What Are Ghosts?
The idea of ghosts is the result of a mistake of the brain or an attempt to account for something of which we see the results, but have no actual knowledge. There are no ghosts. There are many forces at work in the world of which we know nothing as yet. Many of the wonderful things that occur in the world are as yet mysteries to the mind of man. Every little while man discovers one of these new forces, and then he is able to understand many things plainly which were up to then surrounded with mystery and in the minds of superstitious people attributed to spirits or ghosts. Long before we understood as much as we do now of the workings of electricity (and they say we know only a little of its wonders as yet) many of the natural wonders produced by electricity were attributed to ghosts.
Most of the marvelous tales of the wonders performed by and visits from ghosts are the result of disturbances of the brain in the people who think they see the ghosts and the results of their work.
A creature without imagination does not pretend to see or believe in ghosts. Man is the only animal which possesses the ability to imagine things and so the ghosts we hear about are the creatures of the disturbed brains of men. Generally in the ghost stories we hear of, the ghost is described as wearing clothes—usually white. A bed sheet thrown over the foot of the bed may appear to a half-awake person as the outline of the figure of a ghost and to one of a highly imaginative temperament without the courage of investigation, become forever a real ghost. Usually what is supposed to be a ghost is only a creation of the mind—a vision such as we can develop during a dream—oftentimes, however, what you look at when you think you see a ghost is an actual something such as the sheet referred to, but which takes the form of the ghost in the brain of the person who is looking at it through eyes that really see it, but out of a brain that for the moment at least is far off its balance.