Supernatural Beings

[ToJesusMyHeart]

Premises: Angels and demons exist. Angels are non-bodied spirits ("pure spirits"). Demons are fallen angels. Purgatory exists. 

 

1. Are ghosts real?

2. Is a ghost the same thing as an angel/demon?

3. Can souls in purgatory manifest themselves to humans on Earth? 

4. If 3 is true, is that called a "ghost" ? 

5. If a ghost is not an angel/demon and not a soul from purgatory, what is a ghost? 

[GeorgiiMichael]

 

I don't understand the question.

[Nihil Obstat]

Premises: Angels and demons exist. Angels are non-bodied spirits ("pure spirits"). Demons are fallen angels. Purgatory exists. 
 
1. Are ghosts real?
2. Is a ghost the same thing as an angel/demon?
3. Can souls in purgatory manifest themselves to humans on Earth? 
4. If 3 is true, is that called a "ghost" ? 
5. If a ghost is not an angel/demon and not a soul from purgatory, what is a ghost?

It is important to remember that there is a fair bit of latitude afforded to Catholics with these questions. That said, these are my opinions which I think are perfectly reasonable within Catholic doctrine.

• In some sense I think it is possible that there do exist phenomena that fit some descriptions of ghosts.
• I think it is possible that some cases of 'paranormal activity' are demonic in nature, but I do not think that need exclusively be the case. Angelic activity is, I suppose, also within the realm of possibility, but it strikes me as less likely due to angels' typical roles.
• I think that is certainly possible, and I believe the hagiographies of certain saints attest to this possibility.
• Yes, I think that can be the case.
• Some priests in the past have written about poltergeist activity as being related to particular (living) people, typically young people, so these phenomena are not ghosts as such, though poltergeists are usually included along with 'ghost stories'.

Two years ago I wrote a somewhat lengthy reflection on this topic. I have not read it over recently, so I am not sure if I would now consider it in need of revision, but I was fairly pleased with it at the time of writing, and I felt that it represented my thoughts fairly comprehensively.
 
Here is the link.
 
In Exorcism and the Church Militant, Fr. Euteneuer said the following:
 
 
Exorcism and the Church Militant
Pages 103-104:

"Most pagan societies believe in the separation of the soul from the body and an afterlife. This includes the idea that souls may "linger" after death due to "unfinished business" such as unbroken attachments to the earth, to unreconciled relationships or to the affairs of men that supposedly last beyond the grave. In this view, the souls can be benign or malicious; often pagan traditions of ancestor worship or appeasement of the dead are the result of these beliefs.
"The Roman Catholic belief is categorically different from these pagan beliefs, however. The theological tradition concerning souls in purgatory is based on the belief that bodily death constitutes a definitive entrance into an afterlife which is either a temporal purification followed by heaven, or an eternal damnation. Thus, for Catholics there is no such thing as a "lingering" or "wandering" soul who has "not cut the bonds of this earthly life." For Catholics, there is another way to explain these things than the standard pagan reasoning.
"A strong theological tradition recognizes that deceased human souls can and do visit the living after death for various reasons and in various modes. It is clear that this is only done "according to the disposition of Divine providence" and not as a common occurrence. St. Thomas Aquinas says that "separated souls sometimes come forth from their abode and appear to men...", and this can be both for "intimidation" (i.e., damned souls) or for "instruction" (i.e., redeemed souls). He also claims that souls may appear to others "in order to seek our suffrages" (i.e., souls in purgatory). Such apparitions can also be due to a special intervention into the human sphere by a demon creating a deception or an angel appearing in human form to communicate a message.
"Some people call these various apparitions "ghosts." In light of the tradition above, these can be either disembodied human souls or evil spirits. In Catholic thought, however, if such appearances happen, they are always limited and marked by truth, simplicity and utter clarity to distinguish a holy apparition from a demonic one, which is always marked by confusion, discord, chaos, fear and anxiety. Thus, there is no strictly theological basis for believing that there are souls "wandering" around in the world communicating with loved ones, or "haunting" places, but Catholics do believe that the deceased can appear after death in a strictly limited fashion and only with God's permission for some greater reason.
"What has been absolutely forbidden by the Church from the beginning is the attempt to conjure deceased souls from the grave or to communicate with the dead, a dark art known as necromancy. This prohibition is from Scripture. In the Christian tradition, we honor the dead and pray for them- we even consider ourselves in communion with them- but we do not conjure them up or attempt to dialogue with them. All such practices open us up to demonic deception and infestation."

