The question "Do you believe in ghosts?" is one of those questions that sits right in between belief, fear, culture, movies, religion, and the human mind. And for me, the answer is a straightforward "No", I don’t believe in ghosts. But the why behind that answer is where you could say things get interesting but I have only a few.
Let me start with horror movies, I've never been a fan of horror movies, I'd choose to watch news or stay away from the movies if I had to watch an horror movie. It's not that I've never seen one, I mean, that's how I can tell if I like them or not. The few ones I've seen, they just try to make me believe there's really something to be scared of.
Well, everyone's got their own choice of movies so I respect those who prefer the horror genre but keep it far from me, even the sound of horror movie takes away every entertainment it is done for, from me. Life is not supposed to be hard, life is not scary, it's our minds that just choose to make the life the way it is for us, hard or scary.
That goes to say, we tend to become what we think more and we think things from what we see more both past and present, so seeing horror movies that the writers believe there are ghosts, makes you believe there are ghosts and it's not because there really are ghost. We've trained our minds to accept the narrative, that ghosts exist.
From my own beliefs as a Christian, I don’t believe ghosts exist in the way movies describe them. I don’t believe humans can see, hear, or physically interact with ghosts. If something like that were to be experienced, I believe it would be tied more to the mind, through dreams or unresolved emotional attachments to the dead.
So when my door opens on it's own, my first thought would rarely go to the possibility of an invincible being tampering with a physical thing which is impossible to me. Or when I'm home alone and I hear sounds from a corner that sounds can't come from, I tend to imagine something else made the sound, not a ghost.
I think believing it's a ghost when it's not is totally a mindset thing. Ghosts can exist for who believes that they do exist, it's one of the reasons I admire beliefs a lot, they shape our lives and perspectives. You become what you believe and it's same for the ghost thing. And it's same when you have good or great beliefs, they work for you.
I would never feel ghost around me because I won't think it's a ghost since I don't believe them. So you could say the fastest way for me to protect myself from ghost is by not believing that they exist. I'm not daring them to come show me that they do, they really don't exist. It's just sad that most movies today portray the opposite.
Image is AI generated.