Ghost Stories As A Realistic Topic In Our Humanity

There are all different kinds of ghost stories you can read about. There’s no specific ones that stand out from another, all ghost stories have certain aspects that keep the reader interested to read or watch the next one. We enjoy watching scary films or reading scary content with another person because some things can be seen as disturbing and we want the people we can trust there with us. In movies, the ghost stories that are the highest sellers are the ones that scare you the most. In readings, the ghost stories that show the teardown or development of a family seem the most interesting to interpret as the reader when reading deeper into the lines. The definition of “Ghost Stories” according to google is, “a story involving ghosts or ghostly circumstances, intended to be suspenseful and scary.” All ghost stories written and talked about in the past have details that make them unique, but what we don’t take into consideration is how ghosts may not be real at all. Whether ghosts are real or not, the possible myths told by real people are compelling enough to create a story we as readers want to believe.

Ghost stories are a realistic topic in our humanity, whether people like to believe it or not. They can horrify families or individuals for the rest of their lives, and talking to people about it is the worst when they don’t want to believe you. An article written by Discovery News and published by Fox states, “Ghost stories have been around as long as there have been stories themselves”. Writers adapt ghost stories to conceptualize people’s fears and beliefs since ghosts are figures of the unknown. The Fox news article also states, “Nearly half of all Americans believe in ghosts, but there’s no science to determine if the ghosts people see are made up”. Assumptions can be made that people’s fear of ghosts hit so close to heart, that they exaggerate their narrative in order to provide a fascinating story for an author to tell. While everything in a story may not be filled with one hundred percent true facts, readers are so obsessed to figure out what happens in the end. For example, in ghost movies, everything that happens over the course of the film leads up to the intriguing ending every viewer is waiting for. Mark D. Griffiths, who wrote an article for Psychology today, puts into perspective why people get such a kick out of these films, “You choose this entertainment because you want it to affect you…They want those effects these showings provide just to see a resolution in the end, and they are able to control what effect it has on them, emotionally and otherwise”. In simpler words, Mark hints that the only reason people view these is to be “excited in a scary way”. The “fear of death” factor plays a big role in why we are so anxious during these spooky events and why we want the closest people we care about by our side when perceiving these disasters.

It would be false claim to state that we don’t take into consideration the wellbeing of ourselves and our loved ones when witnessing terrifying aspects in ghost films or articles. There are many of us that stay away from these stories completely so we don’t risk our possible religious beliefs or our blood pressure going through the roof. Margarita Tartakovsky, an associate editor for Psych Central gives a personal experience in her article why she tends to dislike all ghost stories, “They freak me out leaving me unsettled for days…I have a hard time sitting through the sacrier scenes of Sons of Anarchy and my boyfriend tells me to leave the room so he doesn’t miss anything important”. This sets an example as not everyone tends to enjoy the harm that people in these situations are put through. Glen Sparks, a Ph.D from the University of Purdue, conducted a research experiment to see how ghost stories and movies affect the brain and found out, “your lingering arousal heightens any emotions you experience, the negative feelings might sway you to skip a scary flick in the future”. Not everyone is built the same for these movies and it has nothing bad to do against them. Different people are triggered easier than others and some tend to express their emotions more comfortably with someone they trust watching with them. To detail on this, there are many sightings, and considerations of ghosts possibly being real but at the same time there’s people who can argue ghosts and building/destroying relationships don’t correlate. While they may not directly correlate, it is expected that watching or listening to a ghost story makes you think harder about whether they have affected your life or someone you love’s life in the future.

