Haunted Houses

I must admit I like to watch TV shows about haunted houses. As a Christian I firmly believe in the existence of angels and demons, and life after death, so I am very slow to write-off such haunted house tales as mere myths or hallucinations. However, there is some serious sorting-out to do regarding what we see and hear so consistently on those shows.

To put it plainly, disembodied human souls (or ghosts) do not linger our atmosphere.  Instead, they depart immediately either into the presence of the Lord, or to “hades” (hell) after the physical body dies (Luke 16:19-31; Luke 23:43-46; Acts 7:59; and 2nd Corinthians 5:8). If you claim to have seen or heard the ghost of a deceased person, you may have the utmost of sincerity, but you are sincerely deceived.  Assuming what you saw was real and not a hallucination, that “ghost” that you saw was actually a demon (or evil spirit, or “familiar” spirit, or “unclean” spirit—all synonyms).

Satan, the devil, has not been cast into the lake of fire just yet (Revelation 12:9-12; 20:10).  For now, he and many of his fellow evil spirits are free to travel throughout the earth (Job 1:6-7; Ephesians 2:2; and 1st Peter 5:8-9).  This is especially evident in the accounts of demon possession and exorcism (Matthew 8:16; Mark 1:23-27; Acts 8:7; and Acts 16:16-18). 

That is why God abhors the practices of witchcraft and necromancy—summoning and communicating with the dead (Deuteronomy 18:10-12).  Necromancy can take the form of a séance, a Ouija board, or chants from spell books (namely the Necronomicon), or the highly-televised practice of “ghost hunting”.  Make no mistake about it: trying to summon a disembodied soul is forbidden by God, and for good reason.  You may be trying to contact your great grandmother that died decades ago, but in reality, you are contacting an evil spirit that’s obsessed with deceiving you and hurting you, one way or another (John 8:44; John 10:10; 2nd Corinthians 4:4; and 1st Peter 5:8).  If Satan can masquerade as an “angel of light” (2nd Corinthians 11:13-14) then who’s to say that he (or any one of his spirit cronies) cannot masquerade as a human ghost as well?

Ghost hunters (and sadly some priests and pastors) will have you believe that most or at least some hauntings are the activity of disembodied human ghosts.  Hank Hanegraaff would say, “That’s the skin of the truth stuffed with a lie.”  The truth is that all hauntings are demonic (whenever they are real and not imaginary).  The real solution is to call upon Jesus, who has authority over all spirits good and evil (Matthew 28:18; Luke 10:18-20; Acts 16:16-18; Acts 19:13-16; Romans 16:20; Philippians 2:10-11; Colossians 2:15; and James 4:7).

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