Review - When Ghosts Speak
a. Ghosts and Spirits are bullshit.
b. I don’t know what to think or say.
c. They are out there! Let me get my Ouija board out tonight
I fall into category b. This post is meant for category b and c readers only. May I request the vast majority of a. category denizens to please skip this post and check Facebook instead.
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I recently finished reading “When Ghosts Speak” written by Mary Ann Winkowski. In this book, Mary Ann – now a paranormal investigator – tells her incredible story. She reveals the difference between earthbound spirits and those who have crossed over, why ghosts stay on the earthly plane and the importance of the “White Light” that appears when any creature dies.
I loved reading this book. In fact, I am a self confessed loser when it comes to books and reading (which has surprised me a zillion times, as I claim to be a writer. How can you write well if you do not read well!). As soon as I read the first page of this book, I was hooked. This book (irrespective of how much is believable) has managed to satisfy my long felt peeve of applying some crude structure or framework to this pseudoscience of afterlife, occult or whatever term your lexicon hosts. I am very much a charts guy. Anything and everything should and must be categorized neatly or roughly into a chart showing groups, then sub groups then sub sub groups. For example - lets take God. My limited influences still yield me a stucture as follows - Group1: Religion; Group2: Non Religion. Under Group1 we can have Monotheism (only one deity) or Polytheism (many dieties). Under Monotheism we can say idol worship (Christianity) and non idol worship (Islam, Sikhism). So on and so forth. I hope you get the drift of my everything-should-fall-in-order view of this world. Now, there is an absolute innundation of ghostly material around us, in literature, television. Hitherto it was unclear how to make a chart and group logically all things related to 'afterlife world'. Namely - demons, exorcism, satan, spirit, poltergeist, wicca, witchcraft, black magic, ouija, seances, mediums, automatic writing, curses and spells, pentagrams the list just goes on and on.
After reading 'When Ghosts Speak' I must say I have achieved the first logical grouping. Group1: Pre Crossover; Group2: Post Crossover. ALL that long laundry list would fall into either of these two master groups. How exactly, I still am unable to figure :-). Let me leave you with the table of contents of the book. I strongly recommend this for anyone serious enough in this field. Otherwise avoid.
Part 1 – Listening to Spirits
1. My Story – Discovering a gift
Part 2 – Understanding Earthbound Spirits
2. The Truth About Ghosts – Separating fact from fiction
3. The White Light – An opportunity to cross over
4. Why Some Souls Stay Behind – And how I convince them to cross over
5. Funerals – Expect to attend your own
6. Murders and Suicides – When spirits stay after unnatural deaths
7. Children – How young spirits are different
8. Animals – Loyal after death
9. Evil Spirits – Rare but real
Part 3 – Living with Ghosts
10. Asking For Trouble – How people attract earthbound spirits
11. Signs That You Are Not Alone – Identifying the presence of spirits around you
12. How To Deal With Ghosts – Protecting yourself from the influence of earthbound spirits
13. Curses And Other Negative Energy – What you can do to prevent, remove or weaken negative energy
PS: Some people would be receiving this post as an email in their inbox. Since you guys don't visit my blog often AND i want you to, hence you have been chosen to forcefully read my blogposts now delivered snugly in your inboxes.
Labels: Book Reviews, Ghosts, Life and Death
7 comments
interesting !
The index of the book is too tempting to try..but I am too scared to read such stuff :) ..as i am not sure if they exist or not...
Lol@ May I request the vast majority of a. category denizens to please skip this post and check Facebook instead.
I would love to read the book but would be too scared thereafter, especially after reading Part 3!
Although I was at one time addicted to shows such as "Buffy The Vampire Slayer", "Angel"...although I watched it because I found the lead actor very handsome! Hehehehehehe...
...and also "The Charmed Ones"!
I will rather stick to the stories that you'd be publishing soon...I hope you are working on them, remember the gun is still pointed at you!!!!!! :D
Guys, this is absolutely NOT scary. Unless, of course, you have a mid night table lamp alone in bed reading habits.
