Expository Essay: Are Ghosts Real or Not?

Paper Type:  Essay
Pages:  6
Wordcount:  1473 Words
Date:  2021-05-24
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While some people admittedly refuse to believe that ghosts exist, others will swear on a stack of holy books that they have encountered spirit entities or at least the manifestation of one, such as objects moving on their own violation, or phantom voices or feet, among others. Ghost stories are told in various forms in the stories they are told, some may look just like people, while others seem to be wispy or appear as lights. Still, other are assumed to take shapes so frightening that they seem unrealistic. Several stories have been told, and several films have been produced all with the aim of proving the existence of ghosts. However, most people have had the illusion or have been scared by the thought of ghosts. Even though there isnt much to make proof the existence of ghosts, it is safe to assume that there might be some truth about the existence of ghosts.

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The simple definition of a ghost is that it is a spirit of the dead, could be a person, an animal or an animal from a ghost that has been for long reported as a human ghost. Since ancient times, people have believed that ghost happens when other souls do not travel to the afterlife but remain attached to the world of the living (Steiger 21). Or they somehow find ways of returning to the world. Whatever the reason, the presence of ghosts spells trouble in most peoples views. There are manly three terms of ghosts: phantasms, spectators, the walking dead, appreciations, and revenants. Other names have fallen in and out of fashion all through history.

Human beings have often believed in the afterlife, at least most of them do. Every culture all through history has created beliefs of what the afterlife looks like, how a soul gets to the afterlife and what happens in the afterlife. Other afterlives are considered happy places while others are considered not quite pleasant. The ancient Greeks thought the afterlife in Hades, the underworld and dearly places. The dead souls, known as shades, longed for the excitement and color of life. Under particular circumstances, they had the ability to leave Hades and returning to the world. Most often, the shades, as ghosts visited the living in their dreams.

Most cultures have had beliefs about the way the dead can return to the world of the living. Whether or not this was a good or bad thing varied from one culture to the other. In Japans, China and other parts of the world, dead ancestors remain part of an individuals extended family (del Pilar Blanco and Esther 101). Thus, their return can be welcomed. In other cultures, however, the dead are not supposed to return. When and if they do, it is regarded as unnatural and unholy. In Christianity, souls are supposed o go either to heaven or hell forever. Some people even believe that souls cannot come back from the dead, and therefore, ghosts are demons in disuse, who have the intentions of tricking people.

The experienced ghost hunters have employed several high-technology instruments with the aim of proving the existence of ghosts in various locations. Electronic sensors, sound recorders, and cameras have produced intriguing results that so far have not convinced all skeptics. Proving the existence of ghosts has then seemed challenging, disapproving the facts is, however, impossible. There is no way of proving the negative. A typical example is that most people cannot differentiate red and green, which is why lights traffic customarily have red on top and green on the bottom. But the fact that this category of people have not the ability to see red does not necessarily imply that color red isnt present. Perhaps with a ghost, some people have the ability to see them while others dont. Not being able to see them does not prove that they do not exist.

Several cases have been reported where people are terrified of what they believed to have been ghosts. Poltergeists, Germany for noisy spirits harass the living through creating solid objects that move at times it seems, deliberate throwing toys and dishes (Cohen 74). Ghosts have intervened in peoples lives in preserving them from destruction or warn them of danger. Still, cases have been reported where ghosts have appealed only with good intentions of reassuring an individual. While spirits have appeared and revealed themselves to people, other are believed to have often manifested and to many people over the centuries. Perhaps it all comes down to the individual circumstance and motivation of the ghosts.

Among the first ghosts, stories ever recorded in the Western world were the haunting of Athenodorus, a philosopher who lived in Athens during the first century. Athenodorus was not rich, and all he was able to afford to rents was a house with horrible reputations for being haunted by an ugly ghost of an old man (Cohen 112). The ghost was a literally chain-clunker. In fact, this story probably created the stereotype of chain-clanking ghosts. The ghost dragged about the house in his leg chains, scaring and moaning away all tenants. Finally, having no other choice or place to survive, Athenodorus moved here. When the ghost came into sight, Athenodorus was not scared as others before him, had been. The ghost led him outside and pointed to a spot on the ground. On the next day, Athenodorus dug up the ground and found a skeleton human, shacked to rusted chains. The bones were given proper burial, and the house was no longer haunted.

The famously haunted Barnstable House at 3010 Main Street in Barnstable is another good example of places where ghost incidents have been seen. In this incidents, the idea of coming to a conclusion that they are ghosts is because they are unclear and do not make sense. Most of the incidences in the Barnstable House have involved fire, in one way or the other. In 1975, the local volunteer fire department was called to the house, which was at that time, to locate the cause of the heavy fire that poured from the roof (Revai, Cheri, and Cheri 201). After conducting a thorough search, the firemen found no fire; however, they did find some dense smoke in the attic, so they cleared up the mysterious smoke and left. However, as they stood outside, most of them were able to see a woman in a long white gown, the same woman they thought they had seen in an upstairs window but were not able to find inside. Some described her long hair as brown while others say it was blond. The woman drifted fluidly among the men, asking strange questions.

In hindsight, they agreed that the woman had been fluidly drifting as if she was hovering various inches above the snow. The firemen never gave the woman much though at the time, however, this was mainly because the air was dark and thick with smoke and fog, and several activities were ongoing. Their eye might have simply been playing tricks on them. But back at the station, they made a comparison of the notes they had taken and admitted that nothing about the woman made sense, and nothing about the mysterious smoke that had no place of origin made sense either. Ghosts haunt places where they had died or places where they had familiarity during their existence. They seem to be more intelligent and have the ability to locate ways of communicating with the living. However, various reasons exist why ghosts are restless.

In conclusion, asking if or not ghosts exist is probably the kind of question that clarifies an appeal to ignorance. Those who say that ghosts do exist will give support to their conclusions by arguing that no one can provide proof to ghost existence; therefore ghosts exist. The lack of proof or lack of ability to illustrate the existence of ghosts is used as a conclusion of the opposite. Conversely, those who assert that ghosts are not real depend on the same logic. They argue that no one can prove the existence of ghosts; therefore ghosts do not exist. This is, in fact, an appeal to ignorance. Regardless of whether or not ghosts exist and are in the living world, they are unpredictable, and that makes them frightening. Not every ghost behaves the same way, but most of them do fall into patterns that have been evident throughout history.

Works Cited

Steiger, Brad. Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits, and Haunted Places. Visible Ink Press, 2012.

Hauck, Dennis William. Haunted Places: The National Directory: Ghostly Abodes, Sacred Sites, UFO Landings, and Other Su pernatural Locations. Penguin, 2002.

del Pilar Blanco, Maria, and Esther Peeren, eds. Popular ghosts: the haunted spaces of everyday culture. A&C Black, 2010.

Revai, Cheri, and Cheri Farnsworth. Haunted Massachusetts: Ghosts and Strange Phenomena of the Bay State. Stackpole Books, 2014.

Cohen, Daniel. Encyclopedia of ghosts. Dorset Pr, 1989.

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Expository Essay: Are Ghosts Real or Not?. (2021, May 24). Retrieved from https://midtermguru.com/essays/expository-essay-are-ghosts-real-or-not

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