Sacred Ghosts of the East

I found the original paper today and now, I present it to the general public so you can see where I, a paranormal fiction writer, came up with my concept of ghosts.

If you like what you read, please find me on social media and look for “Zinfandel” to come out in Fall 2019.

Note: My last name at the time this was written was Johnson. I have since remarried and my last name is now Clayton. I assure you, I am the same person.

Sacred Ghosts of the East

By

Gwen Johnson

Instructor: Richard Trussell

Religious Studies 220A: World Religions I

October 2008

Scribes from every culture throughout history have exalted earth-bound spirits in their literature and folktales. Some writers portray these spirits as grim specters or tricksters determined to frighten us, while other authors describe them as angels or saints guiding wayward travelers or healing the sick and lame. All ghosts, as we have come to call these non-beings, have been depicted as deceased life-forms that have returned from the dead in order to walk among the realm of the living.

Here in the Christian west, Charles Dickens wrote about the three most famous Christmas ghosts in mythology. None of these specters were alive enough to have a heartbeat, or dead enough to altogether leave their worldly homes, yet all of them were sentient enough to teach Ebenezer Scrooge, and every reader since then, the values of humility, charity and joviality.

On October thirty-first of each year, the dead return to the world of the living at the intersection of the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice. It is on this day that the United States celebrates Halloween, while Mexico holds its Dia des Los Muertos festival, and the Celtic lands turn their calendars at Samhain. Is it coincidence or some sort of archetypical realization that this day is sacred among the dead?

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