It’s that time of year again, of struggling to find the last piece of a costume and trick or treating. It is also time for a lively debate: Are ghosts real? Maybe I have a bias because I’m forever a dreamer and a wisher for things to be more than meets the eye, but for me, there’s no doubt that ghosts exist.
It’s obviously a controversial topic, and to this day, science has not uncovered hard evidence that ghosts as we know them are real. Many people, like myself, have a lot of “ghostly encounters.” These moments aren’t actual encounters of ghosts you can see—nobody is seeing a real life Halloweentown ghost. However, there is no shortage of spooky stories people have that are unexplainable. For instance, when I was younger, thirteen or fourteen, I was in my bedroom getting ready for bed and my dresser drawers were open. Now for context, this dresser was ridiculously heavy, it took four fully grown men to carry it, even with all of the drawers out of it. Now, I was in my room, drawers open and it was a calm night, not the slightest of breeze, and —not that one could move these drawers—the dresser drawers began to move on their own, one closing shut and another one opening. There was no explanation for this that I could come up with at the time and after four-five years, I still don’t have an explanation, and a lack thereof in the logical thought department makes me sleep easier at night because, for me, ghosts are real.
The debate is pretty on the fence, in a YouGov poll of 1000 people, when asked, “Do you believe in ghosts, or that the spirits of dead people can come back in certain places and situations?” 45 percent of people said yes. For me, this is interesting because in the same poll, when asked if they believe in life after death, 65 percent of people said yes, so why not believe in ghosts? The strange thing is that a lot of people find comfort in spirits, especially after losing a loved one, that the person’s spirit is with them, looking over them, protecting them. People love to tell stories about how after their mother’s death, her favorite flower suddenly bloomed in the garden, however, they do not believe in ghosts. It’s interesting, the picking and choosing of the connections between the living and the dead. Personally, I feel like more people believe in ghosts and don’t want to admit it because they’re afraid of what will happen if they admit it.
Colin Wilson, vice-president of the Ghost Club Society for that past 25 years, has researched and discovered a lot of evidence; however, his most striking experience came in 1978 with a woman named Pauline McKay who was a nurse in Plymouth. When entered into a hypnotic trance, McKaywould develop a strong Devon accent and state she was “Kitty Jay,” a milkmaid who committed suicide in the late 18th century. McKay had never heard of Jay, nor did she know the existence of her grave which was located on Dartmoor. While in her trance, McKay said she had gone to Canna Farm, near Chagford, which is the most haunted village in England, to look for the laborer that had made her pregnant. After learning how the man really felt about Miss Jay, she hanged herself in the barn. Due to her death being a suicide, her body was buried at a crossroad on the edge of the farm in an attempt to confuse her spirit. When McKay was taken to Canna Farm, she became very upset, however, and without being prompted, led the group straight to the barn where Kitty Jay had hanged herself, going as far to point out the specific beam. The farmer verified that she was correct; it was the same barn Kitty Jay had died in, despite McKay never having been to West Country in her life.
Skeptics will say that this story is ridiculous, that McKay could’ve just researched the story and faked the whole thing. However, in reassuring the validity of this story, I did some research of my own, and in the vast amount of folklore surrounding “Kitty Jay,” nowhere does it state the exact beam on which she hung herself, or that the barn she died in even still existed. There is an endless supply of spooky ghost stories, and there are a million excuses to be made about the paranormal, but there is only so much excuses can do before we have to accept the existence of ghosts.
