As I’ve said many times before, I believe in God. But I don’t personally believe in an afterlife. But that is not to say sometimes I don’t wonder…
One thing that often makes me think about the matter, is so-called “real” ghost stories. I know many of these stories have logical explanations. Some are hallucinations, which according to a medical book I once read, is actually sometimes a normal part of the grieving process. Some are illusions. Some are likely made up. But some, I just don’t know. The stories are sometimes very credible, told by very credible people that have no reason to lie.
There are many examples of this. And I don’t have the space for all of them. So I will present one case that I have been thinking about of late: Resurrection Mary. She is supposedly a young Polish girl, killed on the way to a dance in metro Chicago. She often (it’s claimed) hitches rides with unsuspecting strangers.
Here is her Wikipedia article. Here is a slightly more biased source. And interestingly, here is ballad written about her.
My question is simple. Do ghost stories like this offer evidence that there in fact is an afterlife? (“Proof” is such a strong word. So I will phrase it this way.)
(BTW, some people actually take this matter quite seriously too. There was this local story about 10 years ago of policeman’s ghost, supposedly haunting a local business. I forget the details now, and have no cite. But some people actually raised a fund to find his killer, reasoning that the “ghost” was restless for this reason.)