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, … [Read more...]