What motivates people to ghost hunt is as varied as the people seeking ghostly encounters. I’ve posted before on the subject of the types of ghost hunters, but one thing I do find universal is the anticipation of witnessing something that to that person absolutely definitely proves afterlife.
There are spiritual and religious people amongst ghost hunters. In fact, I can’t personally name one ghost hunter who doesn’t believe in a higher power that I’ve ever met, although there are a few agnostics. Why no atheists? Well, would someone who doesn’t believe in a concept seek proof he’s wrong? That would be like a religious person seeking proof there is no God.
The religious have the dilemma of being told that they must without question believe, and yet there is a logical side of the mind that says, “but where’s the proof?” These folks are looking for a personal miracle that proves the afterlife to them. Catholics might find the Virgin Mary in a windowpane or see someone healed and find that miracle to be verification of their faith. No one balks at their need to find signs of miracles, even though that could look like a sign of lack of faith. In the same way, ghost hunters often times seek that proof that legitimizes and firms up what they think they know in their heart, but need their own encounter with eternity.
Religious retreats where people in groups chant and cry and sway and get healed and spend a weekend in the company of others can often times feed a person’s religious zealotry for a year or years or even decades. For a ghost hunter, it’s that quiet night when you’ve given up hope that you personally will witness something, when you come across something so extraordinary you freeze up, afraid that it might go away. It’s that “aha!” moment when you know you’ve just witnessed something that cannot be explained, and more importantly that moment where something unseen interacted with you. They seek it out again and again, over and over. Each time it seems to firm up more the closeness between the worlds.
For the spiritually-minded but not religious ghost hunters, it’s a different motivation. They seek to blur the lines between the living and the dead. To them, heaven is not a place so much as a state of being. The entire process of communicating with the other side is “natural” to them and they might even practice speaking with the physically dead and see their ghost hunting interactions as natural and a sign that they have reached a higher level of consciousness where they have access to such encounters. It’s not proof of afterlife or the heaven concept they seek, it’s a spiritual connection they can’t obtain in everyday life.
The on-the-fence folks who don’t know if they believe in heaven or afterlife yet, are still open to it. The problem with these folks is the ability to intellectualize and debunk. They wish to see something quite blatant and obvious, but they don’t “believe” they can. The more they ghost hunt, the more their world seems explainable. Still, there is that little part of them that wishes to have that moment where you believe you’ve crossed the boundaries between worlds. That hope remains alive, even in the face of many explainable events. For them, the task is to find that 2-3% of the time when something is truly illogical and impossible. When it happens, the transformation in their very soul seems to change like a person who reached near-death and has a new outlook on life.
Is it wrong for a ghost hunter to seek out little personal miracles? I don’t know. Is it wrong for the faithful to say a prayer and believe they are talking directly to God? If that person’s prayer is answered, is it wrong for him to assume that God answered it? That there was for a moment an interaction between two worlds where one person said something and another heard and answered him?
For devoutly religious people, ghost hunters seeking involvement with the other world and any possible demons and minions of the Devil it may contain are practicing a dangerous thing. To those who don’t believe in God and demons and the Devil, they may say it’s a waste of time and resources. Somewhere between the two ends of the spectrum, however, is where you find the vast majority of the ghost hunters, and perhaps the population of America, as well.
I suppose all that can be said is that if God exist and God gave humans a brain that can intellectualize, that is cognizant and spiritual, then why would He not provide barriers for us when we seek out information that He does not wish us to seek, like a parent who puts guards on electrical plugs to protect infants? No, it would appear that God would trust us enough to allow us no limits, hence the atom bomb, stem cell research, in vitro fertilization, abortion, war, rape, disaster relief organizations, murder, charity, and a vast number of religions.
Humans won’t stop exploring, nor will we stop questioning. For that reason, ghost hunting is the entirely best sport, it provides us a chance to debunk and question things using logic as well as the stimulation of our spiritual side.
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