The Ghost that Didn't Like Me

Many years ago I was called out to a nursing home in Newport Pagnell (in the UK) to repair a piece of equipment.  It was fairly late at night, around elevenish, and after I had finished my work the night manager, a thick set lady in her mid fifties, made me a very milky coffee.  We sat in a long narrow dining room with a set of double doors at one end and a dark kitchen at the other.  The kitchen door was open and though the room was in darkness it was possible to make out a stainless steel fridge close to the door and a white mug on the top of it.

As the manager and I chatted I noticed the white mug moving.  It was one of those moments when you think your eyes are playing tricks on you and I did a double take.  Suddenly the mug lifted into the air and hovered.  I suppose my face must have been a picture because the night manager cackled at my open mouthed expression.

"Have you seen our resident ghost?" She laughed.

I pointed towards the kitchen door and she turned around.  Once again she cackled, this time at the sight of a plain white mug seemingly levitating in mid-air.

"Don't worry, it's only Aida, she's harmless, aren't you Aida?" She called.

Suddenly the mug shot from the kitchen, across the dining room and shattered against the wall behind us.

"Ooh, I don't think she likes you!" She exclaimed.

I don't think anything has ever managed to freak me out more than Aida - the supposedly harmless ghost.  Strangely, despite my experience with 'Aida', I don't believe in ghosts any more than I believe in God.  Of course something threw that mug across the room but I cannot believe that if spirits really exist they would be malevolent, evil or even deliberately scary.  Those attributes seem, to me at least, to be a very human way of depicting something we don't understand.  It is no different from the way we treat other nationalities that are very different from ourselves or even other religions and even different generations.

Talk to many old people and you will find they are afraid of youngsters with tattoos and stretchers. My own daughter has tattoos all over her body yet she is as gentle and kind hearted a person as you could ever meet.  However to some old people she looks intimidating and scary.  Since 9/11 Muslims have been demonised as a religion, yet from personal experience I have found the vast majority of people in the Muslim community are peace loving, kind and very generous people.  Yet how many non-Muslims would feel nervous if they were sat next to a young Muslim man carrying a rucksack on a train or a bus?  Most of us don't understand that radical and moderate Muslims are poles apart and those self same misunderstandings make us fearful of all followers of the religion.

Mans default setting for anything he doesn't understand is fear, yet that feeling is illogical.  

Jehovahs Witnesses would have us believe that the battle for Universal Sovereignty is black and white.  On one side is God, a figure we are all trained to believe represents perfect good, on the other is Satan who is depicted as purely evil.  Yet there is no real logic to that premise because of the two entities we are told that it is God who sets the standards for good and evil while Satan has no say in it. However throughout the bible God is described as taking away human life on many, many occasions whereas Satan rarely has that same accusation levelled against him (the only ones I could find were Lots children).

In reality it's never as cut and dried as black and white.  Why would all 'ghosts' be scary and evil? How could God be purely good and Satan purely evil?  Nothing is that straightforward.

So how would I explain Aida?  Easy really.  If you have seen the two American magicians Penn and Teller you will understand that they will show a trick that looks seemingly impossible (catching a bullet in their teeth, being run over by a lorry etc.etc) and you are blown away by it.  However, ten minutes later, when they have finished explaining the secrets to the trick you feel a little fooled and a bit disappointed at it's simplicity.  Sometime in the future these 'ghostly' happenings will be explained and we will all be a bit disappointed that it wasn't nearly as scary as we thought.