Out of the vast pantheon of ghosts worldwide, which category of ghosts possess the most advantages and are therefore in a position to impact our lives more strongly — in a good way, a not so good way or in an evil manner? That’s not an easy question to answer for several reasons. Such as? Well, partly because to begin with, all ghosts, no matter what their category or classification, possess the power to affect our lives. Partly because the question is connected to the core of an age old controversy over whether ghosts exist at all and if they don’t exist, where is the question of ghosts affecting our lives one way or another? Many skeptics believe in fact that the definition for cryptids “animals whose existence or survival is disputed or unsubstantiated, such as the yeti” should be applied to ghosts as well.
As Exemplore.com highlighted in February this year, for hundreds if not thousands of years mediums, psychics and paranormal investigators have been trying to prove ghosts really exist. But despite widespread sightings and stories dating back over millennia, we still have no definitive proof that spirits actually exist. Believers say the skeptics are blind to the evidence that’s right in front of them. Skeptics say any paranormal evidence likely has a rational explanation. “Who is right, who is wrong, and where is the proof? There has been a great deal of evidence collected over the past decade or so, and the majority of it comes from paranormal investigators…Have researchers really documented spirit entities in the forms of video and photographs? Or, have we all been duped by unscrupulous television producers and networks just out to make a buck? The evidence is compelling, but certainly inconclusive…”
However, it is known that several scientists, doctors and other experts are open to the idea of the existence of ghosts and the supernatural. For instance, Dr. Tan Kheng Khoo, a former pathologist who spent nearly 30 years examining dead bodies, before giving up science to teach meditation and spirituality has no doubts about an afterlife, apparitions and other supernatural phenomena and has lectured in fascinating detail on death, spirit types and related matters. From my own experience and that of others, it is very clear that all ghosts or spirit types possess certain exceptional powers.
They have the power to remain invisible or to materialise according to circumstances. Time and speed have a very different connotation for them, if at all, and they are not bound by their limitations. A spirit can travel from one place; say from Delhi to Dehra Dun or Bihar or London in a jiffy. When Hiren Gupta, a former United Nations official, died suddenly in Dehra Dun, his brother who was in London saw him standing by him in less than an hour. Neither are physical barriers like doors or walls or gravestones an obstruction for spirits— they can go right through them. Whether ghosts float or fly is also a question that continues to be debated. There are other powers that ghosts share. But they don’t always share certain abilities.
Many people feel that being non-living “things” ghosts float as they are not affected by gravity. But opinions vary and as a participant in a thread observed, “Flying implies utilisation of aerodynamics to stay in the air, and floating implies utilisation of air density. As ghosts would be supernatural, non-entities, they would not be effected by air density or friction, and would hover, or levitate”. In April 2018 the UK Mirror carried a story headlined “Ghost’ Flies Straight At Camera In a 800 Year Old Graveyard”. A fitness trainer, said the story, has claimed he was attacked by a “ghost” as he explored an 800-year-old graveyard said to be haunted. “Tony Ferguson says he captured the moment a spirit flew straight at him as he roamed the cemetery at St Mary’s Church in Eling, Hants. The 33-year-old’s footage appears to show a smoky white mist heading towards the camera, which he claims was a ghost whizzing past him…
“He said after watching his video in slow-motion that he believed the spirit was a ‘controlling gentleman’ trying to deter people from visiting the graveyard…. and claimed his footage was ‘evidence’ that a spirit was patrolling the grounds…” Skeptics, however, disagreed after seeing the footage. But Tony said “My REM pod, a device for communicating with spirits, kept going off as well so I was sure there was something paranormal going on. Then I suddenly heard this ‘whoosh’. It came out of a grave and went straight past me. When I watched back the footage and actually saw the spirit flying at me, it was really weird…”
The majority of spirits I have seen have either floated, glided, hovered or whizzed past like a very strong gust of wind. I have seen them ascend to an amazing height at lightning speed and descend and disappear into their graves in less than a second. The laws of aero-dynamics as we know it obviously doesn’t apply to spirits. Mind you, we’re talking here about earthbound ghosts and spirits in general and not about earthbound spirit guides or liberated souls who have remained in our world for a purpose, or of those spirits who are waiting for a loved one or are tending or guarding a loved one or have another altruistic purpose. However, not having a real purpose does not deprive other earthbound spirits of their powers. Many of them can change form and shift shape and are therefore known as shape-shifters. And although they have their own chosen habitats like a particular road or forest stretch, or tree, or building, etc, they can be at home wherever they are— on land or in the air. I would rate them as possessing the most advantages, unlike, for example, spirits that are confined to lakes, ponds, rivers, etc. An exhaustive list of the advantages such shape-shifters enjoy would require many columns.
There is a famous Buddhist saying: Form is Emptiness, and Emptiness is Form, which means many things. Dr. Tan Kheng Khoo has interpreted it thus: :when any material form is reduced to its atomic proportions and then is further reduced to sub-atomic particles and so on, it will finally be transformed into energy. This energy is not visible to the naked eye, and hence it literally has become empty to us. Conversely, the space between the forms is not really empty. The forms that we see and feel are only 10% of ‘things’ that we can perceive. The other 90% are not discernible to our naked eye.” To my mind, the energy forms we call shape-shifters possess an extra energy. Many of these energy forms are frozen in time. But the powers they possess are not frozen and neither are their advantages and the ways in which they can impact our lives.