So say the scientists and the cynics. Which puts me in a rather ambivalent situation as I have a logical and often cynical mind myself and yet I have not only seen and talked with ghosts but have never been particularly surprised by the fact.
I feel as at home with ghosts as I do with people, some are nice, some are not. Some are even boring, like people, when they have a lot on their minds and want to talk about it.
Ghosts (I would rather call them disincarnated beings but that would get very boring) do exist, they have feelings, they can communicate on a human level.
I have many stories to tell of ghosts both seen and unseen but perhaps a run-through of the logic which leads to my lack of shivers would be in order.
If you believe in life after death, and particularly in reincarnation, after the body dies, the spirit goes out of it. When people look at a dead body they always comment that the person is no longer there. An empty shell left behind.
So where does the person go?
"You are not the body" is an often quoted statement made by Sri Sathya Sai Baba. The body is a vehicle through which the soul experiences the lessons of life on earth.
Why should the person we know disappear into a puff of smoke when the vehicle breaks down and is assessed as a write-off? (Amongst other things, I am also in insurance!)
Ideally, the soul travels from the earth plane to another existence on another level, closer to God. After being on holiday for a while, it comes back to earth in another body, for another stay in the school-house of the world - or this is what I, together with two-thirds of the world's population, believe.
However, whether or not one believes in reincarnation, it seems only logical to accept that the person - the personality - lives on. Not so ideally, they may not want to leave the earth existence, through attachment - love, hate, fear, worry, greed, whatever.
So they hang around and can make their existence known and it's not always howling, chain-clanking bed-sheets, it's just whatever their personality is.
Another explanation for a different kind of 'haunting' is strong energy fields left behind. Where a traumatic experience has occurred, the very strong energy that is emitted can remain long after the soul has moved on and away. This energy is often the cause of unexplained supernatural incidents.
But now it is story-telling time and I'll start with
On this occasion I had fallen and damaged a nerve in my wrist and was receiving physiotherapy. Tara Hospital, originally a private home, was used as a military convalescent hospital during World War Two and several prefab buildings had been erected which are still in use today.
I was sitting in one of these buildings with my hand in a tub of hot wax and the physiotherapist had left me to it.
Sitting there, thinking of nothing much, I suddenly became aware that the large room I was in was full of people. Men in bandages, with slings, on crutches. They were leaning against the wall and sitting on the floor, chatting and swapping cigarettes. I was interested, obviously, but unbothered. Although clearly visible, they were not in full colour but in the sort of sepia tint you get in old photos, so that I knew that far from being invaded by a crowd of invalids, I was the intruder on the scene.
When the physio came back, they faded away. I told her about it and she told me that, during the war, the room we were in had been used as a waiting area for the clinic for the 'walking wounded.'
This of course brings up another explanation for ghosts - are we really seeing them in the present or are we getting a glimpse of the past?
As a result of this incident, my doctor sent me to the head of the South African Society for the Study of the Paranormal to discover if I was psychic (if only they'd asked me I could have saved them the trouble) and I passed with an A-Plus.
Around midnight, the party was in full swing and the noise deafening. However, I heard the notes of what I thought was a bugle. Turning towards the entrance, I saw a stocky young man with curly brown hair, playing a long horn with a green and gold banner hanging from it, like those used in ceremonial fanfares.
The young man was playing a tune I didn't recognise and I thought "How nice of the army to organise this little tribute to my daughter's birthday."
I tried to discuss it with the other people at my table but they just looked at me blankly. They either couldn't hear me over the din of the disco or they thought I was as drunk as they were.(One of the perks of not drinking alcohol is being smug.)
After the man finished playing and left, the party went on for me, and I more or less forgot about it. It was only some months later that I shared with my daughter how I felt that it was a shame that such a lovely gesture had gone more or less unnoticed.
I nearly got sent back to Tara.
My daughter, my son, my ex-husband and sundry other guests, when approached, denied that there had been any such young man or tribute from the army.
I had once again visited with a ghost. Or had I glimpsed the past?
The man had been dressed in typical army khaki and in my ignorance I cannot place him closer than some time in the previous century, although my impression in retrospect is Second World War.
Maybe somebody else saw him, I couldn't canvass 150 people, but I certainly did, and this time the 'ghost' was in modern Technicolor.
