ghosts
Are ghosts real? Yes, according to New Church scientist Leo H. Grindon (Life:
Its Nature, Varieties and Phenomena, 1900) What people call a “ghost” is simply
the spiritual body of someone in the spiritual world appearing to someone in
this world.
“Ghost” is just an old word for “spirit,” which in some languages, including
Hebrew, is the same word as “breath” or “wind.” Remember how, when the
Lord appeared to His disciples after His resurrection, He breathed upon them
and said “receive ye the Holy Spirit.” Our word “gust,” as in “gust of wind,”
comes from the same root as “ghost.”
We’re all ghosts, really, but covered with a body of flesh and blood, and
this material covering is what people see. A person’s spiritual body can also
be seen by others, but only through the eyes of their spiritual body. We all
have such eyes, even during our lives in this world, but it is only rarely that
someone’s spiritual eyes are opened to give a glimpse of the spiritual reality
that’s all around us.
“Much as our material eyes enable us to see, they prevent our seeing
inconceivably more,” Grindon says, noting that the light of the sun, while it
makes our earth visible to us, at the same time conceals the thousands of stars
that appear in the night sky.
The idea that for a spirit to be seen in our world it must assume something
of a material nature that can reflect this world’s light is not true. What really
happens is just the opposite, a change in us, namely, the opening of our
spiritual sight.
There are several illustrations of this in the Bible. For example, when
Elisha prayed that the young man’s (spiritual) eyes might be opened to see
the multitude of chariots and horses of fire protecting t