he could see a small figure at the end of his bed. He said he awoke when it tugged on his covers.

Of course we teased him about this episode endlessly, but he was adamant. At check out, he asked the clerk, "Is this hotel haunted?" To which she replied, "Well, I've never seen anything, but some people claim to have seen a ghost child who plays tricks on them."

So now we don't really know what to think, but my son is convinced he had a supernatural encounter.

[TheHeadlessHorseman]

I actually think that's awesome, at least it was a playful spirit that your son experienced so nobody got hurt. I've always wanted to stay at a haunted hotel, maybe because there have been so many movies about the subject, so it's something that I'm interested in, as long as it isn't a hotel with a violent spirit in it.

I haven't ever experienced any actual haunted places myself, but I have heard stories from people about what they saw and some of it is just creepy. The only thing even close to something like that I have experienced was that I've felt the presence of deceased family members, and I could feel them in the room with me, but they were good spirits so I wasn't scared. I know some people laugh when I tell them that, but I swear it was real to me.

[Murfreesboro]

I've never seen a ghost either, though I've felt stuff sometimes. When I visited the Alamo, at ages 11, 13, and 26, I felt a strong presence each time. Now, when I went with my kids last week, I didn't feel it again. But my son (the one who maybe saw the ghost) said he felt strongly that it was "a holy place," so maybe he felt something.

I never knew my grandfather, but when I would visit my grandmother as a little girl, she had this one pole lamp that would turn on and off by itself. She and my mother both insisted the lamp had a short in it, but if they really thought that, I don't know why they didn't ditch it. I've always wondered if maybe my grandfather was doing it to be playful.

[TheHeadlessHorseman]

I've heard the same thing from a friend that has family buried at Arlington National cemetery, he said that when they went to visit they could feel something there, he said it was hard to describe but it made them feel uneasy, as if there were spirits watching them as they were walking around the grounds.

I think that places where traumatic situations happen can be haunted, I've watched shows that talk about places like Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and other places where famous battles happened and they always say that you can still feel the presence of the soldiers that were killed in battle, like they don't know that they have passed on.

I have said before that I absolutely believe in the afterlife, I know that something is waiting on the other side, but it does make you wonder why some spirits hang around and others don't.

[Murfreesboro]

Once, decades ago, my mother and I were touring the Belle Meade Mansion here in Nashville (it was the site of a big horse-raising farm in the 19th century, like the ones up in Kentucky). Anyway, before we entered, my mother stopped dead in her tracks, turned to me, and said, " Something happened here." When we entered and started hearing the tour guide's spiel, she said that five men had died in front of the mansion in a skirmish during the Civil War. My mother turned to me and said, "I knew something had happened there." It was odd, because my mother never believed in ghosts or the supernatural. Yet her feeling was undeniable.

[MauEvig]

Honestly I'm inclined to believe that really was the ghost of a child that wanted to play.

As I get older I find the haunting stories more and more fascinating. Still kinda eerie though.

I'll never forget my Dollar General ghost encounter, and looking back I think it really was a little girl ghost.

Which if I had to be honest are one of the saddest kinds of hauntings...that and animal hauntings to me.

Your mother's feeling of something happening sounds interesting, Murf especially if she was always suspicious of ghost stories and then she got that strange feeling. Being in the right place at the right time can definitely make a believer out of you. It sounds a bit of a chilling experience to think about.

I've heard the same thing from a friend that has family buried at Arlington National cemetery, he said that when they went to visit they could feel something there, he said it was hard to describe but it made them feel uneasy, as if there were spirits watching them as they were walking around the grounds.

I think that places where traumatic situations happen can be haunted, I've watched shows that talk about places like Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and other places where famous battles happened and they always say that you can still feel the presence of the soldiers that were killed in battle, like they don't know that they have passed on.

I have said before that I absolutely believe in the afterlife, I know that something is waiting on the other side, but it does make you wonder why some spirits hang around and others don't.

I think that's just it. If someone had a sudden, traumatic or violent death or have some other reason to be attached to this life, that might be why they stick around as ghosts. They aren't able to move on until they can let go of that life, and I could be wrong but I have to wonder if the longer they are ghosts, the harder it is to move onto the next life (or heaven, or the afterlife depending on what you believe.)

