Transcription:
Interviewer: “Do you believe in ghosts?”
Informant: “I do. I do believe in ghosts and when I say I believe in ghosts, I’m not sure really to what extent I believe in them? But I’ve heard enough stories of people adamantly believing that they saw something. I’ve just seen so much that it kinda is very much stuck in my mind and even more so, there’s no way of proving that ghosts don’t exist. And that’s kinda my motto. If you can’t prove it doesn’t exist, like demons and angels and everything, you can’t say that it doesn’t exist. You know, so I don’t…I don’t necessarily, I’m not necessarily gonna force my beliefs on anyone but I’m just…if I had to say yes or no to whether ghosts exist or not, I would say yes.”
Interviewer: “Cool. Have you had any personal experience with these ghosts?”
Informant: “I haven’t but I have some family members who have. Um my aunt and my mom both have some experience with the afterlife though in very different ways. My aunt, who is my mom’s sister…she believes that she caught the orb form of ghosts on camera, which is when you take a picture and the picture shows that there are just these balls of light floating somewhere in the picture. Uh and people say that those are…those are ghosts caught on camera. It’s definitely a thing, I know it’s a thing. I don’t know too much about it but I know that she looked it up after she caught that and she very much believed that there were ghosts. She was somewhere in a different country when she took the picture. And then my mom had a really interesting experience where several years ago, um…she was on an airplane and…she was just you know minding- she was on an airplane so she didn’t really have contact with other people so she was just doing whatever. And she had this sudden…wave of comfort and felt like…felt something just at peace…uh… and it turned out that…while she had been on the plane, her dad had passed away. My grandpa. And so she…I know that she is Chrsitian and she believes in God I think. Um…I know she goes to church once in a while but…she believes that that was her dad…her dad’s like spirit as it…you know…passed to the other life. Just kinda just saying goodbye to her I guess saying ‘it’ll be okay. I’m okay. I’m happy. I love you.’ She very much thinks he was saying that he loved her. So yeah…and my mom…my mom is a very scholarly person. She’s not super religious, and so hearing that from her was like ‘Wow, I believe that that happened or I believe that you believe that for sure’. It’s weird because she didn’t know that he had passed away then but she very much remembers this experience.”
Summary:
The informant talks about her mother and aunt, both having experiences with ghosts and spirits. She says that because of stories like these, she believes in the paranormal and will continue to since it can’t be disproven. Her aunt once took a picture of a ghost’s orb form. This is when they show up in a picture as a ball of light. Her aunt looked it up afterwards and now firmly believes that she did capture a ghost on camera. The informant’s mother had an experience while riding on a plane. Suddenly, she felt very calm and warm, with no explanation as to why. When she got off the plane she was notified that her father had died. She believes the warmth she felt was the result of her father’s spirit coming to say goodbye to her and reassure her that everything was okay. It’s stories like these that prevent me from dismissing ghosts. Sure you could mark what happened to her mother as a coincidence, but there are so many similar stories to that. I see why the informant places a lot of faith in this story because it sounds realistic and perfectly reasonable. It even helps that a more scholarly person like her mother would believe it’s a ghost.