WHY ARE GHOSTS HERE?
Article continuing the questions about Earthbound spirits and why ghosts are here. For more information about ghosts and hauntings read Craig Hamilton-Parkers books about the next life, the paranormal and how to become a psychic or a medium
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 According to Taoist and Buddhist teachings, it is “craving” that holds a person to the earth plane. This could perhaps manifest as the desire to seek revenge, or to perhaps hold on to material possessions. In China, Japan, and other eastern countries, they call these spirits “hungry ghosts” because they continually seek satisfaction from things that can never satisfy them. The craving can take many forms. The spirit may crave revenge, crave to hold on to worldly fame and fortune, or simply crave to continue living in our world. For example, a spirit may have a powerful sexual urge but, being bodyless, he or she is unable to satisfy such compulsions. The spirit is willing, so to speak, but the body is gone. It is like having a hunger that can never be satisfied. Such hungry ghosts haunt the area under and on the earth perpetually tormented by insatiable greed.
WHY ARE GHOSTS HERE?
Trick or Treat?
Many Eastern peoples believe that hungry ghosts can be nourished by offerings made during religious ceremonies. For example in Singapore, during the seventh month of the lunar year, there is a celebration similar to our Halloween, and it makes trick-or-treat look lame in comparison.
During this time, ghosts return to visit their living relatives. In most cases, this is a pleasant reunion, but there are also troublemakers. These are the souls of spirits who left behind no descendants, or who had less than harmonious relations with an ex-wife, ex-husband, even the occasional creditor. You would not want one of these ghosts as your friend.
 Appeasing the hungry ghosts is said to ward off bad luck and attracts good fortune. During the ceremonies, flaming dragon-shaped incense sticks are lit on the streets, and loud, exuberant music is played nightly in outdoor tents to entertain the spooky ancestors.
Offerings are made to the spirits by burning fake money called “Hell Money”. However, if you need really good luck, it is advisable to burn something a little more adventurous, such as a new television set, a cellular phone, or pieces of expensive furniture--anything that might come in handy to the spirit in the afterlife and earn you a favor. A favorite offering is lucky "black gold," fetching prices as high as $13,000 a nugget. I’m sure that, if you were to watch this hullabaloo from the spirit world, you would smile at the holy-smoke barbecue being performed especially for you.
However, like our own Halloween, the rituals are just superstition and nonsense that hark back to the time when sacrifices were made to the gods and spirits. The occasion, however, gives the bereaved an opportunity to express socially their feelings for departed loved ones and enables them to do something about their grief. Similarly, it provides a focal point to enable the minds of those on earth and in the spirit to link for a time, and serves as an eastern way of expressing remembrance, such as a westerner putting flowers on a grave.
WHY ARE GHOSTS HERE?
Trapped Spirits, Elementals and Ghosts...
a not so funny story!
Throughout my many years working as a medium, I have very rarely encountered spirits that are said to be trapped. Yet, hundreds of people have claimed that they are being troubled by all sorts of fiendish phenomena. Most of the cases of haunting and possession that I have investigated turn out to be attention-seeking fantasies or, in some sad cases, the diseased imaginings of a latent schizophrenia.
 I remember one gentleman who rang me with a very convincing story of how his house was haunted by strange elemental spirits. When I visited his home, he showed no signs of mental disturbance and behaved like any normal person. I asked him to take me to the area of the house where he felt the bad spirits were at their strongest. When he did, I felt nothing untoward in the room. “I really do not think you have anything to worry about here,” I said, hoping to put his mind at rest.
“But can’t you feel them now?” he replied in an anxious tone. “They come from under the bed, please take a look!”
I lay on the floor and looked beneath the bed. “Can’t you see them? There are armies of marching insects. Look, some are wearing uniforms!”
Lying there on the cold floor looking for uniformed insects under the bed in a strange man’s house suddenly didn’t seem like such a good idea. I made my apologies and left...just a more hastily then I normally would.
WHY ARE GHOSTS HERE?
Ghost of murdered man
My numerous communications with the spirit world have revealed to me that even spirits who have been killed, murdered, or otherwise died suddenly have arrived at the other side without any hitches. However, extreme emotional states of mind at the moment of death can cause problems. For example, I worked with the UK police on one occasion and was asked if I could communicate with the spirit of a man who had been murdered above his shop.
 I felt his spirit come close and it explained how he had been stabbed in the stomach in the front room but the killers had dragged his body through the hall and dumped his body face down in the bath. I was also able to describe the woman who sat in the black getaway car, and told the police that another red vehicle was parked at the back of the building. At that time, these facts and many other details related to me by the spirit had not been revealed to the press. I’ve never seen a police officer shake so much--particularly when I told him that he had once put the spirit communicator in jail.
The murdered man told us that for a while he had been trapped between the two worlds. He had panicked at the time of the murder. Much of the time he was trapped had been spent trying to tell his mother what had happened. He had even succeeded in moving objects in his mother’s house trying to get her attention. He was absolutely furious about being murdered.
Against what he felt was his better nature, he ratted on the murderers via my mediumship and claimed that now he could move on into the next world. Much later, when the full story was revealed in the UK newspapers, the mother of the victim claimed that she felt that the spirit of her son had been trying desperately to get in touch with her. She had seen objects in her home mysteriously move by themselves.
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