I believe in the afterlife as well, and I have an interesting idea/theory of how it actually is and works.

That said I think I'd like to visit Gettysburg. A lot of good haunts revolve around the civil war...and that was definitely a traumatic experience for everyone involved in it. The history is interesting though.

[Murfreesboro]

When my husband was in high school and early college, he worked summers at Stones River National Battlefield here in town. That was a huge Civil War battle that happened over New Year's, 1862-63. Anyway, there's a place in it called the Slaughter Pen that is supposed to be haunted. They say birds won't fly over it, and the temp is always about 10 degrees cooler there.

[TheHeadlessHorseman]

I have to wonder if the longer they are ghosts, the harder it is to move onto the next life

That is something that a lot of people believe, and it is similar to the story in 2 of the Poltergeist movies from the 80s.

There are many theories about what the afterlife is like, from the various religions around the world that each think they have the answer, to Einstein's very interesting theory, to the ancient Egyptians that believed that death was only the beginning. Of course, nobody has ever come back to tell us what's it's like, so we can only speculate about it. But the truth is that it really doesn't matter what anybody believes, because every person that was ever born, or that ever will be born will inevitably die, and regardless of the path we take, each and every one of us has the same destination and we will eventually find out what is waiting for us.

[MauEvig]

When my husband was in high school and early college, he worked summers at Stones River National Battlefield here in town. That was a huge Civil War battle that happened over New Year's, 1862-63. Anyway, there's a place in it called the Slaughter Pen that is supposed to be haunted. They say birds won't fly over it, and the temp is always about 10 degrees cooler there.

Wow, that's pretty crazy. Something that ominous sounds like something out of a horror film. But I think animals have a 6th sense for these things. With humans, we're so caught up in our logical mindsets that we shut out anything that could be remotely supernatural. But they say children are more attune to the supernatural, possibly due to them being new to the world around them. They lose that as they get older.

That is something that a lot of people believe, and it is similar to the story in 2 of the Poltergeist movies from the 80s.

There are many theories about what the afterlife is like, from the various religions around the world that each think they have the answer, to Einstein's very interesting theory, to the ancient Egyptians that believed that death was only the beginning. Of course, nobody has ever come back to tell us what's it's like, so we can only speculate about it. But the truth is that it really doesn't matter what anybody believes, because every person that was ever born, or that ever will be born will inevitably die, and regardless of the path we take, each and every one of us has the same destination and we will eventually find out what is waiting for us.

I remember seeing Poltergeist 1 and 2, the original ones anyway. I think I've seen all 3 too, I can't remember, but it does make sense. Though I figured a poltergeist was a ghost that was more active and had a lot of presence and wanted to make themselves known, but I guess they just refuse to go into the light.
No you're right that we can only speculate what an afterlife might be like, and none of us know for sure. Sure there's NDEs, shared death experiences and such that are really interesting and many of them are attuned to one's specific cultural background. But that said, it's definitely not a pleasant thought to think about.
Personally, I think every religion might have a clue about the afterlife, but only a small piece of the puzzle. The thing is, human beings don't have all the pieces. One can only speculate. But I have my theories, one that combines some of the more popular ideas about the afterlife present in mainstream religions.

[Murfreesboro]

I don't worry too much about the afterlife. I just trust that God knows what He's doing. The idea of ghosts in our world unsettles me, though, especially if they're children's ghosts. I don't know why a loving God would leave little ones here. With more mature people, I can see that maybe they'd want to hang around, if only to keep a watch over their families and loved ones.

[TheHeadlessHorseman]

I know that the subject of death is hard for some people to talk about, so I want to apologize in advance if anything I have said below has upset anyone. I also want to apologize for how long this came out, you probably shouldn't waste your time reading it.

When I was a kid, like many people, I was afraid of death, but now that I'm older and I have a better understanding of what life is, I can say that I don't fear death, as I know that inevitably everyone dies, and it is pointless to deny it or tell yourself otherwise.

