While it may come as a surprise to some people, the Catholic faith includes a belief in ghosts. Now I know what some of you might be thinking: “Angels and demons I knew about, Father, but ghosts?” Still, if you consider that a ghost supposedly is the disembodied spirit of a dead person — then sure, Catholics believe in ghosts, because the word ghost, from the German word geist, simply means “spirit”.
Of course, the word “ghost” is rarely used in such a context. What we usually mean by the word is a *restless* spirit, i.e. one that somehow has not yet “moved on” to the afterlife, or has somehow been brought back. In this regard the Catholic faith has a lot less to say. The scriptures mention the curious episode of the summoning of the ghost of Samuel by the witch of Endor (1 Samuel 28: 3-25), but apart from that the Bible has very little to say on the matter. Of course, there isn’t a lot of empirical evidence, either, so the Catholic Church, while not closed to the issue, generally keeps its silence.
Even more nebulous is the question of how ghosts, if they even exist, might influence the external physical world of creation, or the inner psychological world of human beings. In this area the Church is less silent, mainly to warn the faithful about necromantic practices aimed at attempting to contact the dead. Simply put, while we don’t know if ghosts exist, we do know demons exist, and they could easily use a seance as an opportunity to try and imitate a deceased person in order to gain influence. The Church says we can pray for the dead, and we can ask the saints to pray for us. Too much curiosity with regards to the rest is not useful.
I give this background to help readers understand Gary Jansen’s book Holy Ghosts. The book is essentially a spooky tale of the author’s supposed ghostly experiences, both personally and through the guidance of a medium (i.e. a person claiming to be “sensitive” to the presence, activity and even desires of ghosts). It has all the usual ingredients for a good ghost story: strange sounds, strange physical sensations and manifestations, trying to figure out what the ghosts want, and so on. Of course, it also has precious little actual intellectual content, particurly given the tremendous lack of solid material on the subject, and the author’s own maddening lack of footnotes permitting additional research by the reader.
Mr. Jansen says he has become a “believer in things that go bump in the night”, but I couldn’t help but ask myself the question: so what? I realise that for many people in our highly materialistic culture becoming open to the very notion of spirits is already quite a leap, but for those of us who are believers and already accept the whole angels/demons/saints thing, this narrative description doesn’t add much. The core message of the book can be summarized as follows: “WHOA! Spirits are *real*!” To which I reply, “Yeah, so?”
How, then, should we evaluate Holy Ghosts? I am unwilling to dismiss Mr. Jansen’s description of events, because (a) I don’t want to call him a liar, and (b) who am I to say what he experienced didn’t happen? I do, however, take his *interpretations* of those events with a massive grain of salt. Beyond this, the simple fact is that the existence (or not) of ghosts is, on the grand scale of God’s loving plan of redemption, somewhat of a distracting sideshow. I worry a bit for credulous readers who might want to start investigating the paranormal, leaving behind the principles of a solid spiritual life in the process, but who knows? Perhaps the opposite might happen, with a materialist or two being opened up to the possibility of something preternatural, or even supernatural, out there. For your average person, though, this book will be immediately identifiable as something not to take too seriously.