Augustine's Ghost Story

[Michie]

The great saint couldn't resist a spectral tale​

St. Augustine was the first Church Father to consider at length stories of ghostly apparitions that appeared in various strands of hagiography, legend, scripture, and eyewitness testimony. It’s not truly a “theology of ghosts,” but it’s a more developed consideration of the subject that anyone else, even Tertullian, had attempted, or indeed would attempt for centuries.

Augustine firmly rejected the idea that the dead could return from the afterlife to make themselves visible to the living. The idea that a person who saw a ghost was seeing, essentially, the soul of the departed was impossible. He addressed the issue is his letter to his friend Evodius (Letter 158 from Evodius and Letter 159 from Augustine) and in a treatise addressed to Paulinus of Nola called On the Care to Be Given to the Dead.

Evodius was a friend and follower of Augustine who eventually became the Bishop of Uzalis. His letters to Augustine often prompted prolonged discourses. In Letter 158, Evodius tells a complicated story of multiple waking and sleeping apparitions of known dead people who come to either predict a death, or reveal the fate of someone already dead. Evodius appears to accept these as legitimate experiences of the departed, although it is notable that he was eyewitness to none of them.

Continued below.

Augustine's Ghost Story

The great saint couldn't resist a spectral tale

weirdcatholic.substack.com

 

[Bob Crowley]

I'm afraid I'd have to disagree with the learned doctor on this one. I've often claimed on this forum and elsewhere that the night my father died he appeared in my room. I still remember much of the discussion.

He made some dire predictions, which now seem to be on the way, but he also made a couple of personal predictions. One was "You'll become a Christian" (I was atheist at the time) and as part of that "You'll meet a pastor. You'll think he's great, but all he'll do is to discourage you even more!" (than he had himself).

I became a Christian the better part of four years later and met the pastor. About nine years later the pastor said said "I owe you an apology..... You needed encouragement, but all I've done is to discourage you even more!"

I pointed out the pastor's prediction and he blurted out "You really did see your father that night!"

So I think we can see "Ghosts". I did have another event when I was quite young. One of my aunts dropped dead at quite an early age from a heart attack. She'd had glandular fever when she was young, and it weakened her heart. Apparently she was brushing her daughter's hair when it happened.

Anyway we (our family) drove to her home some distance away to offer some support. I was only six, seven or eight at the time.

But as we were about to leave, we were all on the footpath together. Then my aunt, who was still lying dead inside the house (it took the ambulances a bit longer in those days to arrive - they weren't anywhere near as well funded or equipped as they are now), "walked" out onto the small front patio.

It was rather eerie. She looked at my father with what seemed to me to be a look of judgement and then she looked at me in a way that wasn't much more encouraging. Then she turned and "walked" back into the house.

My father turned to me with a demonic look on his face and snarled "Get in the car!"

So I got in the car.

I've had a few visions of the old pastor from time to time, but I think they're the only two "ghost" stories I can relate. In both cases there was a context.

My mother told me years later the aunt was a devout Catholic. I suspect she had been shown how my father treated us, and I suppose the look of judgement was in keeping with that new found revelation.

When my father turned up the night he died, nearly 20 years later, my very last vision of him was an absolutely blood curdling scream just before he disappeared into eternity.

Then he just vanished.

I'm afraid I have a difference of opinion with the learned doctor.

 

[RileyG]

I'm afraid I'd have to disagree with the learned doctor on this one. I've often claimed on this forum and elsewhere that the night my father died he appeared in my room. I still remember much of the discussion.

He made some dire predictions, which now seem to be on the way, but he also made a couple of personal predictions. One was "You'll become a Christian" (I was atheist at the time) and as part of that "You'll meet a pastor. You'll think he's great, but all he'll do is to discourage you even more!" (than he had himself).

I became a Christian the better part of four years later and met the pastor. About nine years later the pastor said said "I owe you an apology..... You needed encouragement, but all I've done is to discourage you even more!"

I pointed out the pastor's prediction and he blurted out "You really did see your father that night!"

So I think we can see "Ghosts". I did have another event when I was quite young. One of my aunts dropped dead at quite an early age from a heart attack. She'd had glandular fever when she was young, and it weakened her heart. Apparently she was brushing her daughter's hair when it happened.

