I’m not sure how it started, or who started the stories, but recently I have been treated to a large number of ghost tales about the property where our school sits. I have investigated a little bit but the story is hard to uncover, not least because I do not know Thai well. Suffice it to say that the story at least as I know it is that there are many Thais unwilling to rent the property where our school sits because apparently there was at least one murder there, and because some people seem a bit spooked by the prospect of ghosts. I suppose Thais, like many other people, have a fair amount of superstitions (this is also true of my own people, I should note).

In the words of Ray Parker, Jr., “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts,” but clearly many people are. Of course, as I have dealt with the subject of ghosts before [1], I suppose without repeating myself too much I can comment a little bit on my own thoughts on the matter. I believe that places can carry with them the reminder of the evil and oppression that happened there–concentration camps and slave forts come to mind as places where evil tends to linger for long periods of time, but even though I believe sin pollutes a land, that the land can recover and that long-gone evil deeds can be forgotten once no trace of them remains in memory.

But there are a variety of reasons that this process does not often take place. For one, human beings tend to have tenacious memories, even if it is only in passing rumors and folk legends from person to person or generation to generation. As long as the memory remains of an evil, the feelings associated with that evil remain as well. This can be both good and bad–remembering evil helps us to fight against it, but it can also prevent us from coming to terms with the past and giving people and situations a fresh start free of misconceptions and fears and doubts. Whether our memories are on the good side or the bad side we must all judge for ourselves.

But despite my unbelief in ghosts, whether we are talking about the disembodied spirits of dead people or of Casperesque blobs, I do believe in the existence of the spirit realm, as a Christian. Furthermore, I strongly belief that our memories and the stories we hear and believe can prey on our minds. The power of ghosts to haunt is not so much the threat of the supernatural on our health and well-being, but our own worries and the difficult state of our own minds, hearts, and spirit. We are beings who are very sensitive to such matters, and whose emotional state is often very delicate and certainly able to be affected by what is outside. We ought therefore to be careful about our own thoughts and feelings, to keep them from running away from us and filling our minds with suspicion and anxiety, when there is nothing to worry about. Ghosts are about as threatening and harmful as I am, which is to say, not threatening at all. But some people still fear anyway.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/the-ghost-of-you-and-me/