With that said, when I was in my early 20s I started contemplating my own mortality, I think that everyone does that at some point in their life, when the realization that the time we have is limited and we start to worry about death and what, if anything, comes after this life. I turned to the Bible for answers, and was quickly reminded of what I had learned in my youth, that we are his children, and that we have a place in his kingdom when we die. While this is a comforting thought, and one that helps to ease the fear of death, it also opens the debate about our existence in this life, and the purpose that this life serves in preparation for the next life.

This life that we are currently living is just a test, and we are given a set of guidelines to live by, the Ten Commandments, and we are told that as long as we honor them and live as good people, that the promise of something better awaits us in the afterlife. For the righteous, a place with no pain and suffering, where we are reunited with the family members that have moved on, and we live in eternal peace. For the wicked, well, let's not focus on the negative aspects of this.

I had a discussion about the afterlife with a few of my coworkers, some of them were from different religions, and I was surprised to learn that they had different views on the afterlife, we didn't argue with each other, we sat there and had a civilized conversation on the subject. We each found it interesting that each religion had something different to say about it.

This got me curious and I started to study the beliefs on the afterlife from every major religion, lesser known religions, cults, tribes, and multiple ancient cultures throughout the history of humanity, and I was fascinated by what I learned. While most of them have plausible and rational beliefs, others are just unbelievable. I have respect for every religion and culture, so I won't specify, or go into the details, about which particular religions they are. For most of the other religions and cultures, their views are actually very similar, sure there are major differences between them, as they each offer their believers something different, but at their core most of them offer the same promise of eternity with our family, and a kingdom of peace.

This enforces the belief that regardless of what religion we believe in, that we have the same creator, and the Bible tells us this same thing over and over again. Also, remember the line from that song... red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight. Another thing that adds to this belief is near death experiences, for example, you can have a person in America, someone from India, and someone in China almost die, only to come back and tell us about their experience. Surprisingly, regardless of what religion they believe in, they each say the same thing, they were either greeted by family members, or there was a long dark tunnel with a white light at the end of it. That can't be by accident or coincidence, but it is by grand design that we all experience the same thing.

I know that some religious people don't like scientists, and there are scientists that don't believe in religion, but if both camps would step back and look at the bigger picture, they would realize that religion and science are, in fact, both one and the same. Before you close your mind to this, allow me to explain, our creator made us, put a brain in our head, and gave us the ability and curiosity to seek out knowledge and the answer to our creation. Science is the tool that we use to further our understanding of our creation, and it is not there to disprove the existence of a creator, if anything, science has already proven that many things in the Bible are true.

When DNA was first identified in the 1860s by Friedrich Miescher, we still had a very limited understanding of what it was, and what it would eventually come to mean to our existence. It wasn't until the 1950s that James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the complexity of DNA and started to unravel the mysteries of it, and in the decades since, scientists have agreed that it is impossible that this was just a random occurrence in nature, but our design has intelligence behind it, we were created.

When Charles Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species in 1859, he was limited by the science of his day, but even he said that his theory on natural selection could be disproved as the scientific method improved, but that hasn't stopped the so called academics from preaching his theory as gospel, even though our hard science today has proven otherwise. Yes, as humans, we and other forms of life on this planet are constantly evolving, but it isn't random. Another thing that science has been able to prove is that a worldwide flood actually happened, just as the Bible tells us, as they have found evidence of it across the planet in our archeological record.

Albert Einstein, one of the smartest people in history, was not religious but he had a theory about death that was beautiful in simplicity. In short, he believed that we are living energy, while we shed our physical bodies when we die, that energy continues to exist, and it has to go somewhere. Some people might call that a soul, and I think that sometimes our energy or soul gets stuck and that is what a haunting is. I don't believe that any souls are left behind deliberately, but I think that people that die traumaticly can't move on, and in the case of kids haunting places I think that they are too young to understand what has happened and they either don't know how to move on, or they are afraid to.

