A New Church Take On Ghosts

Three Bryn Athyn College students recently made a short documentary about ghost stories called “Confessions of the Unknown” for their English class. They included in it interviews with Rev. Scott Frazier and Rev. Andy Dibb to provide a New Church perspective on ghosts. (You can buy the documentary at the new cafe in the Swedenborg Library.)

In the February issue of B.A.C.O.N. Bits, Bryn Athyn College's student newspaper, Rev. Don Rose provides a few more thoughts and passages on the topic; he writes,

A passage in Divine Providence mentions someone hearing “a few words.” The passage says that those who are permitted to say these words “never say anything that takes away the freedom of the reason” (Divine Providence 135). Another passage speaks of exceptional cases when people receive a kind of response in their thought, but these are “rarely by clear speech” (Divine Providence 321:3). A passage in Heaven and Hell speaks of rare instances of speech from spirits. “Some who lead a solitary life sometimes hear spirits talking with them” (Heaven and Hell 249). ...

There are spirits who are able to convince us that we have seen something. “For example, if the object be in a dark place, these spirits keep the mind of the beholder fixedly and continually in the thought of some one thing, be it an animal, a monster, a forest, or any other things; and so long as the mind is held in this thought, the fantasy is increased, and it grows to such a degree that the person is persuaded, and sees just as if the things themselves were there, whereas they are nothing but illusions” (Arcana Coelestia 1967).