My view of the paranormal was best expressed by William Shakespeare by a famous scene in his play Henry IV, Part I, when Owen Glendower says, pompously: “I can call spirits from the vasty deep,” and Hotspur sensibly responds, “Well, so can I, or so can any man.
“But will they come when you do call for them?”
Now let me hasten to add that I am a complete hypocrite. I pray on icy roads, or in other circumstances where I am scared out of my wits.
But essentially, my cosmology is that of Henry David Thoreau, who was once asked by Ralph Waldo Emerson what his view of the afterlife might be. This was at dinner at Emerson’s house, probably on some night when it was a little too cold to stick it out alone at Walden Pond.
Thoreau responded “One world at a time.” Emerson, who clearly was hoping for an answer that was more expansive, said, “Is that all?” Thoreau supposedly said “No. Pass the salt.”
I am not sure whether that really happened, but that’s pretty much the way I feel. By this point in my life, I have known many people who have died, and while I wish I could see many of them, I have no real sense that they still exist or are anywhere.
But in recent years, I have finally learned enough to realize how much I don’t know. For all I know, we know as much about reality as the mold on an orange knows about botany.
I’m not saying this to be offensive, but religion, any and all organized religion, doesn’t make much sense to me; and slaughtering millions of your fellow men because they doesn’t believe in honoring the same supernatural ghosts in the same way you do is, well, insane.
But what makes even less sense than any religion to me is pure atheism, the idea that everything we see and feel somehow came to exist without any force creating it.
Look at a baby’s intricate little hands, or a puppy’s paws, for that matter, or the shape of a snail shell. I suspect strongly that we don’t know the full nature of reality.
Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that our minds are incapable of grasping the truth — though we must keep trying. I dream sometimes of two of my dogs who have been dead since 1990, but who are as vivid in my dreams as though they were right here still.
Who can say they are not in some sense real? I don’t believe in ghosts, and in any event, the solar system is always hurtling through space, and is many million or billion miles away from where it was just a few years ago. Would ghosts be swept along with the planet?
We don’t know. I’m pretty sure there wasn’t really a red dwarf , aka Le Nain Rouge, on the banks of the Detroit River when Cadillac showed up in 1701. But he’s a useful fantasy, and Todd Krieger’s expert use of him forces us to learn something about our folklore.
And what if someone taking a Detroit Paranormal Tour glimpses the shade of a long-dead Eloise patient scuttling down an aisle? How real is that? Do ghosts live anywhere outside our minds and imaginations?
Once, I would have felt comfortable about giving you an answer.
Now, not so much.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
