Ghosts? True or False??

To say you believe in ghosts is a very loaded statement. To believe in ghosts, you must first believe there is life after death. That itself is something I am personally unsure of. Hypothetically, if there was life after death, why would spirits stay on the earth, how would that work, and what would happen to them. Those are all really complicated questions which all have to be thought of before you can say that you truly believe in ghosts. I personally think that there are things you cannot explain, whether those are ghosts or simply failures of perception and senses, I am unsure.

One instance is this; when I was about 8 or 9 years old, I clearly remember a time, when I was staying at a neighbours house, who was several years older than me. She had an old Ouija board, and if you know what those are, those are boards with a small arrow which points at letters on the board to speak to the dead. I didn't believe in such things at the time, but she put it on the ground, we did not touch the board, as this one was supposed to work without it, but we asked it a simple question, "What is around us?". It answered by spelling out a-c-h-a-i-r. Then we asked "What else?" and it put a-d-o-l-l. now, beside my friend, was a rocking chair and on top of it was an old doll. We got so afraid that we made her put away the board and left. She tried to come up with excuses afterwards, like there were magnets and cameras in the board, but it was completely irrational now, looking back on it. I still cannot come up with a proper explanation for it.

Another paranormal experience was done to a close friend of mine and her family. They had purchased an old house that was centuries old, and had once been on a cemetery. She said that the place had often been used as a hospital as well many years after it was built, during the war, for soldiers. As you can tell, it was a perfect mixture for the paranormal. She stayed there with her family for a while and said that there were several times where they could see people, in older clothes, who seemed like they were real and right in front of them, but those people were gone before they could check. Another time they would wake up in the middle of the night and find people in their bedrooms, walking through walls and doors, not paying attention to them. My friend had a little sister and apparently, this one guy would go into her room every night, and hover over the bed. Then parents could even sometimes see the person, walking near the room. These people were very normal, and didn't look like ghosts, except for their strange behavior and odd clothes. My friend swore that this was true and see had seen it with her own eyes, and that was why they never used that house anymore, and instead rented it out to thrill seekers and tourists in England.

One other story, that my mother still does not feel comfortable telling me all about, but has mentioned briefly several times, was, when she was a young child, she had practically watched her great uncle die in front of her. When she had visited him, he had been near death, and you could apparently see his life flashing before his eyes. He had been very sick with some sort of lung disease, and was bed ridden. He died shortly after she last saw him and the following events happened afterwards. My mother begun getting sick, she had strange dreams, and kept seeing her uncle around her room, his footsteps in the night, and she constantly felt a doll he had given her when she was young, was with her in the bed when it was not. She started having trouble breathing, getting ill and having a hard time sleeping, and the doctors said she was showing signs of the same illness her great uncle died from, but that had been caused by constant smoking, and my mother was too young to be showing signs of it. Then she ended up getting a physic, who was a friend of a friend in this case, and had heard about this, to tell her her great uncle was possessing her. My grandmother called a priest to speak with my mother, and he gave her a blessing, and told her that she needed to make peace with the ghost. She spent sometime reflecting and 'talking' to the ghost of her great uncle, and she remembers feeling a wave of calm go over her, and she never got bothered by the ghost again.

One of the same things, although much more negatively, happened to my mother's childhood friend. Her friend started to hear voices and act like a different person when she reached high school. Eventually everyone could hear voices speaking to the girl, and she became a totally different person when possessed. Her parents tried everything, physics and priests, but nothing could fully cure the girl. She ended up having to go to an asylum because she became too dangerous to be around. Everyone was frightened that she was possessed by a ghost.

Still, even with all this happening to people around me and to me as well, I still have a hard time believing that there are ghosts among us.

When it comes to ghosts in movies, I think that movies are just different interpretations of ghosts and fears. There is no right or wrong on something that no one is sure that exists. Each person has a different perspective on what a ghost really is, and therefore we just have to accept each person's individual views and enjoy the movie for what it is, fiction!