A self-caricature of Branwell on his deathbed Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Views of Celebrities on Ghosts
Through the ages famous personalities delved into the realms of the paranormal. Some of the views of Celebrities on Ghosts make up the tapestry of mystery.
Did Rabindra Nath Tagore believe in ghosts?
Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel laureate poet and writer from India, was fascinated by the supernatural and wrote several stories featuring ghosts and other paranormal phenomena. Some of his famous ghost stories are, The Living And The Dead, The Skeleton, The Hungry Stones, and The Victory.
However, his writings on supernatural do not establish himself believing in supernatural.
Rabindranath Tagore participated in Séance
Séance or Planchette is a meeting where people attempt to communicate with the dead. Rabindranath Tagore participated in a séance in 1929 where he communicated with the spirit of Sukumar Roy, the famous nonsense verse writer in his Jorasanko residence. Rabindranath records in his memoir Jibansmriti that when the spirit of Kailas Mukherjee, a cashier of the Tagores, was convened, he bluntly refused to reveal to the living what he had learnt only after his death.
The tradition of séances in the extended family of the Tagores as well as key literary figures of 19th century West Bengal ran deep. The most prominent among them was Bibhutibhusan Bandyopadhyaya, the great Bengali novelist for his passionate dedication to the spirit world.
Bibhutibhushan was drawn to Theosophy after the death of his first wife Gauri, his mother and his younger sister in quick succession. He lost his first appointment as a schoolteacher in Jangipara partly because he held séances on the school premises after sundown. He also held séances regularly at the office of the magazine Shanibarer Chithi, where one of his co-participants was the author Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay (1899-1970).
Bibhutibhushan did not mind much if anyone questioned his literary abilities, but was deeply hurt if his friends expressed doubts about the hereafter.
Comment: In my opinion, the greatest ode to the soul after death of physical body remains to be Bibhutibhusan's timeless and intense novel Debjan where the deep conviction about existence of soul after death of physical body was so passionate and intense that it will undoubtedly leave a permanent impact on the psyche of a sensitive reader.
Did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle believed in the paranormal?
To quote from the official estate page of Arthur Conan Doyle,
At the time of his death on July 7, 1930, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had long been established as the world’s best-known and most outspoken proponent of Spiritualism, the belief that the dead are able to communicate with the living through an earthly conduit, or medium. For fourteen years he had devoted the better part of his time, energy and resources to this cause, which he often described as “The most important thing in the world.” He once declared that he would gladly sacrifice whatever literary reputation he enjoyed if it would bring about a greater acceptance of his psychic message, and to those who found comfort and meaning in his beliefs, he was “The Saint Paul of Spiritualism.”
A Study on Paranormal
The logic of existence of ghosts because of Einstein's law of conservation of energy goes this way,
There are almost eight million results turned up by Google which suggest a connection between ghosts and the conservation of energy. One who was convinced was ghost researcher John Kachuba. In his book, Ghosthunters, he remarked, "Einstein proved that all the energy of the universe is constant and that it can neither be created nor destroyed. What happens to that energy when we die? If it cannot be destroyed, it must then, according to Dr. Einstein, be transformed into another form of energy. What is that new energy? Could we call that new creation a ghost?"
An interesting relevant concept of how Einstein's ghost lives
To quote from a npr.org article,
"Loopholes eliminated in Albert Einstein's ghost experiment. Einstein wanted physical reality to be intelligible, independent of any random actions. If two events separated in space have some sort of correlation, there must be a reasonable explanation for it. By reasonable, Einstein meant "realist," a fancy word that means that the objects have physical properties that depend on their position and that they can somehow exchange information that propagates through space. They should be able to communicate at speeds at, or slower than, light. Otherwise, Einstein said, it would be like having "spooky actions at a distance," i.e. Einstein's ghost. Well, Einstein lost. Three recent experiments confirmed that the realist expectation failed; in quantum mechanical systems (small things like atoms, material particles and photons, the particles of light) spooky action at a distance is a reality. Objects, even if separated by large distances, form an indissoluble unit with one responding to the other in ways that defy local explanations with signals traveling at or slower than light. This nonlocality is profoundly mysterious, even if it lends itself to many interesting technological applications, including quantum cryptography, the ability to send messages perfectly protected from eavesdroppers. Einstein's ghost lives."