Well I fall into category a people, still I read your blog, now you should pay me!! lol. Whatever the things are, I am fascinated with people's imagination in these kinds of stories. And the things about ghosts are from yesteryear when technology was not even advanced. Over the years, the research in this field has improved a lot and still out of my imagination.
category a.
skipped the post.
still commenting coz i wanna see you comment count go up.
Aren't you lucky to have me for a reader :DDD
I have always believed in the existence of spirits as energy which leaves the body. I mean, what is it that differentiates us from other non living things? Its the spirit inside us, which makes us capable of thinking, feeling, loving, hating and doing things. Once our body reaches a physical state where it cannot operate anymore, the spirit leaves it - this is the equilibrium that is maintained between the spirit and the body. Obviously they do exist, because without them we wouldn't exist.
I feel it very strange when people say that they don't believe in spirits because its scientifically not possible and because they haven't seen them. First of all, how are we scientifically possible? If we are possible, then so can be spirits? They can be explained scientifically as a form of energy which exists in us, and which has been found/ proven in many experiments. There are have also been many cases of hauntings and exorcisms reported - while some may have been exaggerated, surely all of them can't be wrong. There are many reasons why the world as a whole does not accept this fact and that's because people will stop believing in the way they live life, they will do crimes and blame it on the supernatural, the balance of good and bad in the society will go for a toss, etc. Science has not yet explained everything in the universe - maybe one day it will explain spirits also as a form of energy inside us. There was a time when we believed that man can't fly in the air or make things that fly in the air, but now we can make aeroplanes. There was a time when we believed that the Sun went around the Earth, but that was proven wrong. So who is to say that the "spirits don't exist" fallacy will also not be proven wrong?
How can we be so ignorant and say that they don't exist just because we have not seen them? I mean just how much great do we think that we are, that if we haven't seen something it shouldn't even exist? As Akshay Kumar said in a comedy movie, "have you seen Japan? No? Does that mean Japan doesn't exist?". Its as simple as that.... there are 10 to the power of 11 galaxies in the universe, and 10 to the power of 11 stars in each galaxy, meaning there are 10 to the power of 22 stars in the universe like our sun. Who knows how many planets likes ours exist, how many have life and in what forms? How much have we seen of this universe to say that we have seen everything? We have seen nothing, absolutely nothing at all. Those who disagree to the concept of spirits in the name of science surely haven't thought even this bit much about science itself. They should broaden their mind and defer judgment - if they haven't seen something, it doesn't mean that others haven't either. If somebody else claims that he has seen a spirit, as is reported in many stories - while some can be false, who are we to say that some were not true? When we didn't experience it, how can we say it was wrong? That's very narrow-minded thinking.
Continuing with my earlier post above (since it was long and couldn't be posted in one shot):
Its just that maybe at times, God does not want us to see and know certain things. Again God here is not the God that religious beliefs portray but rather He is the origin/ source of power for the universe, which gave matter its basic properties that made the universe evolve the way it has evolved. He set the rule that "likes will repel" and "unlikes will attract", which is why it takes a lot of energy to fuse 4 Hydrogen atoms into Helium, and a lot of energy is released in the process and that is how stars like our Sun/ galaxies are formed and that is how we evolved and reproduce to sustain life on this planet. God is that power, which gave matter these properties so that the universe can be created the way it was created, because as we know everything followed an evolution cycle and happened gradually - the way we and every other living organism has body parts and organs dedicated for specific functionality proves it - so definitely there was a very strong force behind it which made it happen and is monitoring it too. And God also believed in "abstraction" - that we should know only as much as we should know. Don't we follow it too? When our children are young, don't we forbid them to watch adult movies? Don't we forbid them to get involved in serious discussions between adults? So when we can do abstraction with our kids, why can't God do it with us? Maybe He did not want all of us to know about spirits, maybe He did not want us to know about aliens, maybe He wanted to give us only a hint, and only a select people the opportunity to really see and experience them. Most of us can live our lives without knowing about these things, and that is why He chose not to tell us. We should understand and respect that, rather than thinking that there is no God and thinking that we are know-alls who know everything because that way we are challenging our own existence and just proving that we are the biggest ignorant idiots He created.
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