My mind says it’s fantasy, but my nerves seem to disagree

China’s version of Halloween is celebrated on Thursday. During the Zhongyuan Festival (Ghost Festival), people burn paper money as sacrifices to please the spirits.

In some places, they float lotusshaped paper lanterns on water.

The afterlife seems much more a part of everyday life in China than in the West. There, the existence of spirits, or ghosts, is debated, and even few believers would accept ghosts’ presence around us as a commonplace reality.

I don’t believe in ghosts … I’m just afraid of them.

The possibility of their existence has morbidly fascinated and terrorized me throughout my life. The first time I can remember was as a child of 4 or 5 years.

My older sister took me to the cinema, and the main feature was a spooky film about a haunted house. I can’t recall the story, just the name, Thirteen Ghosts. It haunted me for years.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a ghost, and I don’t really ever expect to. But many people I trust and respect have told me they have.

My wife says that when she was in her late teens she was watching television with her father one night and sensed motion to her side. She turned to look and saw a young man walk down the hallway and into a bedroom. What shocked her, aside from this man being an absolute stranger, was that he walked right through the almost totally shut bedroom door.

Her mother had similar experiences in that apartment. One afternoon when she was in the kitchen, she saw a man skulking down the same hallway and into the bathroom.

She thought it was her husband sneaking into the apartment to give her a scare and decided to turn the tables on him. She lunged into the bathroom. Seeing nobody, she assumed he was hiding in the shower, quickly opened the curtain and shouted “boo”. It was empty.

My children have also had odd experiences.

In one apartment we had when they were very young, my older boy thought he saw me walk into my bedroom closet. He ran after me to see what I was doing and nobody was there. I was at work.

Another time in that apartment, my wife was having dinner with the boys, she with her back to the living room, and they sitting across the table looking toward the living room.

Both boys suddenly slowly scanned to the left as though tracking some motion behind my wife. The younger boy pointed a finger and said, “Look, the man!” She turned, but saw nobody.

Several years ago, in an apartment in Beijing, my older boy — actually a young man by then — awoke in the middle of the night and got a glass of water. He said he felt something strange behind him and turned to look.

He describes what he saw as a small shadowy woman who approached and touched his hand, sending a tingling sensation up his arm. Stunned, he left the room and went back to sleep.

My mother, a small woman, had died several weeks before.

So what do I believe?

I grew up in a religious family that believed in an afterlife. As a child, I often went to church with my parents, but I never could share their faith.

To me, the spirit is a being’s innermost identity — and isn’t that what a ghost would be, an identity that refuses to quit? — and it’s a quirk of life, something that I expect many higher life forms must have.

But, I think it dies along with the body.

So how do I explain these experiences? I can’t.

I don’t disbelieve people who tell me they’ve had supernatural encounters. I consider their beliefs, religious or supernatural, to be as credible and valid as my own. I just don’t share them.

As I said before, I don’t believe in ghosts … I’m just afraid of them.