If I told someone I could answer any question they had accurately, that they could ask me anything, and I’d be able to give them an honest, definitive, and correct answer, but they could only ask one. What do you think would be the main question people would ask? It would have to be the question, the one, unanswerable, question of questions. In reality there are probably a few of these, but the most famous (or infamous for being unanswerable) is the question ‘What is the Meaning of Life’? To me, this is dumb. It’s all right to wonder what the answer is – if even there is an answer. But you wouldn’t catch me wasting my one and only super hard question on that worthless bit of trivia.

Assuming I hadn’t already used my question in my 2001 GCSE Maths exam (how am I supposed to know what the fuck x equals?), I’d have to consider another of the big, question of questions. Which is ‘what happens to an immortal soul, after death’. This is of course somewhat of a leading question, as should the answer be ‘Fuck All’ then the soul is not immortal, it’s not really even a soul, just part of the body. So let’s just assume that the ‘soul’ does have links to metaphysical being, and it is separate from the body in theory. However if the answer is ‘nothing’ – after death the soul will simply cease to be just as the body has done.

This last statement is a fair assumption. With all we know about history, mathematics, physics, and science in general, there must be a large percentage of odds about to topple over like a wedding reception sized Jenga game on the ‘Fuck All’ side of the favour line. But that’s very easy.

Besides, despite the mounting evidence, or rather, lack of evidence of any kind, only common sense. How would we really know? The only thing you may think is certain is that when you die, you can’t come back. If you could, then you could tell people (write a book or something) about the fact that you died, and you lived in the afterlife, but it wasn’t for you and now you’re back. You’d be the first ghost/zombie to win the Nobel prize!

But no! Not even this is proven. Tonight (Halloween) marks the last day of summer (In the Celtic Calendar, it’s the last day of the ‘light half’ of the year’) on which for some unknown reason, probably thunk up by a marketing man, the gap between the world in which we live (reality), is closest to another world (assumed to be filled with dead guys).

So the Celts certainly believed in immortal souls and life after death and such. Although I’m not sure if you can even call it a ‘life’. You’re locked away for 354 days of the year, then on the one night you are allowed to come back and say hello to all your mates, they dress up in fancy dress, hoping you won’t recognise them.

I don’t think we’ll ever be able to answer the question once and for all. There’s too much hype and scepticism shrouding the whole thing.

I may not believe in ghosts. The best way someone can prove me wrong, and force me to believe that ghosts are once and for all, real. Is by telling me that they’ve seen one. If someone told me Sylvester Stallone was in Hull the other day, I wouldn’t believe them. ‘What would Sylvester Stallone ever be doing in Hull?!’ I’d say. But if they told me they knew he was because they’d seen him in the library and they spoke to him, I’d have to believe it. If someone told me ghosts were real because they’d seen one, I’d hide the knives.

Even my own, closest ghostly experience was whilst visiting a tourist town somewhere around the south coast. I don’t recall the exact fishing village it was in, but I was visiting ‘The Smallest House in Britain’. It’s not Tussauds no, but it seemed to be the only tourist attraction in the village so I went for it. There were only 2 rooms. A ground floor, and a small half staircase and half ladder going up to a 1st floor that you couldn’t get in to, just poke your head up and look round. I queued to get in to the place (unsurprisingly it was one in one out of the 4 square foot house, and I hadn’t brought any girls with me), and when it was my turn, I climbed the stairs, looked around and although I didn’t see anything, I was certain I heard the distinct sounds of a dining family. Hushed mumbling, cutlery scraping plates, chairs screeching… those combined sounds. I couldn’t hear a thing on the ground floor, nor when I went back down, but it was clear as day when I was up there.

To this day, I have no explanation for it. Everything I think of doesn’t really make sense. But does that mean I believe in ghosts? That these sounds must have been made by a long since deceased family of restaurant critics? Of course it doesn’t. I can’t explain general relativity’s theory of gravity either, but it doesn’t mean I don’t believe it!

If I was made the offer, to have any of my questions answered, ‘What happens after death’ might be the one I’d go for. But would I really want to know? Why does it even matter? I don’t think I’d be particularly perturbed by the thought of nothing after death. It’s too weighty a concept to really conceive. I guess my palms might get a tad sweaty if it turned out the whole Catholic thing is right, and it’s all hell and damnation, but what they hey, the sooner you come to terms with it the better right?

Perhaps I’ll just finally find out the answer to that GCSE Maths question, it’s been annoying me ever since.

Ghosts, Ghouls, & Things I Don’t Understand – Brought to you by James Wormald -