Anyway we (our family) drove to her home some distance away to offer some support. I was only six, seven or eight at the time.

But as we were about to leave, we were all on the footpath together. Then my aunt, who was still lying dead inside the house (it took the ambulances a bit longer in those days to arrive - they weren't anywhere near as well funded or equipped as they are now), "walked" out onto the small front patio.

It was rather eerie. She looked at my father with what seemed to me to be a look of judgement and then she looked at me in a way that wasn't much more encouraging. Then she turned and "walked" back into the house.

My father turned to me with a demonic look on his face and snarled "Get in the car!"

So I got in the car.

I've had a few visions of the old pastor from time to time, but I think they're the only two "ghost" stories I can relate. In both cases there was a context.

My mother told me years later the aunt was a devout Catholic. I suspect she had been shown how my father treated us, and I suppose the look of judgement was in keeping with that new found revelation.

When my father turned up the night he died, nearly 20 years later, my very last vision of him was an absolutely blood curdling scream just before he disappeared into eternity.

Then he just vanished.

I'm afraid I have a difference of opinion with the learned doctor.

One of my earliest memories was a ghost staring right at me.

It's burned right into my memory.

I believe it was a soul from purgatory.

 

[Bob Crowley]

Early on in my Christian walk, I ended up seeing a few spiritual counsellors, as I was having a few issues at the time.

One of them was a Presbyterian pastor who had a ministry with street kids. He made a comment about the demonic saying "I've just seen too much of it!" I didn't gain much from the meeting, and eventually I ended up working through the issues anyway.

But he also said "There's a very strange psychic world out there!"

I think that just about sums it up.

 

[RileyG]

Early on in my Christian walk, I ended up seeing a few spiritual counsellors, as I was having a few issues at the time.

One of them was a Presbyterian pastor who had a ministry with street kids. He made a comment about the demonic saying "I've just seen too much of it!" I didn't gain much from the meeting, and eventually I ended up working through the issues anyway.

But he also said "There's a very strange psychic world out there!"

I think that just about sums it up.

If people prayed for the souls in purgatory......I think there would be less and less hauntings.

My opinion only.

 

[Michie]

Do Catholics Believe in Ghosts? Here's What the Church Teaches

Do Catholics believe in ghosts? What the Church teaches may surprise you!

www.churchpop.com

 

[mourningdove~]

I don't refer to these things as 'ghosts'. It's just not a word I use in my vocabulary.

I believe many supernatural occurrences can be attributed to demons, but I do believe there can be something else going on, also. What it is, I'm not sure what to call it. And I don't think it really matters.

Shortly after my first husband died, I believe I was visited by him. He came to say 'goodbye'; I wasn't present when he died. (Details I'll keep private.) The interesting thing is that during this same time period, a neighbor hesitantly approached me to tell me that he believed he saw my (deceased) husband walking along the side of my ('our') house. I didn't laugh at my neighbor for believing so, as I believed it may have been possible.

Another true story. There was a mother I knew, who was very depressed and distraught over her difficult life. She determined to end it all, for herself and her children. She gathered her 4 children with her in their kitchen, and planned to end their troubles by asphyxiation (gas stove). She told the children they were playing 'camp out', and would be spending the nite sleeping together on the kitchen floor. But the 'camp out' was interrupted, before the gas stove was turned on. This mother told me that she suddenly felt the presence of her loving deceased father in the kitchen, because she could smell his cigar. He use to smoke cigars, and she was very familiar with the smell of them. And so, feeling somehow comforted by her father's 'presence', she didn't go thru with her plans for the family 'camp out'.

Was that the 'ghost' of her father that visited that mother in the kitchen, or some other kind of divine intervention by God? Whatever it was, clearly God did not want for that family to die that day.

And the visits by my deceased husband? Well, that sounds more along 'the ghost' story line, but in any case, it was very comforting to me to have a sense of his presence near, during that time of intense sadness.

The Lord works in strange and mysterious ways, but I do believe He works for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.

 

[Bob Crowley]

Someone I know has done a lot of work as a counsellor. The topic of 'ghosts' came up.

She said it's fairly common for people to get "last goodbye" visits from close relatives and friends. I assume she made that comment based on her counselling experience.