Whoever he was, though, wasn't it a really nice thing to do? He wasn't much older than my daughter. Maybe no-one had made a fuss of his 21st and it was a question of "do unto others what you wish they'd done unto you?"
The cottage was built on three levels, with a steep staircase to the bedroom floor which the son was to use as an office.
He was extremely obese, so that my thought was that the stairs would be a bad idea for his heart.
Did this also occur to the lady of about 40 with a pleasant face and dark brown hair who appeared suddenly at the head of the staircase? She said directly to me: "Kill Eddie".
She didn't look at all malevolent and I don't think she was giving me an order. It was supposedly concern on her part. I had already told the mother of the household my concerns for Eddie's heart and she thought I was trying to find a way of staying.
So I couldn't ask them who the lady was and, anyway, maybe she was an "ex" and really had been giving an order. It has been known to happen that live people, during sleep, appear elsewhere to hand out warnings and even threats.
I have no idea who this particular "ghost" was but as far as I know Eddie is still with us.
Apparently it had a very bad vibe, poor light and very dark furnishing, including carved, wooden masks and other such Edgar Allan Poe items.
One of the masks kept falling off its nail on the wall for no discernible reason.
Teachers started noticing that, on the stairs, children would often stand back and look up at something apparently moving downwards.
Autistic children vary considerably in function and many are non-verbal. However, some are verbal i.e. they can communicate through words, and the teachers asked a little girl what she was looking at and why she stepped back.
She answered: "The man with the yellow hair going down the stairs."
A Roman Catholic exorcist was called in and he spoke of a very unhappy soul being in residence, carried out his ceremony and ordered that all existing furniture and ornaments be removed and the whole place repainted.
This was done and the first I heard of the occurrence was when I was sitting on the stairs, waiting for my sister to finish some work, and commented that the place had a very pleasant vibe!
That was obviously a very good exorcist.
You cannot tell an autistic child that ghosts don't exist, the concept is not in their sphere of experience and therefore they cannot be programmed into non-belief.
They do not lie or make up stories to impress, because that is also not in their experience.
The children in The Key School were able to see the ghost of the unhappy man, whilst the science-programmed teachers could not, and they were unable to tell anything but the truth.
Off Jan Smuts Avenue in Johannesburg there is a perfect copy of an Italian villa called Villa D'Este, now used by a jewellery designer and interior decorators as business premises.
The house looks a bit like an over-iced wedding cake but is beautfiul inside and the gardens are full of fountains and statuary.
I got to know the jewellery designer and, one day, having been to the kitchen to make coffee, I returned to his office via a corridor hung with crystal chandeliers.
Literally in passing I nodded and said "Good Morning" to a woman, and walked on.
The fact that I could not in fact see her did not particularly bother me, she was a clear impression in my mind and she was there, elderly, white-haired, imperious and dressed in Edwardian style.
I told the jeweller they had a ghost in the house and he just said "Oh, you mean the woman in the passage with the chandeliers."
However, I felt help was needed and took a pad and pen and went and sat on the floor in the passage and started asking her questions. This is a summary of what she told me:
She had built and lived in the house and practiced homeopathy there. A relative had died and their teenage daughter, now orphaned, came to live with her there. Unfortunately they did not like each other and both were, in fact, very unhappy people. The woman resented having to look after the girl and the girl didn't like being there.
One day, in the corridor with the chandeliers, they had a violent argument and the woman hit the girl across the face so that her head hit the wall.
She fell to the ground, dead.
The lady naturally thought she had killed the girl and the body was hidden under some of the stonework in the garden. Presumably the woman had help as the disappearance was successfully covered up and not only literally.
What held the woman to that corridor where the 'murder' had taken place was guilt. Overwhelming guilt and remorse and her entrapment in that area was self-inflicted reparation. However, she had a very strong character, to put it mildly and even long years later, when I spoke to her, she held on to resentment that she had been landed with the girl in the first place.
I was able to tell her that in fact the girl had stolen and swallowed a large dose of belladonna from the homeopathic storeroom and was, during the argument, in the process of committing suicide.
