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20141020

The Ghost Story: Fear and the Human Mind (satire)

Some people are afraid of ghosts; other people aren't.

Perhaps ghost stories being told around Hallowe'en is to "scare" away the concern about dangerous tricks performed on that day with terrible consequences and replace it with the innocent excitement of going door to door to beg for candy and other treats.

Using the cartoon Casper the Friend Ghost as an example, Casper may represent a boy living in poverty who was cared for by an uncle. One day he ran away from home after being scolded by his uncle, and decided to leave their abandoned house. It was a nice way of exposing us to poverty without us kids knowing that the creator was secretly mocking the homeless and the poor.

In almost every ghost story that is a comedy, we see signs that one of the ghosts is a pauper or a bum e.g. Beetlejuice the Movie.

However, most ghost stories are created to scare us with the hope that perhaps the pandemonium may lead to a moral panic so that a ghost buster can scam them all as in Ghostbusters.

In most cases of ghosts, the gullible in a haunted scare everyone else around them. The "ghost" is actually their fear talking, and other people may pick up on that.

It is hard to tell a person who is afraid of ghosts that the only thing to fear is fear itself. When fear appears, observe it until it leaves and then follow it until you feel it no more. Eventually you will accept your fear of ghosts as unrealistic.

My purpose in stating the previous three sentences is to show that mere words cannot cure a man of fear. Rather, reason is needed to distract the fearful person from obsessing about the fear-inducing object, the ghost.

Fear cannot always be real, since it only affects our minds.

Through a person's control of the mind, it is possible to overcome fear. That is where meditation comes into the picture.

At this point in the discussion, I urge the gentle reader to ignore the ghost stories. Fill your mind with everything but the supernatural. For your fear verges on superstition because you believe in something that never exists except in the human mind.

Some people may still be afraid of ghosts; I am not.

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