Ghosts are Our Invisible Neighbors

I don’t like to speak of ghosts everywhere. I don’t want to say that I have seen some of them and I don’t want to assert that they exist. Quite often, when I narrate  ghostly apparitions, people of so called scientific bent or rationalistic pride smile condescendingly. Some openly scoff. Some others even ask me rudely to prove that ghosts exist. I can’t do it  because you cannot catch spirits and make them stand for a photograph.You cannot tell them to show themselves because this or that person of weight would like to see an exhibition of them. They are free beings. If they wish to appear before our eyes they appear, otherwise you will l not see them all your life . They are under no one’s command.

Yet, when people are celebrating Halloween and many are going about dressed as ghosts, I think I can talk about these our  invisible cohabitants of the earth. No, they are not confined to graveyards as many of us might think.  They can be found in abandoned houses, on  leaf-thick trees,  in forests and  in quiet places away from human residence. As we human beings are destroying natural animal habitat, we are also encroaching upon the residences  of these spirit  creatures. They too are being driven out of their homes and are being compelled to find refuge in other places. Some  of them may decide to stay around us and at rare moments  they suddenly can become visible to our mundane eyes, which are so accustomed to seeing material objects.

To me, they have appeared in different forms. I have seen them as hairy animals, as dancing fires on trees, as dark humanoid shadows, as misty human shapes walking. Once a woman of gigantic size appeared to two persons of my family.

As a man far from the Halloween celebrating cultures, I don’t know why people celebrate this day. However, I believe, it is one way of acknowledging them as our neighbors and rendering them their due respect.