If you grew up, as I did, in any of the settlements along the Kumba-Mamfe-Ekok road, then you have certainly heard stories of dead and buried people who were later seen in some distant place living a full human life: working, married and perhaps raising up children and supporting the original family back home. Chances also are that you yourself have encountered a ghost at least once; only once if you were exceptionally lucky!
I vividly remember each of my many encounters with ghosts, even ghost couples! May be someday I would get the motivation to write a fascinating book on ghosts. My last encounter with ghosts took place in Mungo Ndoh, a beautiful village in Nguti sub-division that was recently burnt down in this current savagery. As an Altar Server on mission with the Reverend Father Louis Nomi of blessed memory, I was sleeping alone in the car when sometimes around midnight the worst happened. I awoke the entire village with my screams: “Devil oh! Devil oh! Devil oh!”
Given such a ghost-rich background and considering my theological exposure and psychology adventures, I think I have a good reason for venturing into the world of ghosts. More so because my closest neighbours at the moment are the corpses in the Limbe Community Cemetery. With my bedroom being just metres away from this cemetery, only a mortuary attendant can compete with me when it comes to being daily in the presence of the dead. As I sit on my desk, lie on my bed, or enjoy my balcony, graves stare at me nicely in the face.
Naturally, then, I should be interested in the truth about ghosts. What truth? The truth that in much the same way that angels can take human form (cf. Genesis 19:1-5) to do good, so too can demons, the fallen angels, do likewise to deceive and harm people. Such is likely the case when a dead person is seen and recognized by those who knew them when they were still alive.
God has given human existence a fixed pattern which no created power can alter. We come into this world at birth and we quit at death. For the rest of our existence we shall either be forever with God in heaven or forever with the devil in hell. After death, a person cannot return to this world for some other form of existence since “it is appointed that men should die once and after that judgement” (Hebrews 9:27). There is abundant scriptural evidence that on rare occasions and for very special reasons God takes the liberty to send a holy person back to earth (cf. Matthew 17:1-13). But there is no evidence that he has given this same power to Satan even though Satan may sometimes manipulate situations as in 1 Samuel 28.
Approached differently, we can also not underestimate the power of the human mind to conjure up things. Essentially, many of the ghost encounters are not unconnected with hallucinations brought about by severe destruction of the mind at infancy by the ghost stories that adults shamelessly tell children or irresponsibly allow them to watch on television.
Therefore, as a sickening phenomenon that can cause chaos, torture and destroy people, ghosts exist. But as a reality, as a category of creatures with existential import, ghosts as ghosts do not exist. So then, whenever a person encounters a ghost only one of two things is happening: Their mind is playing a dirty trick on them or else the devil is up to some mischief. Anyone who disagrees with my thesis is welcome to challenge it: state your case and bring your proofs so that we can examine the facts together.