The blow may have accelerated the process but when the body hit the floor, it had died from self-inflicted poisoning. Had the woman not been in such a hurry to dispose of the body, she would, as a medical person, have noticed signs of this for herself.
I believed I had convinced the woman of this and persuaded her to leave and move on. However, these obsessions, particularly hatred or guilt, can be so strong as to be unbreakable and I would not be surprised to hear that she came back.
I have lost touch with the occupants of the Villa D'Este. When I explained the 'haunting' to them, they were at first sceptical since she had not been an adult in Edwardian times. But when I pointed out that 'souls without a body' can appear in any guise they want, they laughed and said that the 'Edwardian Grande Dame' had been absolutely up her street!
I should explain here that "not seeing" ghosts which you know are there is in fact a clear impression in the mind, a kind of transparent image, giving shape, form and colour and yet not seen by the eye. Similarly, talking to ghosts is done telepathically, the words being formed and received in the mind, the sound not heard by the ear but very audible for all that. Weird, but true, you really may take it from me.
One of the bedrooms contains a young, dark-haired man with whom the owner of the house often sits and talks. He is a very sad ghost but the owner rather likes having him around.
However, I felt more rescuing was needed and went and sat in the room and talked to him myself.
It appears that he had been attacked by three hooded men who broke in through the large window of the room.
The particularly interesting part is that he had not been killed. What seems to have brought him back to that room after his eventual death was partly the horror of the experience of being attacked but also anger that he had written to his mother to come and help him through the aftermath of the attack and she had not responded.
I was able to tell him (being psychic does occasionally have its uses) that although his mother had given him the address of a friend where she was supposed to be staying, she was in fact in hospital undergoing tests for cancer and had not wanted to worry him.
She never received his letters and kept quiet about the cancer.
On her return he sulked and said nothing. Their relationship was needlessly damaged and was never repaired.
I tried to talk him into moving on and away from the experience but apparently he has not taken my advice and is still in residence.
I could feel his anxiety for me and I told him repeatedly that I was OK and that he should "turn towards the light and go", standard advice in these situations.
One night he did not come and I felt very happy that he had taken my advice and moved on.
Then my sister, who has the autistic son, phoned me and said "You're never going to believe this, but Dad was here last night".
The inhabitants let me show my husband around inside. When we went into the drawing-room I was suddenly gripped by fear and the back of my neck became ice-cold.
My husband told me afterwards that I had simply turned around and walked out of the house and down the driveway to the car, without saying a word of thanks. He was rather cross.
In my memory, I turned and ran and didn't stop running until the fear faded.
My mother had been an alcoholic and the last two tragic years of her life had been spent in that house. I had been almost entirely in charge of her and these poor addicts often hate the people they see as "keepers".
I believe her unhappiness and her hatred of me remained as energy in that house and hope that I am the only one who could feel it so clearly.
Later, I am glad to say that I believe our relationship was healed but that will come into a future article.
We have all had the experience of entering a home and liking or disliking the feel of it immediately. Picking up the vibes.
During the ten years of my marriage we lived in a house in Brackenhurst, Alberton. We built the house, there were no previous occupants. My last two or three years in the house (because of post natal depression) had been very unhappy.
We sold the house after the divorce but I used to pass it several times a year to visit a friend.
Every time I passed the house, it seemed that it was more neglected and had yet another For Sale sign on the gate.
I asked my friend about this and she confirmed that the house had, indeed, been changing hands regularly since we left. Nobody stayed for long. It suddenly occurred to me that MY unhappiness had given that house bad vibes and that I was responsible for the inability of anyone to live happily in it.
I was utterly overwhelmed, with remorse, and with the fact that it is all very well to talk about bad vibes in other people's homes, cause unknown, but to know yourself to be the cause is horrible.
I prayed fervently for the house to be cleared - "take this burden from me" . Prayer is real and the next buyer stayed and the last time I saw the house it was beautifully maintained and obviously loved.
The vibes were dreadul, but my father was a scientist by nature and not open to such feelings, so in we moved.
My first night there, I heard banging coming from above my head. "Great, lousy plumbing too" was my reaction.
The next day I was given the unenviable task of hoovering the entire top floor, deserted servants' quarters inches deep in dust.
I trundled my "tun and hose" vacuum into a room with wallcupboards built into the angle of sloping ceiling and wall.
