Does the afterlife have to be scary?

Cliches of the ghosts

If you’ve read my stance on near-death experiences (NDEs), you know that I wonder why we don’t spend more time and money studying the question does death really, truly kill us?

While the mainstream media is pretty quiet on the subject of ecstatic near-death or mystical experiences, there’s one woo-woo area of the topic that seems to be thriving, at least on cable TV. Ghosts!

Several TV shows that I have seen feature hauntings and demonic behavior front and center. Paranormal researchers go out with their high-tech ghost hunting gear hoping to capture some authentic woo-woo on audio or video surveillance.

I have come to understand that ghosts, for the most part, are tortured souls. They’re people who when physical death comes don’t get it. They don’t have a God to go home to. They don’t go to the light. They may be so terrified of the evil they’ve done that they hide in the darkness. Despite the fact that they no longer have a physical body, they don’t realize in any positive way that there’s more to life than flesh and that they have a great future in the light. So they hang out where they died and haunt humans for blood fun.