Ghosts Among Us - James Van Praagh [1]
During the past twenty-five years, I have listened to and witnessed the wanderings of thousands upon thousands of ghosts existing in places one couldn’t even imagine. Those experiences have made me keenly aware of the intricacies of the human experience and the lingering results of mental and emotional anguish.
Science is all well and good, but when you can get firsthand information from a ghost, it doesn’t get much better than that. This subject takes on a whole new level of understanding when the understanding and words come directly from the ghosts who are haunting us. Many people ask where the ghost world is. Are they always around us? Do they see everything? My desire is to provide insight and examples of how we share our space with ghosts and to show that they are a part of everyone’s life. By becoming more aware of ghosts and spirits, we learn that sensing the other dimensions around us is not an experience limited to an exclusive group of people but one available to us all. Simply put, there is more power in knowledge and awareness than ignorance.
When I was a little boy, I knew I was different. I had been seeing ghosts from the time I was lying in a crib. Why I had this unique portal to the other side, I don’t really know. As I grew, I learned that no one else could see what I saw and that therefore I had to cope with the secret of living with ghosts. That’s not so easy when you’re a little kid and want to be like everyone else. There were many times when I had to reconcile what I saw with what I was told about the unseen world. I soon realized that people’s beliefs about ghosts and life after death were pretty scary stuff. It took me a while to differentiate my own feelings from the feelings of the ghosts around me. Like people, some ghosts were scary and some were nice. For the most part, the unseen strangers who came into my life ultimately changed it forever in a positive way.
So why are there ghosts in the first place? Do all ghosts haunt the living? Are there good ghosts and bad ghosts? And what can we do with all this information?
The journey beyond this earth is one of incredible beauty and creativity. Only those of us who are afraid choose to stay behind and cling to this earthly atmosphere. These earthbound ghosts are the kind written about in ghost stories and seen in scary movies. Not all ghosts are scary, yet the more knowledge we have, the more we can protect ourselves from those earthbound ghosts who want to encroach on our physical environment. These ghosts can be a negative influence on us, cause us to do things we might not otherwise do, and keep us locked in a world of fear and woe. On the other hand, there are spirits who can guide us to do the right thing and to pursue our dreams and who encourage us, thus making a positive difference in our lives. We can become aware of ghosts’ energy by understanding our own. We can sense ghosts by using our intuitive mind, and we can tune in to the spirit forces around us to gain a proper perspective of ourselves in the world.
Use this book as a guide. There are plenty of examples of how ghosts have influenced my life and the lives of others. There are techniques, meditations, and various ways to contact ghosts and to know when ghosts have entered your life.
Before you take your fist step, however, look around at the world you know. When you finish reading this book, that world will never seem the same again.
ONE
Growing Up with Ghosts
“I see dead people.” Those four words from The Sixth Sense have woven their way into popular culture and will forever be synonymous with a person describing his ability to see and communicate with ghosts. Since this highly successful film was released in 1999, a whole slew of books, movies, and TV shows have been created, most of which would have never seen the light of day a decade ago. No