Faith Works 10-23-21

Faith Works 10-23-21
Jeff Gill

Haunted, yes; ghosts, well…
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Not to chase away readers, but I'll just make my views clear right from the start. I think ghost stories are more about us than they are about them.

But as Dumbledore famously said to Harry Potter: "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"

I come from a religious tradition that prefers to ask about contentious questions "What does the Bible say?" On ghosts, it's actually not clear. So I am not critical of fellow Christians who believe ghosts appear or manifest or haunt. I would read the weight of scripture as cautioning us very strongly against interpreting a message from the dead as being the same as a word from God, so when people tell me they've had a vivid dream about a deceased loved one, I'm guarded in my response.

Not dismissive, though. Again, I think ghost stories are more about us than they are about them, the departed, the ethereal, the deceased. We have unanswered questions, longings unresolved, and issues that are just left awkwardly where we want clarity and closure and even conclusion. This is where I think our mental and spiritual desire to fill in gaps can create some impressive impressions.

Yet I have had my own encounters, and heard guidance or at least messages that have struck me as on target, even mysteriously so. Just over a week after my dad died, I walked up to him and hugged him and we talked. It was in a dream, and the answers, such as they were, had an elliptical quality at best. No, I'm not going to tell you what he said, it would take to long to set up, and besides it's personal.

What I've heard again and again from people over the years is that vivid dreams or strong impressions in a wakeful moment about a person who has died can be intensely personal, in a way that makes such dreams or visions stand out. Sometimes it means something that the recipient knew already but was having trouble admitting or facing; sometimes it has to do with unresolved matters which point towards a solution. There are stories about the latter which end up implying knowledge which "could only have come from the deceased," but this is where both my caution and my skepticism come in. We all have a tendency to try to fit questions and answers together.

More broadly, we want to believe. Even in a secular age, and a less religious era, I think it's fair to say in general, we want to hope that there is life beyond life. Call me a religious person — guilty! — but I see this impulse all around as October rolls towards its pumpkin shaped conclusion. From the candle inside the jack-o'-lantern to the ghosts taped onto our windows, there's a desire to think we have souls, that beyond death is . . . something. We toy with that impulse, play with it, and try to laugh at it, but it's there in every ghost hunt and haunted house entertainment. Listening to electronic devices or watching cameras for mysterious orbs, always hoping for a sign that after death is . . . something. A haunting, a verified ghost, a documented apparition, would give us something for sure.

And I admit I am haunted. I've lived and worked here long enough that there are far too many places I go or pass by where I know someone has died. Yes, right there. The awareness haunts me. My dad? I still read or hear or find something that makes me think "I need to call Dad and tell him about that." My grandmother, gone forty years and more now, I think of when I see a really cool bird; just a few years back I was in the Everglades surrounded by about a dozen birds I'd never seen before, but I couldn't stop thinking about her.

Israel Dille I talk to often, about Newark and earthworks and Licking County, technology and faith. He died almost a hundred and fifty years ago, and he has no marker on his grave at Cedar Hill, though I can tell you right where it is. Obviously, we never met in life, but he and Mary Hartwell Catherwood and William Gavit and Minnie Hite Moody, Benjamin Briggs and Carl Etherington, Sister Mary Eulalia Wehrle and Rev. Levi Shinn, and certainly Lilly Benjamin Jones . . . they all haunt me.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's seen things you people wouldn't believe. Tell him what haunts you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.