Forgetful Phantom

I really miss the Weekly World News. They had the most interesting takes on some of the strangest news ever. It was always fun and there were some truly bizarre stories buried in there.

Looking through the archive available on Google Books I came across this little gem from 2005. (Click the picture to see the original.) The story reports on a ghost who was apparently hit on the head when he died and just couldn’t remember why he was haunting the place. They got it all worked out. Thank goodness!

It got me to thinking a little about the nature of spirits and what it is like when we move forward. In what I do there is a lot of interest in souls who have passed on and what they experience. Spiritualism is the religion most connected with souls who have passed. Regular connection with these spirits is the whole point of spiritualism. In this perspective death is merely another threshold, like turning 21. We move into a different life, with different experiences, knowledge, and perspectives. We are still ourselves and we are still doing things.

The change in perspective is a big one. All of the fleshy limitations disappear—though if the WWN story is accurate there may be some lingering effects. Are they real effects? Are they choices? a reluctance to move forward? Is it the spiritual equivalent of living in your parents’ basement? Ideally we move into a new perspective where we break boundaries of time and space. We don’t gain any super knowledge, but our new view lets us understand things, much like an adult understands things that a 3-year-old can’t imagine. For some, this is a big leap forward, so much so that they have little need to deal with the life they left behind. Others like to check in. Others seem to get a little lost.

Personally, I think that we are supposed to have some connection between this world and the next. It is subtle and sometimes incomprehensible, but a connection nonetheless. Let’s hope that it doesn’t leave us wandering around, endlessly haunting, looking for the glasses perched on our head. That would be hell right there!