Last night my partner and I got into a silly little debate about ghosts. Earlier that day, we watched the Demon House documentary and then followed up in the evening with a Netflix movie based on the same story: The Deliverance.

We’re both atheists, so neither of us are sold on the religious aspects of it. But she believes in the possibility of ghosts where I don’t believe in anything paranormal whatsoever. Really, I’m not even big on aliens. I don’t think we’ve ever been visited by intelligent life from another planet and I doubt we ever will, but that’s a whole other conversation.

I bet I sound like I’m real fun at parties huh?

I know it’s not nearly this black and white, but I’ve always felt like you have to be at least a little religious to believe in the paranormal. At least the way it’s presented by most documentaries, ghost hunter shows and horror movies.

Like The Exorcist for example. Wasn’t it considered to be one of the most utterly terrifying films ever produced? It has a lot of vulgar stuff in it, but paranormal horror always seems to end up circling back to one thing: good vs evil. Literally. In the name of Jesus Christ our lord and savior. It’s always some kind of demonic entity from the depths of literal hell, and the solution is to get an exorcism from a Catholic priest, complete with his official vial of Holy Water™

Same thing with conspiracy theories. David Icke, Alex Jones; pick whichever charlatan you like and there’s a pretty good chance the bad guys in their narratives are devil worshipers or maybe even authentic demons themselves. The solution is usually to keep God in our schools and government. And buy our books, movies, supplements, tee shirts and bumper stickers. Please make sure to donate too; spreading TRUTH is not easy or cheap.

I’m an agnostic atheist. I’m agnostic when it comes to pretty much anything in the realm of the unexplained. If I was ever presented with hard evidence to support a specific religion, aliens, ghosts, other dimensions, ghouls or goblins, I’d have no problem admitting I’m wrong. But in my 33 years on this planet so far, I’ve yet to see any – and it’s not for lack of trying!

Back in the day, like around the time I was in high school, I was a full blown conspiracy theorist. Loose Change and other homebrew documentaries about 9/11 being an inside job were huge. Then the Zeitgeist Movement came out around 2008. Oprah was pushing The Secret, which was a book and a movie about how you can literally will something into existence if you think about it hard enough. Wanna be rich? Just obsess over it and make a vision board and you’ll have abundance before you know it. Ah shit… you got fired from your job and you’re still broke five years later? You just didn’t try hard enough. Buy the new revision of our book and try again.

I believed all of this stuff and loads more when I was young and naive. I eventually decided I needed to get right with God, so I started to read the Bible for the first time ever when I was 18 or 19. It didn’t take long for me to start scratching my head. At first, I was afraid God would banish me to hell for even so much as questioning the scripture. But after going against my better judgment and digging down a few unholy rabbit holes I realized there were a lot of people who were raised in conservative Christian households and had taken a similar journey to mine after they started to question the Book.

I discovered skepticism through the standard modern day outlets; James Randi, The Atheist Experience Show, Skepchick.org, Christopher Hitchens and other people like that. I learned how to spot logical fallacies, even if someone’s argument sounds convincing. I learned how the burden of proof lies on the person making extraordinary claims, not the one who says they don’t believe them for lack of evidence.

It does take a lot of wonder out of the world. It sucks the fun right out of everything most of the time. But I’d much rather be rooted in reality and have a method for determining what’s true or false - something other than indoctrination and gut feelings.

I think I have such a binary take on this stuff because of my own past with conspiracies and religion. I’m not claiming that I’m right about everything (or anything, really) or that people who believe in the paranormal are wrong. There are plenty of things that used to be seen as completely backwards and untrue before eventually being proven as fact. I just choose not to log it to my brain as fact until the proof is there - even if it does make me insufferable at times.