Anthony Milhorn, founder of the Southern States Paranormal Research Society (SSPRS), answers the ghost research survey:
WHAT IS A GHOST?
We all commonly believe that a ghost is the spirit of a dead person that, for reasons unknown to us, lingers behind on Earth to haunt favored locations, or even the living. The question here that is being addressed by this paper is not the existence of a ghost, but the very driving forces behind the concept of a "ghost", by asking the hard to ask questions that no one seems to want to ask, let alone have the answers to. To even attempt to begin to address this question both science and religion must be laid bare and it often leads to uncomfortable questions that neither side of the argument likes to address.
To be able to fully comprehend what a ghost is, a person must come to terms with the nature of life -- and yes -- death.
Ghosts, apparitions, hauntings, telepathic messages from beyond the grave and unbelievable psychic experiences presuppose that the receiver or, at times, the observer, to accept the reality of another dimension or aspect to human consciousness into which we will all pass into eventually. Either that, or they simply refuse to acknowledge the experience or rationalize down to terms in which they are comfortable with.
We must also consider the three most important unanswered queries to date: What is man? Why is man? How is man?
For all our technology, advances and hard core science, we cannot begin to answer any one of those questions with any degree of true certainty. And we must examine each question in depth if we are to understand what a ghost is.
Let us tackle the first question. Why is Man?
Some people toss the problem of man's origins to religion to handle, assuming us to be the works of an all powerful supreme being, a creator. But this poses problems, problems that fall far short of any answer or insight. Even if we are to accept the notion that a supreme creator made us, it leaves the next question unanswered: Who Created the Creator?
Does something arise from nothing?
Now, from the scientific perspective. To chalk up our existence to the slowly turning wheels of time and evolution from a simple electro-chemical compound, into the shapers of the planet, while more sensible, is to raise but more questions.
Assuming this ideology is right -- there seems to be overwhelming evidence that it is -- what exactly was the force behind the ordering and shaping of these chemicals and bonds? The complexity of life begs to shake the very idea that all of this evolution and perfection of multi-cellular intelligent organisms from its foundations, because if this is true, who guided the process from start to where it is now? Who laid down the path work to what is obviously a very ordered pattern of development? Or was it purely random chance, which to me, seems very unlikely.
So we are back to square one. Why is Man?
Whether we are theistic or atheistic, materialistic or idealistic, the end result seems to lead to the same door, a door that is and remains to us, closed, locked from our science and religion both.
The next questions, What is Man? How Is Man?
Are humans -- are we -- merely an animal, descended from primates as Dr. Desmond Morris states in The Naked Ape? Is man a mere accidental development, having spawned by random chance from an ape over time becoming primitive man? To this day, this particular hypothesis has been shunned and rejected by large segments of the population. The stigma against such an idea comes mainly from religious indoctrination and strongly entrenched fundamentalism. After all, when religion goes against science it always looses.
Or does it?
On the other hand, as we must always look, is the hypothesis that we are unique creatures of the creation of supreme God, a belief that is so widespread in this country that it has made heavy of the attendance to churches and synagogues with church leaders and the various denominations thinking of rather inventive new ways to get followers to their flocks daily. Or even perhaps, a genetic experiment began hundreds of thousands of years ago by ancient alien races as little more than cattle or slave labor?
Regardless of what you "believe" -- and, yes, it is a belief either way whether we wish to admit it or not -- it still does not answer entirely what we are and how we came to be thus highly lessens our ability to comprehend or understand what we will become in the next phase of life, if there is indeed one. The reason I state this is because a growing number of people have began to report encounters with the state of human existence that we never thought possible in scientific terms and yet it violates most religious beliefs, at least in Western society.
The majority of these people take their experiences and accept them and hold them blindly, never questioning them, seeing them as messages from beyond or guideposts that they interpret to fit their faith and sometimes, even fail in this.
They do not stop to question the hows and the whys of such an experience.
It seems to me, that in the end, to answer these questions, we must look at the dark place between religion and science and explore the forbidding areas where these two dogmas meet, in order to understand the nature of humanity and intelligent existence, for if we are to ever understand man in all his forms we must take into account all the elements, strip them of their fallacies and retain the hard truth, no matter what it may be.
With that being said, we must now move on to consider, What is life? How do we as humans define it? From a religious standpoint? From a scientific standpoint? Let's ignore the two for a moment as separate entities and look at what life is as a fact-based exploration of the definition of the term.
Next page: What is a ghost?, cont'd
