GHOST – A REALITY OR AN ILLUSION
“Hey Horse!! Are you afraid of your own shadow? Ha ha ha. Its ridiculous”
“Yes I am afraid of my own shadow, which I can see but what about you humans, you humans are afraid of GHOSTS which you cannot even see…
Toastmaster of the Day, Fellow Toastmasters & Distinguished guest a warm & eerie good evening to one and all!
How many of you believe in Ghosts?
Well, well, lot of courageous people!!!
You just start telling a Ghostly incident to your friends and sure enough everyone will have at least one ghost story or an incident to tell. No matter, whether your friends are literate or illiterate.
The difference between the literate and illiterate people’s ghost stories are only their dialogues.
The literate will say “I still could not make out how my cupboard was shaking itself!”
The illiterate will clearly say, “The ghost came in my room through the keyhole and started shaking my cupboard.”
Dear friends, my research shows there are four categories of people.
1. Who are illiterate and 100% unconditionally believe that there are ghosts.
2. Who do not believe in ghosts in public but their heart accepts that ghosts do exist. They will visit a Doctor as well as a Baba’s Darbar for a minor fever.
3. Who do not believe that ghosts exist and accept that ghosts are just a psychological image. But whenever they are alone in the dark and look at a hanging white shirt in the yard kept for drying purpose their logical thinking fails and their brain starts making a psychological image that there is a ghost in the yard.
4. is a very rare category who believe that the ghosts do not exist and are also brave enough to handle any situations.
I don’t want to ask you in which category you fall in but category I fall in No.3.
So whenever I am sleeping alone in my room, I take out all the hanging shirts just to avoid the psychological image of GHOSTS if I wake up in the midnight.
I remember an incident which happened with me which also proves that I fall in no. 3 category.
My elder brother & I were going to bring water from a well. Since in summer all wells in our village become dry, we would collect water in the night. My brother was carrying a torch and 2 buckets while I was carrying a small bucket tied with a rope to fetch the water from the well. While walking towards the well suddenly I felt that there was a snake behind me. Without looking back I started running and I could feel the snake also running behind me.
I started shouting asking my brother to help me. He shouted and asked me to stop and look behind. I stopped and I felt that the snake had also stopped. When I looked behind with fear, I found that the rope tied to the bucket which I was carrying was the scary snake!
This incident was used by my brother to blackmail me many times. I did not want to become a joke in front of my friends.
I am sure if I would have been alone this would have remained a ghostly incident.
There was a fear in a village that if someone goes to a particular tree at midnight he would die. Two qualified young guys happened to visit to that village and as a challenge one of them visited the tree at midnight. The next morning people found the person dead near the tree. His friend tried to find out the reason of his death. The postmortem report showed that he dead because of a Heart Attack. According to his friend he went to the tree, nailed a label as a proof that he came to the destination but unfortunately he nailed the label with the corner of his shawl and when he was trying to turn back he felt somebody was pulling him back. This fear became the reason for his heart attack and death.
There are many incidents of ghostly happenings but fortunately all are resolved because I came to know the logical reasons of those incidents.
I would like to share an incident during my school days.
To go to the school we used to walk through the forest starting 5 O Clock in the morning in the dark. One day a group of students including me ran back home from half way and told our parents that we saw a white huge ghost moving his hand like he was calling us. When some of the parents went to see the place at which we saw the ghost, they found that there was a skinless huge tree with two branches moving because of the wind.
Today I strongly believe that there are no ghosts but they are a psychological image and just an illusion.
The incidents of Ghosts that we have are just unresolved puzzles. Our brain does not accept that what we saw is not a ghost. It is similar to a magicians trick when he makes a note of Rupees 500 with a piece of news paper. Nobody from the audience understands how he does that. In reality he just hides the piece of paper and displays a 500 rupees note which he already has. Still the majority of the audience thinks it is magic!
In conclusion I state that there are no ghosts, they are just a figment of our imagination.
I recollect what Richard Harris Barham, the English novelist and humorous poet who said,
“Ghosts, like ladies, never speak till spoken to!”
