Fascinating CNN story: Ghosts of coronavirus victims are appearing to loved ones worldwide...

[Michie]

...[this is why Masses, indulgences, suffrages for the dead are so important!]

(CNN)They never ran out of things to talk about. It was obvious from the start.

He was a brawny former Maine lobsterman with a booming baritone. She was a redhead with freckles from Wisconsin who worked in corporate recruiting. They talked about everything from sci-fi movies and her love for the rock group Bon Jovi to whether the Lord of the Rings film trilogy did justice to J.R.R. Tolkien's books. He asked for permission to kiss her on their first date. She said yes.

When Ian and Michelle Horne got married, he wore a purple tie on their wedding day because it was her favorite color. As the years rolled by, they got matching tattoos and gave each other nicknames from the movie, "The Princess Bride." He called her Princess Buttercup and she called him "Farm Boy Wesley." They made plans to visit Ireland this year to celebrate her Irish roots.

Then came the pandemic. Last fall, after a long battle, Michelle Horne died from complications caused by Covid-19. Ian Horne's "superpower," as he called her, was gone. They had been married almost 10 years.

But not long after his wife's death, the morning radio deejay in Wichita, Kansas, wondered if Michelle was still speaking to him. He was driving to his job in the predawn darkness when he spotted something odd. About two dozen streetlights flanking the highway had turned purple. They looked like a lavender string of pearls glowing in the night sky.

Continued below.
They lost their loved ones to Covid. Then they heard from them again - CNN

 

[Gnarwhal]

Aren't these kinds of things usually demonic?

 

[Chrystal-J]

Aren't these kinds of things usually demonic?

I tend to think so. As it says in Psalm 146:3-4
3 Put not your trust in princes,
in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.
4 When his breath departs, he returns to the earth;
on that very day his plans perish.

 

[Bob Crowley]

Aren't these kinds of things usually demonic?

We don't know what they are. They may be demonic; they may be ghosts working out their purgatory in a confined location; they may be spirits who need our help.

I lifted the following extract from the quoted article.

In the classic memoir, "What It Is like to Go to War," Karl Marlantes, a Vietnam veteran, wrote about how the ghost of a North Vietnamese soldier he killed stalked him years after he returned home.

In one striking passage, Marlantes relates how he exorcised his enemy's ghost. He arranged a private mass with a priest at 2 in the morning at an old church where he says he saw the spirits of the enemies he killed and the comrades who died under his command file into the pews. Even his late grandparents appeared, smiling as if they approved.

Counselors working with veterans often hear such stories, Janssen says.

In September 2011, the De Vanny family from Australia visited the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbour. The mother Susan took a photo but didn't realise what she had until she was looking through her photos later.

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To me that spirit is asking for help, one of 1,177 servicemen who were killed on that ship, and in many cases their bodies weren't found. Most of them would have been young men, with the usual military reputation for less than godly living, caught unawares and spiritually unprepared by a surprise attack, and very unpleasant deaths.

I sometimes wonder what would happen if a couple of US military Catholic chaplains set up shop on board the USS Arizona, with the intention of hearing ghostly confessions.

And then just waited.

 

[AvilaSurfer]

Aren't these kinds of things usually demonic?

Absolutely not.

 

[Gnarwhal]

Absolutely not.

I mean, I've heard of Saints or the Blessed Mother appearing to people, but they were already canonized so their status was known.

 

[Michie]

I mean, I've heard of Saints or the Blessed Mother appearing to people, but they were already canonized so their status was known.

I’ve also read where it a plea for prayer. Spirits in purgatory.