Ghost stories

Do you like scary stories? Most people probably do, in one form or another. Today's stories (usually movies), however, are often silly or worse. The hero is obliged to kill the evil spirit--which of course (hello? any body home?) is, um, already dead. (Yawn...)

But the true ghost story is an art, indeed an art of the moral imagination. My treat these days is Russell Kirk's Ancestral Shadows, subtitled: "An Anthology of Ghostly Tales." It is champagne compared to the Thunderbird that is the modern ghost movie. Kirk understood the need for the ghost story to be primarily a moral tale, not just a scary story.

And if you really, really want to be scared? I have the book for you: The Awakening by Friedrich Zuendel. It's now a free download from Plough Books. It is the true story of a Lutheran pastor in Germany in the 19th century who did not believe in the world of evil spirits. Which only made it harder on him when he found that this world believed in him. Quite seriously I think it would be hard for any Christian to read this book and not be thoroughly convinced that evil spirits pervade our world today and that we are protected only by God's mercy.

So what's the practical point? The classic ghost story, or the historical stories of ghostly presences or demonic possession, are, if you will, preachings of the law, after hearing such you are quite likely to flee to the Gospel. They are, for some, God's megaphone (as Lewis would say). Try these suggestions (but only with the lights on!)