The Unsolved Mystery of Haunted People

A young English lady had come to India with her husband. Early in the morning on March 19, 1917, she was dressing up her little baby. Suddenly she felt the urge to look behind her. She did so. She was amazed to see her pilot brother standing there. She thought that he had been posted to India. She was so excited that she took some steps to greet him. But then suddenly she realized that her infant would fall down from the bed. So she turned back towards her baby and when saw him sitting safely, she again turned towards her brother. But there was no one this time. Her brother was gone. Thinking her brother was playing hide and seek with her, she searched the whole house. But he was nowhere to be located. Exhausted, she sat down disheartened. A few hours later she heard the shocking news. Her brother had been killed in an air battle.

In 1869, a woman in Italy saw the body of her mother. The woman was upset by the sight. She immediately penned down a letter to her mother. By return post she got the news that her dear mother had passed away sometime back and was buried on the same day when she (the daughter) had the vision.

There are not mere stories. And these two are not the only cases. There are innumerable such cases. But what do such stories arrive at? How should a modern mind comprehend these cases? Did the two ladies in the above stories see ghosts? If yes, then what do we mean when we say the word “ghost”? These and many other intriguing questions haunt the modern mind.

Surprisingly, all these sciences, only psychiatry has seemingly given an understandable answer. According to psychiatry, ghosts are signs of unfulfilled wishes, guilt and of far-fetched imaginations. Accordingly, it is not improbable when a lonely widow sees an image of he dead husband or a loving daughter or son sees an image of a dead parent.

But this explanation has shortcomings. For how can one rationalize the “seeing” of and unknown person?

Margaret Sheridan was just a child when she had her first encounter with a ghost. She had gone to stay at Frampton estate with her mother and brother. They were to await the news of their father, who was a British Army Officer. He was serving at the German front in World War I. in the evening when Margaret was coming down to the drawing room, she met a little boy on the stairs. Recollecting the incident, Margaret later wrote, “He was wearing a white sailor suit, with a round straw hat on the back of his head. He looked at me, and I looked at him. We passed each other without a word. Nanny had always impressed upon me that I must never speak to strangers; I assumed, nevertheless, that he had come to play with me. As soon as I got into the drawing room, I announced with shill anticipation, “I saw a natty sailor boy”. An ashen silence followed. I came to know much later, that the Sailor Boy was a visitor of ill-omen in the Sheridan family. In life he was an ancestor who had been drowned at sea as an midshipman. He appeared at Frompton only before the death of the heir. The strange part was the portrait of him was that of a young man of sixteen or seventeen, yet what I saw – and saw clearly – was a child of about my own age.”