Ghost Hunting

Why I Hate Ghosts

And how can we stop them?

Don’t you just hate it?

It’s two o’clock in the morning, and you’re awoken by a ghost. It’s not just something in the roof, like a mouse, or a loose tile. It’s not your cat either, as she died years ago. It’s not your children, as you don’t have any. It’s not a burglar, as you’ve nothing to steal. And it’s not the wind, because the forecast is calm for days. So what is it? It’s a ghost.

What else can it be?

You must have had this? For no reason whatsoever, you wake up to sounds in your house. So you tentatively go downstairs with a gun or a baseball bat. Only to see and hear absolutely nothing.

Your kitchen, lounge and dining room are exactly the same as you left them the night before. An ocean of takeaway wrappers and beer cans littering the floor. But apart from that, everything is the same.

So what is it?

Is it the walls expanding? The floorboards? Mice, rats, zebras in the attic? And why don’t I hear that rattle, hum, creak, or squeak during the day. Why always in the middle of the night when I’m fast asleep?

I can only conclude it’s a ghost.

I have a very good friend called David Paul Nixon who writes ghost stories and podcasts for a living. He has spent the past decade collecting and chronicling new and real life ghost stories from around the UK.

He’s now regarded as an expert in his field, and has a huge following. I’ve read all his books, and after each one, I always get this strange metallic taste in my mouth, wondering if it’s true or not.

By David’s own admission, he doesn’t know what to believe. He tells the stories as they are, and lets the reader decide. As Arthur C Clarke once said about the supernatural: “Half the stories are true, unfortunately, I don’t know which half.”

I don’t believe in ghosts. I believe that when you die, you die, and for the rest of eternity, there is nothing.

That’s hard to take.

Which is why humans invented religion. To ease the burden of living, knowing there’s something to look forward to afterwards. It’s like going to a party and having to stay sober because you’ve got to drive. You grin and bear it with a glass of soda, knowing that when you get home you can get blown.

The idea of the afterlife is exactly the same. Live your life as holy as you can, but with one eye on Heaven when it’s all done.

Problem is, when humans start stirring up ideas of heaven and hell, it naturally leads to ideas of monsters, demons, ghosts, phantoms, ghouls, spectres, spirits of every shape and size.

Then books and movies are written, and before we know it, our minds are awash with images like this.

I sometimes wake my wife up in the night, and say. “Did you hear that?”

She says: “What?” And goes back to sleep.

In the morning, she tells me, it’s all in my head.

“So I’m going mad, now!”

“No,” she explains, “it’s just an extension of your dreams. Dreams that don’t quite finish when you wake, and so continue briefly into reality. Or it could be the cat.”

“We don’t have a cat,” I declare.

“Oh yeah.”

My wife’s sister swears her old house in Manchester was haunted. They saw things: shapes and outlines that moved through walls, sometimes even through people. Rumour had it, that it was built over an old graveyard during the Victorian period.

That’s great, isn’t it? That’s all you need! Nice little story, so that when you hear a noise at night, the natural reaction is to assume it’s a ghost. Even though, you don’t believe in them.

Not that it’s a bad thing. Do we want to believe in nothing all the time? That when we die, we really do die, and then there’s nothing?

I believe in that, yes! But there’s a part of me — a small part — that is open to the supernatural, the afterlife, Heaven, Hell, call it what you want.

After all, if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be human.

Thanks for being scared. For more supernatural, check out