I am an existentialist. I have been since before I knew what it was. As a child of 5 or 6 I'd get night panics about ceasing to exist when I died, about the world continuing on for everyone except me. I was 16 when we read Le Mur in French class and the prisoner basically vocalised all my thoughts. I was so surprised I exclaimed 'That's what I think!' (having kept it to myself at my religious school, thinking I was weird for believing it). The teacher looked at me and said kindly "There's a whole school of thought on this, it's called Existentialism". There was comfort in leaning it wasn't something crazy in me.
So I am aware there is a certain degree of cognitive dissonance in what I'm about to tell you.
I am extremely superstitious, because why push your luck? In New Caledonia a guide asked if I wanted to go into some cave. He phrased it "You can go in, if you want to?" I asked him if he was going in and he said no, it was protected by Black Magic. I declined because why ask for trouble and also a lot of warnings about caves are because bad things happen - flash floods or collapse, or getting lost. The threat of the supernatural is to keep people out for their safety. There's a logic.
With my recent health issues, while in Kyoto, I went to the Yasui Konpira-gu shrine to remove the tumours. You crawled thru the tunnel and returned, making your prayer and sticking it on the rock. I also got the little health amulet/prayer token at the Sanjusangen Do Temple because it can't hurt. My liver issues have cleared up, and I'll find out soon enough about the tumours. (As an aside, the photos of the gardens at Sanjusangen are here and here with snow and here gleaming after the melt).
Here's were it goes off logic. I have lived in a house with a ghost.
When we moved into our first share house, it was me and another woman and a guy. In the first few weeks, I kept thinking someone had arrived home and was standing behind me. I'd turn to ask them about their day or tell them the movie I was watching had just started or something, and there would be no one there. It wasn't scary, it was just odd.
Then I began to get a clear image of him. He was an old man (though really probably late 60s). I could tell when it was him behind me. I didn't see him visually, but I could see him in my mind.
After about a month, the other woman said to me "I need to tell you something but you can't make fun of me". When I agreed, she said "I think there's a ghost". I jumped in "There is a ghost!" and she got cross saying "Don't make fun of me!" I had to reassure her I wasn't. She said it wasn't there all the time (I agreed) and the cat could see it. The cat would look straight at where she felt it was.
The difference was she thought it was an old woman. I was certain it was a man. It's only just occurred to me writing this 35 years later that maybe it was a couple and a different ghost was showing itself to each of us? She felt it was a little scary whereas I felt no threat at all. I felt it was looking over us to make sure the house was in good hands.
I'd sometimes talk to it, asking if we were meant to do something for it but of course there was never a reply, Things didn't move around, there were no eerie noises. Then one day I realised it hadn't been there for a month or so. My friend said to me out of the blue "I think the ghost has gone". So we both felt it leave around the same time too.
Do you believe in ghosts?
Linking with #TellUsAbout
The pictures are more in the #Haunted series.
Other ghost posts are Ghost party and Ghosts but they are not about the supernatural.