Edited June 4, 2013 by Nihil Obstat

[ToJesusMyHeart]

What is a poltergeist?

[Nihil Obstat]

What is a poltergeist?

Do you mean from a possible Catholic perspective, or in general?
 
I believe I wrote something on that too, subsequent to that post I linked to...
 
 

Sunday, August 19, 2012




A Catholic Priest's Writings on Poltergeists Pt. I

 

[...]
 
I think in fact it would be safe to say that, besides some fairly simple prerequisites, there is not a lot in the way of 'official' teachings on ghosts. That leaves a lot of room for speculation, as long as we remain firmly grounded in Catholic doctrine. For instance, we accept that the soul is created by God and does not pre-exist. We accept that all humans are judged at their death without exception, that some go to hell, some to heaven, and some heaven by way of purgatory.
These things in mind, I think it may be fun to look into some of the speculative theology and speculation in general surrounding ghosts and other paranormal phenomena from a Catholic perspective. I'll start with a nice old book I picked up called Ghosts and Poltergeists by Fr. Herbert Thurston, a Jesuit priest who died in 1939. It mainly deals with poltergeist activity, and is heavily focussed on individual accounts.



Chapter 1:

A General View of Poltergeist Phenomena

[Part I, pages 1-4]

 
Although the German world "poltergeist" is now naturalized, and is often met with in the newspapers of both England and America, still an examination of standard dictionaries shows that it is a term of comparatively recent introduction. Few, if any, of those published in the last century will be found to contain in, and it is particularly noticeable that it is not recognized by The Stanford Dictionary of anglicized words and phrases (London, 1892), though this work was expressly compiled to registered those foreign importations into the language which had acquired rights of citizenship. The word does appear in the great Oxford English Dictionary in 1910, but the earliest illustration there given of its use dates only from 1871. It is certainly older than that. Mrs. Crowe, in her widely-circulated book The Night Side of Nature (1848), makes frequent use of it - once in a chapter heading. When the Spiritualistic movement started in America, more attention was naturally directed to such matters, but the earliest American example I have met of the use of this term occurs in an article copied in 1852 from the Boston Pilot which speaks as follows:
 
The Germans have long been familiar with a mischievous devil called the "Polter geist" whose delight it appears to be to enter houses and turn everything upside down, doing more mischief in an hour than a thousand monkeys would do in a day. It is not well to listen to these things, but really some respectable witnesses have testified that this same monkey ghost has troubled several families in England and America within the last few years.
 
The article was reproduced in a book Spiritual Manifestations, by Adin Ballou, which may claim to be the first systematic treatise on Spiritualism ever printed either in America or elsewhere. As Ballou's little volume went through several editions, and was republished on both sides of the Atlantic, appearing in London, and again in Liverpool, within less than twelve months, it may very easily have helped to give currency to a term previously unfamiliar to most writers of English. Moreover, the description supplied may be regarded as fairly accurate. A poltergeist is simply a racketing spirit, which in almost all cases remains invisible, but which manifests its presence by throwing things about, knocking fire-irons together and creating an uproar, in the course of which the human spectators are occasionally hit by flying objects, but as a rule suffer no serious injury.
In the last century several prominent members of the Society for Psychical Research - notably Mr. Frank Podmore from the sceptical standpoint and Mr. Andrew Lang in a more benignant vein - occupied themselves with poltergeist phenomena; but the most important contribution to the subject, definitely upholding the objective reality of these manifestations, is that published in 1911 by the late Sir William Barrett, F.R.S. Being himself then resident in Ireland, he had personally investigated two Irish cases, and he takes occasion to outline the features which are found to recur in other examples of the same type of disturbance gathered from all parts of the world. The points upon which he lays stress as characteristic of the poltergeist are the invisibility of the agents, the sporadic and temporary nature of the manifestations, and notably their dependence upon the presence of some particular individual - usually a young person and often a child - who must be assumed to possess strange, if unconscious, mediumistic powers. When telekinetic phenomena occur - and this is almost invariably the case - whether they take the form of missiles which seem to come from nowhere, or of crockery and even furniture crashing or flying through the air, the movement often seems to be controlled, tortuous and at variance with the laws of gravitation. Professor Barrett writes: -
 
