You might have heard of things that go bump in the night but apart from cracking your shin against furniture in the dark, have you heard something else go bump during the night? Did wake up with the feeling that there had been a sound and yet found no cause for it? There are individuals who go through experiences that leave them with only one conclusion and that is that they are living in the constant company of ghosts. In other words, their lives are haunted. The movie Sixth Sense included the now famous line, "I see dead people." Imagine the plight of someone who actually did manage to do exactly that and for their whole life.
We all have different reactions to the concept of ghosts. Some people get scared, some people get all sympathetic, and some look on it as a kind of thrill seeking. One thing however remains common with all people; any apparition no matter how brief or any visual illusion that resembles a ghost fills everyone with fear for at least a few moments. Television shows like Ghost Hunters might be said to enjoy their popularity partly because people truly are curious about ghosts and the rest of audience is waiting for something to leap at them so that they can feel that edge-of-the-seat rush they get from a horror movie.
The hunters in Ghost Hunters are regular folks during daytime and have their day jobs. At night, they visit places reputed to be haunted and basically try to prove that there are no ghosts and that everything can be explained. Most of he time they succeed in doing so and their explanations are logical enough. Unfortunately, there are occasions when our heroes come across something that defies all logic and stubbornly points to paranormal sources.
Ghosts, like the paranormal and other powers like psychic abilities, have not been proven to exist. Hence, the scientific mind will never accept that they are real and will insist that everything seen and felt has natural causes and the people experiencing the sensations are deluded through no fault of their own. However, there are some things that are not so readily explained and neither so simplistically. Science sometimes fails to answer certain phenomena and in the absence of a very real result but no explainable cause, the reasoning human will only conclude that the cause must exist but is simply not visible for some reason.
The concept of a ghost and haunting is recorded way back in human history, making the observer wonder how something so unreal could stay with humanity through so many changes. The common explanation across cultures and religions is that ghosts are the spirits of the dead that are unable to leave this plane for some reason or simply do not realize they are dead because the death was sudden.
Among the various types of ghosts, the poltergeist is the most troublesome because it has the maximum interactivity with humans. It is only thing to feel someone is there and entirely another to have that invisible someone toss things at you and make your life miserable. These are the type considered to be demons. The friendliest type of ghost is the messenger ghost. This ghost knows that the body is dead but stays a bit longer to comfort loved ones.
The term paranormal is a compound of the words para (beyond or outside) and normal. By definition it implies that anything described by this word does not come within what is known, as the normal understanding humans possess. However, this is a very simplistic definition. Similar to words such as metaphysical and supernatural, the term paranormal is not open to a clear and precise definition because there is no universal consensus on what the phenomenon is or what it implies. Unlike something like gravity, that has a precise definition and associated qualities that make it less confusing, paranormal does not offer such a simple viewpoint.
Just to get a wide range of topics that various belief believe come under the broad scope of paranormal consider the following: ghosts, Loch Ness Monster, UFOs, Bermuda Triangle, and so on. You will observe that the list include spirits of people who are no longer alive, a physical location on the planet, an animal that is reported by never witnessed when looked for, and aliens. Due to the religious beliefs of human beings, they are more taken with the paranormal in the ghost bit rather than the UFO part because this represents an opportunity to somehow get in touch with a world that is out of reach while being right beside us.
We all have to die in the physical sense. That is, our body will someday stop working and cease all functions. Some people are of the opinion that the whole business of spirits is just a way to pacify the fears of death being the ultimate end to all existence. Without going in an argument against that, it must be noted that those who do sincerely believe that there is more to our life than just the physical span associated with a living body, such people find deep peace through their beliefs. Another controversial aspect to this viewpoint is that the beliefs are more important to those people who apparently suffer more than others for no reason.
While there has been much exposure through television and other mediums regarding spirits and their deeds, which are often witnessed as physical movement without cause, like a door opening by itself or vessels falling off tables, to floating lights, and foggy or blurred images of what looks like a human form. Whether one believes in such things to be spirits or not comes down to faith, just like belief in god. The scientific community of course completely dismisses this all as fantasy and make-believe because nothing has ever been witnessed in a scientific manner and the whole situation is suspicious because it seems these spirits are deliberately avoiding being studied in a scientific manner.
This further confuses the issue because if the paranormal is consistently witnessed in something like, say a haunted house, then where does it all go when there are people with cameras and recording equipment sitting in the house on the night of expected activity? Since the paranormal is, by definition, beyond normal, then how does anyone truly understand what it means and how it affects us?
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