Are hauntings real?

A full moon in spooky Virginia

On the eve of Halloween, and All Souls and All Saints Days, I appreciated this article from The Pillar, Are hauntings real?

It takes a look at several common questions that come up when considering the possibilities of ghosts, spirits, and demons, answered by Dr. Regis Martin, author of The Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell.

To the question about what the Church teaches about hauntings, and whether places can actually be haunted by spirits, Dr. Martin say,

I think [they] can be...We're not alone. This [world] is a very rich sort of mosaic that we're looking at; there is a lot more than you can see.

When you die, you become more intensely real than you ever were in the flesh, and I don't see why that shouldn't spill over into this world from time to time. 

I’d agree with that. It reminds me of a book I read recently, C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce. In it, the author is taken on a bus ride from Hell to Heaven, and you learn what sorts of people stay in hell (a world they create themselves) and what sorts of behavior get one into Heaven (spoiler alert: it is not becoming famous or rich).

One of the lessons the protagonist must learn is how to physically get around in the new world of Heaven, where every movement is painful to his body. Lights are brighter, grass is sharper, movements are slower. It is explained to him that this is because everything in Heaven is realer, and even that great, dark chasm he thought he was leaving in Hell to enter Heaven was no bigger than a virtually unseeable sliver of an opening, compared to the bigness, grandness, and realness of all he saw and experienced in Heaven. Imagine an opening in the earth as wide as a football stadium, which is rendered nearly unseeable by the reality of the bigness of God.

The interview with Dr. Martin goes on to cover other good topics, including whether Catholics can celebrate Halloween (yes, yay), the value of having holy water in the home, a bit on purgatory (I hope you pray for the souls in purgatory - you will have an opportunity to on All Souls Day Tuesday, November 2), and demons, because as Jimmy Aiken would say, it’s always demons.

I find nothing wrong with Halloween, and actually have always thoroughly enjoyed getting dressed up and a little spooked. As Dr. Martin points out, you can actually look at wearing a mask as making fun of the Enemy, that:

Those masks that you wear are really a way, I think, of ridiculing the devil. Unmasking the devil. You make fun of him. He can't bear derision. And Halloween is one of those wonderfully risible moments when we poke fun at the old guy, and when we look at him and say, “You are really quite laughable because you have no power, except for the power we give you.”

On the topic of masks and being real, I recall that scene from the 1994 movie “The Mask” where Jim Carrey has taken the mask to an anthropologist, played by Ben Stein, who gives him this piece of wisdom: masks, as often as they allow us to hide, actually allow us to truly be ourselves, as well. In having on a mask, our inhibitions and fear drop. We can be more real.

So, what do heaven and masks have in common? Apparently, the ability to require of us our realness.

Wishing you an excellent Halloween, with just the amount of spookiness you desire.