The movement of objects is usually quite unlike that due to gravitational or other attraction. They slide about, rise in the air, move in eccentric paths, sometimes in a leisurely manner, often turn round in their career, and usually descend quietly without hurting the observers. At other times an immense weight is lifted, often in daylight, no one being near, crockery is thrown about and broken, bedclothes are dragged off, the occupants sometimes lifted gently to the ground, and the bedstead tilted up or dragged about the room. The phenomena occur both in broad daylight and at night. Sometimes bells are continuously rung, even if all the bell wires are removed. Stones are frequently thrown, but no one is hurt; I myself have seen a large pebble drop apparently from space in a room where the only culprit could have been myself, and certainly I did not throw it. [Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. XXV, p. 378.]

In both the cases investigated by Professor Barrett, rappings and inexplicable noises played a prominent part. The earlier occurred in 1877 at a lonely hamlet called Derrygonnelly, nine miles from Enniskillen, in the house of a farmer who had been left a widower with a family of four girls and a boy, the eldest child, Maggie, aged about twenty, seeming to be the centre of the disturbance. Strange rappings and scratchings were first heard, then objects were seen to move, stones began to fall, and candles and boots were repeatedly thrown out of the house. Several neighbours urged them to send for the priest, but the family were Methodists and preferred to put an open Bible on the bed with a big stone on top of it. Some unseen power, however, displaced the Bible and eventually removed it from the room, tearing seventeen pages right across. The freakish disturber of their peace evinced a peculiar dislike for any source of artificial light; candles and lamps were mysteriously stolen or thrown out, and Professor Barrett recounts how the old farmer told him that "Jack Flanigan came and lent us his lamp, saying he would engage the devil himself could not steal it, as he had got the priest to sprinkle it with holy water." Nevertheless the lamp, in spite of the blessing, seems to have shared the fate of the Bible. When Professor Barrett visited the scene he heard the long continued knockings some of which were "like those made by a heavy carpenter's hammer driving nails into flooring." He satisfied himself that the noises could not have been made by any of the inmates, who were all in view, and, as already mentioned, he saw a stone fall from the void. Moreover he challenged the mysterious agent of the knockings to echo by raps the numbers which he mentally indicated; which is did. Further putting his hands into the side pockets of his overcoat, Professor Barrett asked the spirit to "knock the number of fingers he held open." The experiment was repeated four times, with varying numbers, and in each case the answer was given correctly.
The disturbances which took place at Enniscorthy in July, 1910, were more dramatic, and though in this case Professor Barrett was not personally a witness of the phenomena, still the depositions he obtained from those principally concerned are so explicit and so fully confirmed by independent testimony that it would be unreasonable to doubt the facts. Apart from hammering and other noises, the prank upon which the poltergeist seemed to concentrate his efforts was the pulling off the bed-clothes and the moving right across the floor of a heavy bedstead, which, lacking one castor, was a particularly difficult object to shift from its place. Three young men slept in the room, all of whom were reduced to a state of abject terror. The principal sufferer was a lad of eighteen, named Randall. According to his account, confirmed on one occasion by reliable investigators who sat up with them, the sheets and blankets were pulled off him, he himself was dragged out of bed on to the floor, "a chair danced out into the middle of the room without anyone near it," and when all three in their fright decided to get into one bed together, "the bed turned up on one side and threw us out on to the floor, and before we were thrown out, the pillow was taken from under my head three times. When the bed rose up, it fell back without making any noise." [Proceedings S.P.R., Vol. XXV, p. 389.]

