Ghosts in the family

Happy Halloween

As I wrote recently about UFOs and my great doubts about whether they represent a real issue, I began to understand why people believe in them. I also realized that, out of fairness, I had to admit to my own out-there conviction that ghosts are real.

How can anyone who dismisses otherworldly UFO theories latch on to the idea that ghosts are among us? It boils down to one thing — The credibility of the witnesses.

In my family lore, my grandfather and grandmother dealt with a ghost they discovered after moving into a new home in the little town of Gilman, Illinois. The incidents began when they discovered a little pile of sugar that had been placed neatly underneath a kitchen chair. The bag of sugar was in the cabinet where it belonged and there were no sweet crystals scattered about.

On another occasion my grandparents were chatting when a candlestick suddenly tilted until it rested on its side. It was as if an invisible hand had just laid it over, taking care to not make any noise. The same thing happened later as my grandmother was telling my aunt about this. Over went the candlestick, and they both felt a chill.

On more than one occasion my grandparents came home from an outing to discover all the windows in the house had been thrown open. But dramatic as they were, these occurrences were nothing compared with what happened to my aunt as she delivered some groceries to the Gilman house. She entered the kitchen from a door that opened on the inside of the garage and there, at the kitchen table with his back turned, sat a man in a green parka. He stood up and he turned around and he didn't have a face. And then he disappeared.

After the ghost had made himself known, my grandmother, whose faith was deep and unshakeable, went to every room and prayed that the Lord end these episodes. They did end.

Now, if the story of the Gilman ghost had not been told by down-to-earth people I had known my whole life, I wouldn’t have believed it. But my grandparents and my aunt were sincere, highly moral people who had never claimed any supernatural experiences. What they went through in that Gilman house led me to believe that reports of hauntings fall into two categories. Nearly all are hoaxes or, to be generous, products of contagious hysteria. The rare few, like the one in my family, involve demonic spirits who do flee from demonstrations of faith, like my grandmother’s prayers. I think this way because despite moving away from the extreme (and extremely politicized) form of religion I knew as a boy, I still believe in heavenly and not-so-heavenly spirits.

It may be hypocritical for me to dismiss one outrageous phenomenon but embrace another as, shall we say, “gospel” truth. But I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, who would you believe — your grandparents and aunt, or someone who says, without a shred of proof, that aliens have been captured and are being held at some secret military base?