Seeing a ghost in person, as harmful as it may sound, doesn’t seem practical to happen in anyone’s lifetime. CNN’s John Blake argues, “Death doesn’t sever the connection between loved ones, say people who’ve experienced so-called crisis apparitions”. A crisis apparition is explained as, “the spirit of a recently deceased person who visits someone they had a close emotional connection with, usually to say goodbye”. While not related directly to ghost stories, the idea of a crisis apparition is common in ghost related tales as it drives the whole plot of the narrative. Also argued by witness and paranormal investigators, “although these encounters are chilling, they can also be comforting, suggesting the bond that exists between loved ones is not erased by death”. This goes into the topic of “life after death” and seeing loved ones pass away but knowing they are still with us in some way shape or form. When you experience the loss of a loved one, they aren’t ever forgotten about, and linger in your mind each and every day making you think what you’d do to see them again. These thoughts can make people go crazy and have realizations of a ghostly figure of them being real.

We all have family stories about losing a loved one and not realizing how much we cherished them in our lives until they were gone. Steve Paulson wrote asking the question if these ghosts that remind us of our lost family members are even real. We look into science and studies taken from people’s experiences to determine facts or foolishness with these ghost stories. Paulson uses a Pew Research Center study to express, “18% of Americans say they’ve seen or felt a ghost, and 29% say they’ve experienced the presence of someone who has died”. When we go to church and pray for our lost loved ones, we have them in our minds and some people believe that they are always watching over us. When referring to the term “ghost” or “spirits” it sounds haunting or uncomfortable but what keeps people sane is knowing their loved ones are in a better place.

Losing a loved one very close to you is always a tough thing to grasp, and may affect you in ways you didn’t think were possible. Vaughan Bell writes an article titled, “Ghost Stories: Visits from the Deceased” aimed at people coping with loss to contemplate the empathy felt as soon as their beloved is no longer with us. “The dead stay with us, they remain in our hearts and minds but for many people they also linger in our senses leading to hallucinations when people fear they might be considered insane or mentally disabled by their loss”. Bell details on how people cope with loss and how it is related to ghost stories. Bell also talks a lot about how “hallucinations make people believe they see ghosts, when in reality they aren’t there,” Referring to possible ghost sightings that may just be all in your head. People that experience similar aspects don’t realize it’s all a dream until someone tells them it is.

Regular people like you and I that are constantly in an environment of distress and confusion tend to lose themselves and actually go crazy. The author describes a middle aged woman, who would constantly hallucinate, “grieving her daughter’s death from a heroin overdose, regularly saw the young girl and sometimes heard her say mama, mama”. While it sounds insane to read about, people that experience hallucination say it is comforting for them, “as if they were re-connecting with something positive from the person’s life”. This relates to the article written by Steve Paulson on the idea of wondering if these ghosts in our head are real if our mind isn’t in a relaxed state. Both authors have the same arguments that the spirit of a loved one will always be there and technically speaking that is what a ghost is. When grieving such a close loss, you will want to believe they’re still with you and those thoughts don’t describe being in a relaxed state. There’s very few people that can say they have seen a ghost, and that makes most of us consider that these ghosts aren’t real.

A question to ask when relating to ghost stories is do they only seem real to the people that have experienced similar beliefs themself? It’s also worth it to note after hearing people’s hands on experiences with “ghosts” does that make the reader consider the fact that they may indeed be real? While there is no right or wrong answer when it comes to a topic like this, every author makes their individual contribution, detailing on the subject and giving the reader another way to view the topic. For example, while Kristine Peoples, the author of “Haunted by the Ghost of Relationships Past” suggests to reminisce on the good in the past relationships, John Blake from CNN signifies not to watch them alone. With all this studying about ghosts stories, Discovery News suggests, “Such apparitions aren’t ghosts at all, in the sense of otherworldly spirits. Instead, the phenomenon may be a kind of extrasensory perception that we can’t yet measure”. Science can determine people’s emotional states and brain wavelengths, but they cannot directly determine what makes people perceive ghosts as a part of our everyday lives. We want to believe that ghosts aren’t real, but the articles show how it affects so many people and their loved ones that they are willing to share their stories to inform others. So where does all these facts and opinions put out by authors and contributors lead us to believe? It is one thing to hear a story and consider it to be real, but to actually experience it is another level.