[ToJesusMyHeart]

I'm sure that says a bunch of cool stuff but I'm too tired to read it now. I will tomorrow. Can you just in one sentence define a poltergeist according to Catholic minds?

 

[Nihil Obstat]

I would say that one acceptable opinion is that poltergeist activity is caused by "mediumistic" [psychic?] powers linked to a central, generally adolescent, individual.

I think this phenomenon, if real, is quite probably related in some way to those people whom we consider to be 'sensitive' to the preternatural. Fr. Gabriele Amorth says: "Sensitives, by nature, have higher levels of sensitivity (we often refer to a sixth sense) and are able to perceive things that cannot be detected by most individuals."

I would certainly not characterize this as a common thing. But I do not think it is beyond the realm of possibility.

[GeorgiiMichael]

Bruce Willis was dead the whole time.

[ToJesusMyHeart]

I still don't understand what a poltergeist is. 

[Oremoose]

I still don't understand what a poltergeist is. 

 

In my knowledge a Poltergeist is a Supernatural Being (be it demons, restless souls, souls in purgatory )that can interact and move physical things though they themselves are not. 

[Nihil Obstat]

I still don't understand what a poltergeist is.

Essentially a noisy "entity" that likes moving things, breaking things, throwing things, etc..
Though like we established, perhaps not truly a separate entity.
I believe in German it means noisy spirit.

[OnlySunshine]

Premises: Angels and demons exist. Angels are non-bodied spirits ("pure spirits"). Demons are fallen angels. Purgatory exists. 

 

1. Are ghosts real?

2. Is a ghost the same thing as an angel/demon?

3. Can souls in purgatory manifest themselves to humans on Earth? 

4. If 3 is true, is that called a "ghost" ? 

5. If a ghost is not an angel/demon and not a soul from purgatory, what is a ghost? 

 

I posed this same question to a priest in Confession and told him I was watching "Ghost Hunters" on SyFy.  He warned me of the dangers of speaking to the dead and, although I wasn't doing it myself, there was real danger in becoming obsessed with ghost stories.  My penance was to stop watching it which was difficult but very necessary.  I watch those shows now with reserved caution because I realize how dangerous it can be to open up to paranormal activity. 

 

The priest said something I'll never forget.  He has heard stories of people claiming to talk to ghosts only to be possessed or oppressed by demons later.  Now, demonic possession is very rare but oppression takes place pretty easily by demons interferring with everyday activity.  He told me not to live in fear of demons but have a healthy respect for life by not communicating with the dead or watching shows where people do.

 

To answer question 3, I think that human spirits can be sent back to earth to relay certain messages or spend purgatory wandering around but only in rare circumstances.  Think of St. Faustina's Sister coming to her in a vision and tell her to pray that she be released from purgatory.  Other times, I believe their memories get trapped here.  Certain mineral composites in the earth have the capability to "store" information, like quartz and limestone.  No one really knows how this is possible but it has happened in poltergeists and residual hautings (where the ghost doesn't react to present events).  Read this (with caution):

 

http://liparanormalinvestigators.com/rocks.shtml

 

I think it's OK to use the word "ghost" but I prefer "soul" or "spirit."  I do believe that ghosts can exist because the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost exists, so why not others?  :)

Edited June 4, 2013 by MaterMisericordiae

[Gabriela]

Your posts, Nihil, make me really glad I'm 33.

[Nihil Obstat]

Your posts, Nihil, make me really glad I'm 33.

Why is that? :p

[Gabriela]

Why is that? :P

 

So that I can't be the adolescent/young adult "center" of such a manifestation. And thank God, I don't live with any adolescents or young adults. That crap would freak me the heck out.

 

It makes you wonder: Does such an adolescent/young adult feel like s/he's "not being heard", and thus unconsciously causes such a racket? But if it really is the "sensitive" person causing it, how do you explain that that one poltergeist could read the mind and see inside the pocket of the researcher?

 

Freaky!