Modern celebrities who believed in ghosts
I will cite examples from two articles with list of celebs who believed ghosts. These celebs belong to USA.
Celebs Who Have Had Actual Ghost Encounters
An excerpt:
"While stars like Demi Lovato, Kesha and Kendall Jenner have claimed to have had positive experiences with the other side, some celebrities' encounters were not so pleasant. Just ask Jessica Alba and Miley Cyrus, who would probably rather forget ever meeting such unfriendly spirits."
34 celebrities who say they believe in ghosts
A few excerpts:
The famous Matrix star Keanu Reeves said, "I was six or seven years old then. There's a doorway and all of a sudden we're looking over there and this jacket comes waving through the doorway, just an empty jacket," he said during an appearance on ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live" in 2014. "There's no head, there's no body, there's no legs, it's just there. And then it disappears."
The actress Kristen Stewart said, "Who knows what ghosts are, but there is an energy that I'm really sensitive to," she said. "Not just with ghosts, but with people. People stain rooms all the time."
The reality TV star Lisa Rinna said, one night at 3 a.m., she heard a "blissful laugh." The actress said that she saw "a woman standing at her crib" as her baby laughed and talked with the ghost.
And so on and on. It's just not celebs, a large proportion of people all over the world will tell you such stories about the paranormal that they believed to have happened in reality.
Life and Work of Emily Brontë
To round off the views of famous personalities in literature and movies, I will dwell upon the works of Emily Brontë, creator of Wuthering Heights.
Emily Brontë wrote just one strange novel Wuthering Heights to cement her permanent place in the hall of fame of literary creations of all time.
Born in 1818, Emily was the daughter of Irish clergyman Patrick Brontë and his English wife, Maria Branwell. The fifth of six children, she spent her childhood in Haworth, a village where Patrick served as the resident parish priest.
Lucasta Miller, author of The Brontë Myth, says the Brontë children grew up isolated in part because of Haworth’s impoverished status. “There weren’t many other families of the Brontës’ social position with whom they could socialize,” she explains.
Charlotte left Haworth for an expanding life and later wrote the classic "Jane Eyre" among her other works.
In December 1847, Emily Brontë’s only published novel, Wuthering Heights, hurtled onto England’s literary scene, shocking the public and critics alike with its graphic depictions of violence and psychological abuse.
More than 175 years after its publication, Wuthering Heights is a beloved literary classic. Yet the woman behind the book remains elusive, the details of her short life (she died in 1848 at age 30) shrouded in inscrutability.
Emily spent her life largely as a fiercely independent person but as a recluse. For long her life was intertwined between reality and her imaginary world. She died young when she was only thirty.
Ghosts and the supernatural in Wuthering Heights
Ghosts appear—both literally and figuratively—throughout Wuthering Heights.
Deceased characters persistently haunt the living, who accept that supernatural encounters like these are possible.
- In fact, unlike many conventional Gothic stories, some of the characters openly embrace these hauntings.
- Heathcliff, for example, continually desires contact with Catherine's ghost, even going so far as to plead with her to haunt him when she first dies.
- He also exhumes her grave so that he can look at her again, and he has part of her coffin removed so that he can truly be buried by her side when he dies.
Although it's never made entirely clear whether or not Catherine's ghost is supposed to be real, Heathcliff does interact with a ghost shortly before his own death, suggesting that he has finally been visited by the spirit of his lover.
- In this way, Brontë employs spectral figures to underscore the intensity of Heathcliff's and Catherine's love, a bond so potent that not even death can sever it.
Comment: I still cannot forget the intensity of Wuthering Heights. That's why the longish description of Wuthering Heights and Emily Brontë, both enigmas in their own rights.
Other articles on whether ghosts exist
Do Ghosts Exist? Do You Believe in Ghosts or Souls After Death?
Do You Think Ghosts Exist - Most Haunted Places in the World
What are the most notorious haunted places in Asia
Do the Ghosts Exist - Most Notorious Haunted Places in India
Existence of Ghosts - Most Infamous Haunted Places in Kolkata
Do the Ghosts Exist - Unexplained Paranormal Experiences