Afterglow and Echo

I’ve been watching some episodes of Ghost Hunters, the sci-fi channel show, online. Compared to other shows of its kind this is quite professional, though its factuality is possibly in question I am treating it as real for the purpose of this post. I certainly have an opinion (if you can call it that) about Ghosts. Shock of all shocks, I hold to a predominantly biblical view of such things and while the bible doesn’t speak directly about "Ghosts" it has much to say about life, death, and “spirits”. As for life and death, they are the only two real states to be mentioned so the ideas like purgatory and hauntings are not truly biblical. A dead person can, God willing, be seen/heard here on earth, but the circumstances of those occasions do not place them under the standard definition of ghosts.

As for the term spirit, we know that God’s Word tells us about “spirits” in many ways. Some of the talk of spirits is in reference to a spirit of love or a spirit of enmity, but these are obviously meant to help portray the emotion or condition within a person. Some places the word spirit is in reference to human souls or the Holy Spirit, but never as a haunting. In other places the term spirit is referring to true spiritual entities though; separate from mankind and God. These are things that are not human and not God; the likes of fallen angels otherwise known as demons by most of us. The rule regarding these is that they are deceptive and dangerous to humans, not to be trusted or even trifled with by the average person.

Anyway, as I watch and listen to them I noticed over and over that they aimed to be empirical in their work; using meters, cameras, recorders, and thermal imaging equipment. They would go out and collect data from a location then bring it back and review it looking for signs of “Ghosts” or other paranormal activity. That in itself, dangers aside for the moment, is admirable. Instead of letting a camera chase them around a spooky location gathering only personal experiences, these guys try to debunk and get some form of empirical evidence.

However, and this is the point of the post, when they have personal experiences or when they have the data reviewed and in front of them it does not clear up the matter. They never come to a sound conclusion on anything, not because of the lack of evidence, but because they have no guide to help them interpret the data and experiences they have. While they seem to have interesting adventures and the equipment seems to do well as they use it, they only have blinking lights and ethereal voices at the end of the day. They come home from these adventures with a few pieces to a puzzle and begin the process of inferring (guessing as to) what is missing.

Using God’s Word they might be able to interpret their findings accurately. The spirits they find are not people who pass away nor are they residual emotion, but the deception of various dark spirits. The question is, would they accept the help that God has provided? If they were shown to be arbitrarily guessing at what was going on, would their search for answers really bring them to an acceptance of God? Or would they reject Him for rebellions sake anyway, choosing a faith in the confusion of unguided theories?