The theory of reincarnation makes sense, that our energy or soul goes somewhere for awhile after we die and we eventually just end up right back here. There have been many cases documented of young kids that claim to have memories of a previous life, they can remember their name, who they were married to, where they lived, and other intimate details that they couldn't possibly know, but are proven to be accurate. Maybe we are here to learn to be good to each other, and if we don't learn those lessons we are just recycled and are sent back again and again until we do.

The Bible says that our soul is immortal, and the death of the physical body is not the end. Our creator loves us, he loves all his children, so there really is no reason to be mean to each other and argue about which religion is right or wrong, but I know that won't stop people from doing it. As I said before, regardless of the path we take, we each have the same destination, and after our time here we will be judged for how we lived this life. It is both foolish and arrogant for us to assume we know what is waiting for us, but you can trust that our creator has a place for us.

Then again, what do I know? I'm just a guy with a opinion and a keyboard. I leave you with a few words to think about.

When pride cometh, then cometh shame: But with the lowly is wisdom. - Proverbs 11:2

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing. - Socrates

Reality is merely a illusion, albeit a very persistent one. - Albert Einstein

[Murfreesboro]

That's a very provocative post, HH, and I'm not sure I have the concentration right now to respond to it in the depth it merits.

When I was a teenager I read around in Eastern religions, most of which propose reincarnation. At that time I thought it would be neat to imagine I had lived many lives. But as I read further, I came across the belief that the goal of it all was Nirvana, and that "the soul enters Nirvana like a drop of water enters the ocean." And I thought, Whoa, when a drop of water enters the ocean, sure, the molecules are still there, but its integrity as a drop of water is gone forever. That just wasn't what I needed to hear, so I was done with Eastern mysticism.

[Murfreesboro]

My phone literally died as I was typing a response to you yesterday, so I'm back now to add a few thoughts.

To finish what I was saying, I returned to Bible reading in my early 20s and was struck, after my flirtation with the Eastern beliefs, by how important naming is, in both the Old and New Testaments. I emerged with the belief that the God of the Bible is above all the God who knows your name. And that appealed to me, because I needed some assurance that whatever came, I would be me forever, as would the people I had loved and lost.

Now, of course I've heard those stories you mention, of the children who recall past lives in great detail. I cannot explain them within my belief sysyem. But the idea of reincarnation just doesn't appeal to me. That's all I can say about that.

[Murfreesboro]

Similarities among major world religions: I was raised by my mother with this attitude, that all religions are more alike than different. Certainly, as regards ethical systems, it makes sense. Certain rules of behavior have to prevail if people are to live together in any kind of harmony. However, my adult life has been a discovery of the ways in which Christianity is actually different from others. For example, all religions seem to have some form of the Golden Rule. It is much older than Jesus. But the classic formulation is a negative: don't do to anyone else what you wouldn't want done to yourself. Jesus actually turned that around, made it both active and positive: DO unto others as you would have others do unto you. The difference is subtle, perhaps, but it's real. And that's the sort of thing I see throughout Christianity that sets it apart. It is a very positive religion. The most frequent commandment in the Bible is, "Fear not." That's actually pretty awesome.

[Murfreesboro]

On final judgment: my mother's father, who died before I was born, was not a Christian believer. He was, however, a strikingly wise, charitable, and ethical man who was adored by those in his family who did know him. I think it was because of him that my mother was unwilling to teach me a strict form of Christianity. Now, according to the theology of the church, this man is a lost soul. But I hope God has forgiven him whatever sins he committed and has found a place for him in Heaven, because I would like to meet him there.

A few years ago, one of our most devout church members here in town lost a daughter who had turned away from Christianity to embrace Wicca. I knew this young woman and liked her. Sadly, she got cancer and died of it in her 40s. Out of loyalty to her mother, several church members attended her funeral. My husband and I were among them. A week or so afterward, another church friend was speaking privately to me about her, and she remarked, "You know where she has to be now.' I said, "It's not my job to decide who is saved and who isn't, and I'm glad it isn't, because I don't want that job."

I do believe there is such a thing as Hell, but I don't think God sends anyone there. I think, if we go, it's because we send ourselves there. My hope, and my belief, too, is that ultimately God judges us by what He finds in our hearts. I hope I make that cut.