Are Ghosts Real?
Years ago, I was in charge of a Halloween fundraiser called Local Haunts, where storytellers performed ghost stories from the area where I lived. I’d heard there was a good ghost storyteller in nearby Gettysburg, purportedly the most haunted town in America, and so I went to one of her ghost walks, at night, by myself.
BIG mistake.
After spending almost two hours walking around Gettysburg in the dark, listening to ghost stories, I had to drive home through a dark forest all alone. I was seriously freaked out, sure there was a ghost in the back seat. I had to pull over several times and catch my breath.
If you had asked me that night if I believed in ghosts, I would have said yes, absolutely. But the next day, I felt a little foolish. I hadn’t actually seen any ghosts, but the stories had so fired my imagination that I was scared out of my wits. (One of the curses of being a writer is an overactive imagination.)
After years of research and writing, I am certain the supernatural world exists. Angels, demons, possessions, and exorcisms are clearly articulated in the Bible. But what about ghosts? Can the disembodied spirits of dead people actually haunt the places where they died?
People in Bible times believed in the existence of ghosts. When the disciples saw Jesus walking on water, they thought he was a ghost. Likewise, when He first appeared to them after the resurrection, He said, "Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have." (Luke 24: 38-39) They still weren’t convinced, so Jesus ate some fish to prove he wasn’t a ghost.
So ghosts might have been accepted as a possibility back then, just as they are today. Does that mean they exist?
The only appearance of an actual ghost in the Bible is the manifestation of Samuel by Saul through a medium.
'So Saul disguised himself, dressing in different clothes. Then he and two men set out, going to the woman at nighttime. “Please call up a ghost for me! Bring me the one I specify,” Saul said.
“Listen,” the woman said to him, “you know what Saul has done, how he has banned all mediums and diviners from the land. What are you doing? Trying to get me killed?”
But Saul promised her by the LORD, “As surely as the LORD lives, you won’t get into trouble for this.” So the woman said, “Whom do you want me to bring up for you?” “Bring up Samuel,” he said. When the woman saw Samuel, she screamed at Saul, “Why have you tricked me? You are Saul!”
“Don’t be afraid!” the king said to her. “What do you see?” The woman said to Saul, “I see a god coming up from the ground.” “What does he look like?” Saul asked her. “An old man is coming up,” she said. “He’s wrapped in a robe.” Then Saul knew that it was Samuel, and he bowed low out of respect, nose to the ground. “Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?” Samuel asked Saul. “I’m in deep trouble!” Saul replied. “The Philistines are at war with me, and God has turned away from me and no longer answers me by prophets or by dreams. So I have called on you to tell me what I should do.”
“Why do you ask me,” Samuel said, “since the LORD has turned away from you and has become your enemy? The LORD has done to you exactly what he spoke through me: The LORD has ripped the kingdom out of your hands and has given it to your friend David. The LORD has done this very thing to you today because you didn’t listen to the LORD’s voice and didn’t carry out his fierce anger against the Amalekites. The LORD will now hand over both you and Israel to the Philistines. And come tomorrow, you and your sons will be with me! The LORD will hand Israel’s army over to the Philistines.”
Saul immediately fell full length on the ground, utterly terrified at what Samuel had said. He was weak because he hadn’t eaten anything all day or night. '
1 Samuel 28:8-20
Even if he is an actual ghost in this story, Samuel is not haunting anyone. He returns to deliver the message that Saul and his sons will die the next day. Then he’s gone.
Was this really Samuel, or did Saul just think it was? Could it have been an angel sent from God to give Saul the message in the form he was expecting? All those things are possible. The text itself doesn’t offer an explanation.
Most Christian theologians maintain that the Bible does not support the idea of human spirits remaining behind to haunt the living. According to scriptures like Hebrews 9:27 and 2 Corinthians 5:6-8, the spirits of the dead return immediately to God for judgment. There’s no possibility of them wandering the earth.
If you’ve seen Ghost Hunters or Kindred Spirits, or any of the other myriad ghost-hunting shows on cable, you might be totally convinced that ghosts are real. I watched a few of them, and I came away unconvinced. Almost everything I saw on those shows could have been faked pretty easily.
Does that mean ghosts don’t exist? Demons certainly exist, and they can take many forms, perhaps even the aspect of dead people. I think that while paranormal activity can be quite real, it’s probably the work of demons, not dead people. Yet the Bible does not explicitly say that the spirits of the dead cannot ever remain trapped on earth. When it comes to the spirit world, nothing is really off the table.
I once had a friend who adopted a young girl from Vietnam. She’d been raised in an orphanage, a truly horrific environment. It was clear from the onset that the girl had many troubling issues, but it wasn’t until my friend decided to have her baptized that her “issues” became overtly supernatural. The girl had wild fits when she saw the baptism dress, to the point where she had to be restrained. Then weird things happened in the house—lights would go on and off, doors open and close, and other terrifying occurrences. Eventually, my friend and her husband had to give up the girl when it was discovered she’d been plotting with their son to kill them. They never did have the baptism.
To my mind, that girl was demonized. Yet psychologists attributed her bizarre behavior to “Child Attachment Disorder.” Was it one or the other? Or could it be a little of both?
What do you believe?
Gina Detwiler is the author of Forbidden, the 4th book in the Forlorn series, and co-author of the bestselling The Prince Warriors series with Priscilla Shirer. She’s also written The Ultimate Bible Character Guide and The Ultimate Bible Character Devotional.
