The Ethics of Ghost Hunting

In My Humble Opinion
1

First: I do not believe in ghosts.

But assume they do exist. What are the ethics? Should the hunter try to “help” the ghost find “peace”? Say the hunter can establish contact, a dialog. Does he say, “You’re dead! You don’t belong here. Go to the light!”? Is that the best thing for the restless spirit? Some religions teach that suicides are forever damned to hell. What if the shade is that of a young woman who, in a moment of depression over the loss of her One True Love, threw herself from a precipice? Does she deserve to be damned for that? Wouldn’t “going to the light” take her to a worse place than she already inhabits?

What about the playful spirits of children? What if they’re having fun being ghosts? What if they’re living (as it were) in an eternal amusement park? Is it right to send them to “peace”? What if “peace” is boring to them?

What of helpful spirits? Some have been alledged to save the lives of others. One would assume they like doing the service. Should their livelihoods… er, “deathlihoods”? be taken away? By sending them to their Eternal Rest, does the hunter condemn others to death, who might have been saved if the ghost had illuminated the lamp in the old lighthouse or appeared at just the right time to alert them to danger?

It seems to me that “evil spirits” probably deserve to be sent to hell. Would they believe that their torment will end by going to the light? Would they want to go to the light. Can ghosts even see the light? But assuming evil ghosts can and should be sent away, should friendly or helpful ghosts also be sent away? What mortal can know whether it is better for the departed to hang around, or to go away? Do ghosts have a right to exist?

So what’s “right”? Let them haunt unmolested, or help (or force) them to find the way to where they’re “suposed” to be?

2

[Moderator Underoos On]This thread presupposes that ghosts exist, so any answers questioning the existance of ghosts will be frowned upon by Yours Truly[/Moderator Underoos On]

3

Because I was just chatting with the ghost of the Lindburgh baby, who haunts the pencil sharpener on my desk. Aparently, seniority in the afterlife depends on how long you were alive on an earthly plain, and my pencil sharpener is the best he can get. Still he counts himself lucky, he says that the 2 ghosts who have to share the bottlecap my cat bats around the kitchen floor have no fun at all. I put your question to him, and this was the answer I got:

"You’d think that the light would be pretty much irresistable, but it’s not really so. Sure, most mortals head for it, like sheep, but you don’t HAVE to go. I stopped to watch the World Series, and then realized I could stay. “Going into the light” is a source of great debate among ghosts on this side. That Socratees, he’ll go on and on for hours about the phylosophical issues surrounding the light, until one day General Patton got so mad he slapped him. Socratees broke into tears and Madam Currie pushed him into the light. Sadly, he came back, and now when anyone sees him coming, we hide.

See, that’s the thing. You can come back out of the light. I went in there for a few days in 1997, and this is what I saw. First of all, it’s all run down. God sits around all day in his bathrobe and plays Pac Man on his Commodore 64. Jesus keeps telling him that there are better machines available, but he dosen’t seem to care. You have to be careful about being too insistant, or God gets ticked. Last time someone tried it, God responded by making ATARI go broke. What, you thought it was superior products and business savvy that made Microsoft so powerful? HAH! It was God’s fit of pique!

The room they gave me looked like it came right out of some cheesy Poconos resort- carpeted walls, a heart shaped hot tub, the whole works. Cleopatra and I had ourselves a time in that tub, yes we did, hehe. Still, piped in routines from washed up Jewish commedians and free buffets that are just cold cuts and pickles gets old fairly quickly, so I came back out. Living in your pencil sharpener isn’t too bad a gig, when you’re not here I surf porn on the 'net all day, but Dave, I’m getting tired of those cheap pencils you use. Gimmie some Ticonderogas or I’m gonna start giving your AMEX number to every porn site I can find. You have been warned!"

shrug Not sure that answers your question, but he was getting cranky, I didn’t want to push.

4

You’re weird, Dave. :wink:

No, seriously. I don’t believe in ghosts, but hypothetically what are the ethics of interacting with them?

5

Perhaps most just want to be left alone. That’s why they respond with anger (slamming doors, throwing objects, etc.) when “intruders” start doing such things as séances, cleansing rituals, etc. Or even if they do something as innocent as moving into “their” home.

Is “releasing” a ghost from its locus an unethical thing? Perhaps, if you want to work the religious angle. That is, if you believe that by allowing them to “cross over” you cross them over into Hell, then yeah, it’s a bad thing. However if you don’t believe in Hell, or if you believe in annihilationism, them you’ve done them no harm. In fact, you’ve probably given them peace.

My advice if you suspect ghosts in your home is to learn to live with them. If they’re not showing any overt hostility toward you then just accept their presence par for the course, so to speak. If the worst manifestation you get is such things as apparitions, disembodied sounds, yada yada yada, then I’d say the best thing you could do is to leave the entity alone and either get used to it or move. I’ve heard of families with ghosts who were at first terrified of and then later grew to enjoy “their” ghost.

If you’re getting overt hostility, such as objects being thrown at you, physical attacks, etc. then I’d say a “cleansing” is in order.

