Do You Believe in Ghosts?
Five true ghost stories, just in time for Halloween!
-Patty French
Did you know that Halloween was originally New Year’s Eve? (Even more incentive to party, right?) Yep, the ancient Irish Celts believed that October 31 was the most significant and magical night of all, when the Great Powers of the Cosmos actually dissolved the current year and re-created the universe from scratch. Of course, with all this dissolving going on, it naturally affected the barriers that kept the living and the dead apart, and even the past and future in proper order. In fact, the veils became so thin that the dearly departed were invited to feasts, and the merry-making included all kinds of supernatural divination; psychics and tarot readers were the A-listers at all the best parties. Bonfires were lit to burn away the old unwanted things in people’s lives (no, not Auntie Magda) in order to make way for new desires to manifest (the original “Law of Attraction”?) and costumes were worn to play out what revelers wanted the future to bring.
So do you think that we can more easily see ghosts on Halloween? Do you believe that ghosts can ever be seen at all – or that they even exist? Well, people who have seen them believe! Gather round the fire while I tell you Five Authentic Tales of Ghostly Meetings …
Robert*, 16, of Sebastopol, California was hanging out with friends in the cemetery near his home one wild and crazy Halloween. And yep, he actually saw what looked like the Grim Reaper galloping towards him, cape flying and sword flashing. “Later on at home I was so frightened during the middle of the night that I actually used my cell phone to call upstairs to my mother’s cell phone,” Robert confesses. (Oh, that one doesn’t count at all you say, come on, we all know what he was doing in the graveyard …)
OK, OK, so what about Nancy, 23, of Denver, Colorado. This healthy and wholesome pregnant mom woke up one night to see a little boy of about 8 years old staring straight at her. “I was so startled that I couldn’t move or speak. I tried to wake my husband but the fear paralyzed me,” Nancy says. “I realized why those girls in horror movies just stand there while the monster stumbles along towards them!” The little boy finally headed out, going through the wall. The kicker is … the apparition actually was an explanation for all the weird things that had been happening in her apartment, like the poor tropical fish dying because the aquarium heater had been turned all the way up. The landlord confirmed that a little boy had died in the house about 50 years ago.