I decided that I would have to vacuum the inside of the cupboards as well, but as soon as I put the nozzle inside one of them, the vacuum stopped.
I kicked the plug, the vacuum started, I put the nozzle back into the cupboard and it stopped.
Even at the age of 18 I was fairly unaffected by possible ghosts, so I tried a toaster, an iron and a heater and, in each case, the power would stop as soon as the appliance passed over the threshold of the cupboard.
I finally just gave it up and told no-one as my father wouldn't have believed me, even enough to go and see for himself, and my poor mother was already unstable.
That night we went to a cocktail party given by the couple who sold us the house, whose family had bought it from the original builder and owner, the Portuguese Ambassador to England. There is therefore documentation supporting the story we were told.
Historically speaking, a servant raped the daughter of the Ambassador and was discovered by her brother and murdered. The body was stuffed into a wall cupboard and only discovered three days later because of the smell.
Personally, I think the historical documentation was falsified, as no daughter of the house would go into the main servants' quarters unless she had a secret rendezvous..... be that as it may, she apparently went insane and spent the few remaining years of her life going up and down the main staircase, dressed in the same blue riding-habit and obsessively looking in a wardrobe that was only removed from my bedroom just before we moved in.
The ghost story is that the servant can be heard banging about in the wall cupboard and the daughter constantly repeats her journey up and down the stairs. I never saw the daughter, but the only attic room with wall cupboards was above my bedroom and if you still think that noise I heard every night was lousy plumbing, I've got news for you!
So, you still don't believe in ghosts? Well, perhaps you have not been fortunate enough to walk and talk with them.
'Ghosts Are Real
- not only do I see them, but I talk to them'
By Valerie Dean
Valerie Dean is a Johannesburg psychic whose ability was tested by the South Africa Society for the Study of the Paranormal and she was given an A-Plus rating.
"Ghost stories are fabricated, they have a practical explanation. Ghosts do not exist." GHOSTS I HAVE SEEN
At the end of the '70s I was in the Tara Mental Hospital in Johannesburg with post-natal depression. Hold it right there. I may have been depressed, but not crazy and have seen ghosts in a totally placid frame of mind. THE BUGLER ONLY I COULD SEE
Another 'Is it a ghost or a glimpse of the past?' incident took place during my daughter's 21st dinner-disco, which was held in the Officers' Mess of the army base in Centurion, near Pretoria. I will have to emphasise energetically here - I DO NOT DRINK! 'KILL EDDIE'
I once stayed in a cottage which was very pretty but with an uncomfortable vibe. Visitors didn't like to be there. It belonged to an elderly couple who lived in the main house. One of their middle-aged sons decided that he wanted to move back home and I had to leave. AN UNHAPPY SOUL
This following incident I did not experience myself but heard of from my sister, who has an autistic son. The Key School for autistic children in Parktown, Johannesburg, has a set of stairs leading down into a wing where an ex-Principal had once lived. YOU CAN'T BLUFF AUTISTIC KIDS
The most inrteresting part of this happening is that it is probably the nearest thing to proof of the existence of ghosts that we will get. A SUBURB'S GHOSTLY RESIDENT
There is an ordinary family home in the suburbs of Johannesburg belonging to a family which I will not name, to protect their privacy. MY FATHER'S GHOST
My father died when I was 21 and newly arrived in South Africa from our home in England. I subsequently got married and then divorced 10 years later. So it was at a time that would be worrying for a parent that I felt the presence of my father next to my bed, night after night. HATRED ENVELOPS ME - LINGERING ENERGIES OR GHOSTS?
Nearly 30 years ago I went to England with my husband to visit our house in Tunbridge Wells, which features in my final story. It was a very large (Victorian) house and had been turned into a sort of upper-class commune. INFESTING A HOUSE WITH MY OWN UNHAPPINESS
Before I continue the story of the house in Tunbridge Wells, which is a ghost story de luxe, let's have a look at an incident of bad vibes affecting the inhabitants of a house.MURDER MOST FOUL CANCELLED OUT THE ELECTRICITY
Finally, No. 9 Nevill Park, Tunbridge Wells. My mother and I both hated this large, Victorian monstrosity as soon as we walked into it, circa 1966.
