Ghosts and spirits are such a huge part of today’s culture. For those of us who believe, the stories of ghosts and ghouls aren’t hard to imagine. For the non-believers though, while they may want to believe,
the lack of evidence nudges them in the other direction.

“I’m a skeptic, so I believe there’s a possibility, but I won’t know for certain until there’s
evidence. I think it would be cool if they did stick around,” said Andrew Slama, a science teacher at MSHS. Even though Slama does not believe in ghosts as an adult, that does not mean that he was always a skeptic. As a young boy, he believed in the paranormal. “My friends and I would tell stories. I think that’s something that every kid does. You sit in a dark room and tell the creepiest stories. That kind of goes away when people get older which is kind of sad because that’s the fun part.”

Some people want to believe in ghosts, but they also want to have the facts that give the motive to believe in them. Until that happens though, they stay skeptical. This is the case for Zachary Brown, another science teacher: “I still think that there’s a possibility that [ghosts] are real, I just haven’t experienced
anything for myself. The same with supernatural and superpowers and other stuff like that. There’s always a possibility, and it’s fun to entertain the idea for it, but I haven’t seen anything that points to it.”

While both Slama and Brown need to have first-hand experiences to believe in ghosts, two
believers have had experiences of their own: teachers Steven Blocher and William Brown both have had
paranormal happenings.

William Brown said, “We have a ghost living in our house right now and we’ve named her Maggie. The cat likes to go into the attic and play with her.” Going further in-depth about Maggie, the friendly household ghost, he said, “Oh, Maggie will turn my phone on in the middle of the night, we believe Maggie moves things around our bedroom. Maggie’s a good ghost and not a bad ghost.”

Having a friendly household ghost is not the only type of paranormal active that someone can have. It could be something was worse. “Never touch an ouija board, seriously,” said Blocher. “When I was a teenager, my friends and I had an ouija board. We would go to graveyards and stuff to try to use it at night, and it never worked. I was at this party one time and there was a girl there who swore she was a witch; she was dead serious. She had an ouija board that we were messing around with and she said, ‘I can get this ouija board to work.’ We were like, ‘Okay, whatever.’ We all sat down and she was so dead serious about the ouija board. People started asking her questions and it started moving in a way that I’ve never felt it move before. It was very weird like there was an energy there, but I still thought she was screwing with us. I thought I was smart, so I asked the spirit, ‘What’s my social security number?’, because nobody knows that but me. I swear to god, it moved and spelled out my social security number. I’ve never touched an ouija board since.”

With the want people have to believe in ghosts, could these experiences be real? Are they signs of an
overactive imagination and weird insight? While the non-believers need experience in order to
believe, it might be better they don’t have any. Although, what’s life without a little mystery?