If you’re getting unmistakable signs of demonic infestation (cold spots, indescribably bad smells, desecration of religious symbols) then you’re pretty screwed and you’ll want to call in an exorcist.

So, long-story short: Ghost-hunting isn’t a bad thing unless you’re trying to deliberately antagonize or torment the entity you’re hunting. If you’re just going to photograph it or whatever, then it’s all good.

6

Are you ready for this?

This is a true story, make of it what you will.

Near where I grew up there was a childrens hospital. My mother worked there for many years.

Eventually for one reason or another it was decided to close the hospital and move its business to another bigger hospital nearby. So all the staff and patients were transferred to the other hospital and the childrens hospital was closed down and demolished.

The site of the childrens hospital was sold to a property developer who built a number of houses.

Fast forward a couple of years.

One day my mother is working in the childrens wing in the new hospital when a man comes in with a strange story to tell. He is the owner of one of the new houses and he claims that every so often when in his kitchen he sees the ghostlike presence of a young girl standing watching him.

The staff of the childrens wing are skeptical but something about the earnestness of the man together with his apparant sanity makes them dig out the old blueprint plans for the old hospital.

Guess what they found?

The mans house was constructed directly over the place where the childrens mortuary used to be.

(cue Twilight Zone music)

7

Take my opinion as you will. I’ve been doing this for a while, though.

Personally, I am quite opposed to the whole ‘send them to the light’ crowd. As a joke one year my friends chipped in and- SURPRISE- sent me to see a lecture given by the Spawn of Satan… uh… I mean Ed and Lorraine Warren. Anticipating what my reaction was going to be, they sent along the most attractive and well-built member of our group, who could either distract me by shoving his tongue down my throat or by physically sitting on me. The tongue thing stopped working about 15 minutes into the lecture. He literally had to sit on me, with his hand over my mouth, for almost three hours. He didn’t even whimper when I unconsciously bit him hard enough to draw blood. I hate those people with a firey passion that borders on the psychotic. Ugh.

Sorry… got a little distracted. Where I was originally going with that is… I have no right to tell people what to do in ‘real’ life. I certainly don’t have that right when they’re dead. They’ll move on when they want to. Or if they specifically ask for help, I’ll give it to them. But I always tell the people who hire me that the ghost was there first, and you’re just going to have to learn to live with one another. (pardon the pun) Hell, Mr. Bobkitty’s great grandmother lives with us. The woman takes YEARS off my life… jumping out from around corners at me, turning on the water and the TV, bringing friends over and playing cards at my dining room table. We’ve reached a compromise. She keeps the TV at a reasonable volume, I don’t kick her non-corporeal ass out of the house. It’s never boring at the Bobkitty house.

To return to the Spawn for a moment… they make a big deal about the ghosts ‘knowing it’s personal’ and how they’ve been attacked physically on more than one occasion. :rolleyes: Uh huh. If you came into MY house with a cross and started flinging around holy water and commanding me to get out, I’d get pretty ticked off too, and have an irresistable urge to throw you down a few stairs.

Negative energy is a totally different story. That can be banished, but not ‘exorcised’ per se. That’s a lengthy 'nother post, though.

Just my humble opinion. :slight_smile:

-BK

8

What gives ghosts the right to live in your house? “They were here first” dosen’t seem to cut it. Suppose the people you bought it from refused to leave when they were supposed to, would you learn to live with them? Suppose a squatter had moved in between them leaving and you arriving, would you learn to live with him? Why do the discoporal have greater rights than the corperal? While we’re on that subject, aren’t houses built for corporal beings? Presumably, ghosts are not subjects to the frailties of flesh, so they wouldn’t need shelter from the storms, as it were. Why NOT exercize them as tresspassers?

9

Well, if the ghost happened to be a succubus… :smiley:

10

I know that at least some “theories” of ghosts claim that they are merely the psychic impressions of long-gone individuals. Erasing them, if such a thing is possible, would be no more immoral than taking down that creepy portrait over the mantle that came with the house. Whatever part of a being that goes to the afterlife (oblivion, whatever)is already there, and this is just a vestgial shadow.

Of course, debating corporeal vs. non-corporeal property right is also interesting. My take on the subject would be that ghosts should tolerated whenever possible, but ultimately this plane belongs to the living. An entity’s claim to a place or things ends with their bodily existance.

11

I’m with Weirddave. These ghosts are like wallpaper.
When you move in you have the right to redecorate. So you can clear out the ghosts.

As for the ethics, if ghosts won’t communicate, how do we know what the right thing to do is?

12

I am planning to seriously haunt a few people. I’ll be pretty pissed if somebody tries to send me off before I get to the end of the list. Into the light, my ass.

Like bobkitty, if I don’t have the right to tell people how to live, what gives me the right to tell them how to be dead? Or undead. You know what I mean.

[practicing] Ooooooo! ::chains rattle:: OOOooooOOOO![/practicing]

13

Along the same lines, why don’t we eliminate all the mimes? :wink: