Do Ghosts and Spirits Exist?

I recently came cross an interesting psychic website that claimed to have an interactive soul’s engine. It said that it practiced virtual tarot and could predict things about a person’s life. The person had to type a question and request the ghost to answer it. It seemed pretty unbelievable but I still decided to try it long with the friend who introduced the website to me. I tried asking question after question but the ghost didn’t answer any of them. It either said that it will answer my question later or that I should stop testing it. Then my friend said that the ghost only interacts with a few people and he was one of the people whose questions it answers. He then started asking questions about my life and the ghost gave correct replies. After testing the website for sometime, when I had just started believing him, my friend revealed the trick behind the website to me.

Here is the trick. When a person typed the request to the ghost, say, “Good spirit, (followed by a dot) please answer my question”, he actually typed in the answer to the question about to be asked after the dot. The answer would then be displayed in the ghost’s answer field. The request field on the website was designed in such a way that no matter what the person typed after the dot, the sentence ‘please answer my question’ would appear on the screen, in place of the answer the person typed. Thus, the other person was tricked into believing that the ghost was answering its questions correctly.

Existence of ghosts and spirits is one of the most debatable topics. There are some people who staunchly believe in their existence, while some claim that no matter how many times they have visited haunted places they have not come across any ghosts.

A television show which I recently saw invited a famous sage, a ghost hunter, a religious expert, and a ghost believer. All four of them presented their ideas on the subject. The sage said that he believed in the existence of soul and reincarnation but didn’t believe in ghosts. The ghost hunter said that till date he has visited many haunted places but has never come across any ghosts or spirits. The religious expert said that people who meet an untimely death or who die before their wishes are fulfilled in this lifetime turn into ghosts. He said that he has seen incidents where religious practices performed at haunted places have helped in freeing the ghosts and cleansing the place. The ghost believer also seconded this and said that an incident happened in his family which made him a believer. An ailing family member was taken to a psychic who detected that his son was possessed by an evil spirit who was in turn ruining his health. Some religious rite was then performed to get rid of the evil spirit.

A very famous international science and geographic channel showcases some of the so-called real life stories related to ghosts and spirits. They show dramatic reconstructions of what actually happened and how the situation was then dealt with. They interview people whose houses were once haunted and weave these interviews in between the dramatic reconstructions, thus making the story look believable. In these stories people narrate how they came across ghosts and spirits in their houses and how they got rid of them with the help of psychics.

There are some other channels which thrive on such ghost stories which have been blown out of proportion. They show spicy advertisements promoting these stories and get viewers interested in them. They interview psychics and get them to perform controversial and rarely seen religious practices. They show psychics performing religious rites on people thought to be possessed by evil spirit. They also show ascetics who meditate in burning ghats, next to nearly charred dead bodies, eating their remains and meditating in order to get special powers from the devil.

Some channels have regular programmes in which they send their reporters to famous haunted places to try to prove that ghost only exist in the century-old stories related to such places and not in reality. Sometimes, they also send psychic’s to visit such places. These psychics meditate on spot and narrate the incidents which they visualise. Sometimes these psychics come up with stories or scenes of violence committed in such places due to which the souls of the tortured people haunt these places.

The film industry is also not far from showing all kind of stories regarding ghosts, sprits and reincarnations. Movies have been made suggesting various things about them. Some of the famous myths are that ghosts’ existence can be determined by placing a holy lemon in the haunted place and seeing if changes colour after some time. They profess that ghosts cannot be seen in a mirror and ghost’s feet are turned outwards.

Thus, as audience it is up to us to judge whether these stories shown on television, movies and various other media are true. We have to use our own discretion and religious faith to decide whether to believe in the existence of ghosts and spirits or not.

Finally, no lack of scientific proof has stopped a man from believing in God and none can stop him from believing in ghosts and spirits.