Can a Christian believe in ghosts?

My novel Secondhand Sight won the 2013 Reader’s Favorite international book award for Fiction in the Horror category.

However, the novel is not one  that I’d recommend to everybody because the plot involves paranormal activity. Ghosts are treated as real entities in my book, because I believe they really exist.

I do realize that not everyone believes in ghosts. It even seems that some of my Christian friends agree with my non-Christian friends about the subject of ghosts, even though they disagree about practically everything else.

Most atheists reject the idea of ghosts because they don’t believe any supernatural or paranormal phenomena is real. Yet I’ve had Christian friends also say they don’t believe ghosts are really the spirits of dead people. They think ghosts are actually demons pretending to act like a dead human, presuming that we know how disembodied spirit should normally behave. Some of my Christian friends don’t think there is a biblical basis for believing that ghosts are real, but they are mistaken.

In my opinion, Christians should be open to the possibility that ghosts exist because of something that’s in the Bible, words spoken by Jesus himself.

Luke 24: 36-39 describes the first encounter that Jesus had with the disciples, after his crucifixion and resurrection. The New International Version Bible (NIV) reads:

36 While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be upon you.”

37 They were startled and frightened, thinking they had seen a ghost.

38 He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds?

39 Look at my hands and feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; Khamis Mushait a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have.”

Please note that Jesus does http://dearmckenzie.com/2012/christmas-scenes/ not say, “Ghosts do not exist.”

Instead, Jesus describes the difference between being brought back from the dead and being a ghost by specifying that ghosts do not have flesh or bones. His disciples were men who had allegedly witnessed more than enough miracles performed by Jesus not to question his authority or divinity.

They would have believed him, had Jesus simply said that ghosts don’t exist, at any point during his ministry. However, Jesus never did that.

Jesus never said that ghosts were nothing but a figment of our imagination — probably because he remembered how the witch of Endor had called forth the ghost of Samuel for King Saul, found in I Samuel 28:3-25. Perhaps Jesus knew that ghosts really exist from personal experience, like me.

I grew up in Savannah, Georgia, with the reputation for being one of the most haunted cities in America. I believe in ghosts because I’ve had them play silly pranks on me, more than once. I’ve even felt a ghost touch me. So I have very, very little doubt that ghosts are real. My personal ghost stories were recounted in my first book, Divine Evolution.

You don’t have to simply take my word for it, though.

Personal observation and experience is the most powerful form of scientific evidence one might consider — empirical evidence.

It isn’t all that difficult to find a haunted house with a well-documented history near where you live, to find out for yourself. As the old expression goes, seeing is believing.

However, you might choose to simply believe the words of the risen Christ.

Assuming you really are a Christian, of course.