By Jo Mooy
This month, when the veil thins, spirits move between worlds and apparitions can appear.
October marks the end of summer, when the last of the harvest is brought in. The death of the crops in the fields signaled the changing cycles that governed the lives of ancient cultures. They believed the boundaries between the worlds of the living and dead became blurred during this time, when the darker days arrived, predicting that winter wasn’t far away.
Samhain was celebrated this month, when the ghosts of the dead returned to Earth. That festival, still practiced by Wiccans, evolved into the Christian remembrance of All-Souls Day. For the Aztecs, who honored their ancestors in a Day of the Dead ceremony, it later became the Latin American Day of the Dead. It’s also Halloween, where costumed ghosts and apparitions donned by children and adults make merry.
But there’s a serious side to these celebrations. When the veil thins, spirits move between worlds and apparitions can appear. A ghost is an astral form of a dead person who interacts with the living. And, many claim to have seen one. Chapman University in California runs a yearly survey asking people about their beliefs in the paranormal. Almost half of the respondents believed in ghosts and 58 percent strongly believe that “places can be haunted by spirits.” More intriguing, a quarter of them said they had seen or been in the presence of a ghost.
On ghost-hunting TV shows, scientific equipment is used to record or measure spirit activity. Numerous creepy photos and videos make it seem like ghosts exist. However, none of these offer good evidence of ghosts. Some are hoaxes, created to fool people. The rest only prove that equipment sometimes can capture unexpected noise, images or other signals. Ghosts are the least likely of many possible explanations in the scientific studies.
And yet, there are oddities that happen that can’t be explained. Cold or hot spots appear on sensitive equipment which mark locations that ghosts were seen or frequent. At other times, objects moved without explanation leaving the researchers perplexed. It’s also well known that spirits use electronics to communicate with the living by switching the devices on or off, or actually sending messages. Science says all of these things are impossible. Still some of the recordings say otherwise, but the research teams stand by their findings.
What scientists have discovered is that there are lots of reasons why people might feel they have had ghostly encounters. They might refer to the encounters as hallucinations. But from my perspective—as well as my own personal experiences—that’s a cop-out. I’ve had intense experiences with astral beings that were as real as if I were physically sitting in person with someone.
My grandmother appeared in my bedroom with a personal message that she delivered to me two weeks after her death. Every part of the experience is as real in memory as it was the day it occurred over 40 years ago. On the fifth anniversary of my husband’s death, I got an email from his Yahoo account—an account that had been closed and was no longer active. I verified this with many calls to Yahoo’s tech support.
A young 18-year-old woman who was murdered by her husband appeared in my bedroom when I moved into a house one-quarter mile down the dirt road from her home in Connecticut. She stood at the foot of my bed calling her name, Laura, over and over. A year after the experience, I learned about Laura’s story from the old farmer who lived across the dirt road from her. His wife was Laura’s best friend and witnessed the murder. None of my experiences were hallucinations. I was wide awake when each one happened.
The physical body dies, but the spirit (or ghost) continues its existence. So says every mystic tradition. Thousands of Near Death Experiencers (NDEs) have come forward sharing their stories after the death of their physical bodies. Though, despite the stories, many scientists not in the field remain skeptical. Who’s right?
In my case, I know what I saw because the experience was so “real” that I can still report explicit details that occurred. In most “normal experiences” that heightened awareness is not present. Each person probably has to experience an astral visitation before deciding if ghosts or apparitions are real. Maybe this Samhain or Day of the Dead, you’ll get lucky and can report your own experience.
Jo Mooy has studied with many spiritual traditions over the past 40 years. The wide diversity of this training allows her to develop spiritual seminars and retreats that explore inspirational concepts, give purpose and guidance to students, and present esoteric teachings in an understandable manner. Along with Patricia Cockerill, she has guided the Women’s Meditation Circle since January 2006 where it has been honored for five years in a row as the “Favorite Meditation” group in Sarasota, FL, by Natural Awakenings Magazine. Teaching and using Sound as a retreat healing practice, Jo was certified as a Sound Healer through Jonathan Goldman’s Sound Healing Association. She writes and publishes a monthly internationally distributed e-newsletter called Spiritual Connections and is a staff writer for Spirit of Maat magazine in Sedona. For more information go to http://www.starsoundings.com or email jomooy@gmail.com.