Do You Believe In Ghosts?

I have not given much thought to this subject, and I have certainly never experienced anything remotely paranormal. Many people report to have seen ghosts, and others say they can feel the presence of the dead in a very conscious way. There is an entire industry devoted to "ghost tours" in places like Key West and St. Augustine. So what exactly is a ghost?

Having given it some thought, I believe there is another dimension beyond our conscious world and some people have the ability to sense it. We smell. We taste. We see. We feel. And we hear. We all have different abilities. Some of us have the extra sense, and some of us do not. Maybe that sense can be developed. Maybe some of us "feel" the paranormal to make up for a weakness in another area. I'm not sure.

So what brought on these thoughts? Just outside the mountain town of Magdalena, NM is the ghost town of Kelly. Two miles up the hill stands an old silver mine and the remnants of a town of 3000 people that petered out before the end of the 19th century. As we drove the coarsely rutted road I imagined a ghost town like the ones in the movies. You know, the ones with broad streets, tumbleweeds, old hitching posts and saloons. A town of that size would have hotels, merchants, stables, a jail, maybe even a school. What we found was a church that had been recently restored, and on either side of the narrow roadway, the skeletons of adobe structures built 150 years ago. No wide streets. No tumbleweeds. No people. No sound except the "drip-drip-drip" chirp of a brown-headed cow bird that sounded like a slow moving rocky stream. What of the ghosts that the sign said had been "seen" hanging around the town? I did not "feel" anything. Maybe the bird can.

To my knowledge, there are no government programs to contact the dead. But, 20 miles from Magdalena is the National Radio Astronomy Observation Very Large Array. If you saw the movie Contact starring Jodie Foster, you may recognize these radio telescopes. The movie was shot here. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the visitor center details all the wonderful discoveries about the universe that have been accomplished at this facility. No mention about contacting aliens that was the subject of the movie. Some people see UFOs, but no one seems to believe them. Are they out there? Maybe they have already been here and are not coming back.