By Joana Karoshi | Staff Writer
Ghosts are often synonymous with death and decay. When things happen that we can’t explain, appealing to the supernatural provides an explanation for some.
Also synonymous with death are the soul and the Christian belief in heaven. If heaven is a place of contentment with God, how can Christians believe in vengeful ghosts?
Dr. Cindy Little, a curriculum developer in the Moody School of Education, has spent more than two decades investigating paranormal activity.
Little described herself as a “very devout Christian,” and she currently attends St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Waco. In her time spent researching and investigating reported paranormal activity, Little said her work does not conflict with her faith.
The morality of belief in ghosts may depend on what someone means by “ghost” in the first place.
According to the 2025 Baylor Religion Survey, 49% of participants said they believe in ghosts. Additionally, 53% said they believe some people can communicate with the dead.
The survey also found that 67% believe in angels, 61% believe in demons and 60% believe in Satan.
“We have had ghosts with us for probably as long as people have been around,” Little said. “Even the Bible mentions them. In the storm, Jesus is walking across the water and the disciples think he’s a ghost.”
Little explained that Christians may have a difficult time with ghosts because many people define them as the spirits of dead people, with Christianity teaching that the dead are no longer physically present on Earth.
“[Christians] interpret that to mean that there is really no wiggle room there,” Little said. “If you are not here on earth as a person, you are in heaven with Jesus.”
Because of that belief, Little said some Christians interpret reported encounters with the dead as demonic spirits.
“What a lot of people interpret ghosts to be … are deceptive spirits masquerading as people,” Little said.
Little approaches her work as a paranormal researcher and investigator with care. She said she leads with curiosity and a desire to understand what people are experiencing, approaching reported encounters “skeptically and more scientifically.”
That approach means Little does not assume that every strange experience has a supernatural explanation. She said investigators have to consider whether something that appears paranormal could have a natural explanation that people do not yet understand.
Even still, Little said she prays before investigating allegedly haunted locations, “just in case something might be a little bit nasty that is coming your way.”
Little said she has never experienced what she would consider a demonic encounter herself, despite investigating the paranormal for more than 20 years. She said she knows other paranormal investigators and parapsychologists who believe they have experienced something that could have been demonic.
Dr. Candi Cann, an associate professor of religion, approaches the question of ghosts from a different perspective. Cann, who studies death, dying, grief and remembrance, said the answer to whether Christians believe in ghosts depends largely on what people mean when they use the word.
Cann said “ghost” comes from the German word “geist,” meaning “spirit.” The Christian phrase “Holy Ghost,” for example, refers to the Holy Spirit.
The ghosts that appear in horror movies and television shows, however, are a different matter. Cann said those stories often reflect the fears and concerns of the societies that tell them.
Ghost stories often center on tragic or unresolved deaths. A person who died in an accident, whose body was never found or whose death left unanswered questions, according to Cann, may become the subject of a ghost story.
“There might be an accident on the side of a road, and no one found the body,” Cann said. “So [people] say, ‘Oh, that ghost wanders by that site.’ So what you’re really saying is, ‘I don’t know where the body is, and somehow that question remains unresolved for me.'”
Ghost stories also tend to emerge around people whose deaths might otherwise receive little attention.
“You tend to get a lot of ghost stories around the margins of society [or] around underrepresented populations, around questionable deaths,” Cann said.
Ghost stories, Cann said, are similar to roadside memorials. A memorial can honor someone who died in a crash, but it can also draw attention to a dangerous road and the possibility that something needs to change.
“These memorial markers and ghost stories function on different levels,” Cann said. “They also function as calls for attention.”
Grief can also shape how people understand encounters with the dead. Someone who reports seeing, hearing or feeling the presence of a deceased loved one may not need to decide whether the experience was supernatural or imaginary.
“Pay attention to the fact that this person is saying, ‘I miss this person,'” Cann said.
Cann said she does not immediately decide whether a reported encounter was real or not.
“I don’t want to diminish what someone else might experience,” she said.
Religious traditions also do not have one universal approach to communicating with or remembering the dead. Catholics, for example, pray to saints for intercession and pray for the dead.
Little’s approach to ghost hunting relies on the idea that there is still much that researchers do not understand. She uses cameras, audio recorders, trail cameras, temperature readers and electromagnetic field meters during investigations.
“We don’t really know what [ghosts] are yet,” Little said. “But we can measure changes in the environment while people are having ghostly experiences.”
Little said ghost hunting is also much less dramatic than the television shows that portray it. Investigators can spend hours waiting for something to happen, and sometimes nothing does.
Her recent trip to Marlin was one of the times when something did happen.
Little said her friend woke up in the haunted Airbnb and saw what appeared to be a full-bodied man looking out the window. The woman described the figure as wearing a 1930s-style pork-pie hat and overalls, clothing that Little said “could have been that of one of the bottling company workers.”
Little described this experience as a possible “residual haunt” — a theory that an environment can somehow replay an event from the past. The figure did not acknowledge her friend before disappearing, Little said.
The next morning, Little reported seeing the shadow figure enter her friend’s room.
Whether those experiences were ghosts, natural phenomena or something else is something Little said she cannot prove.
That uncertainty has not made Little less religious. She said paranormal investigation has actually caused her to reconsider her understanding of Christianity.
“I’ve re-examined the Bible, and I have re-examined my faith,” Little said. “I believe that now I’m closer to God than ever, which is a good thing.”
Little said paranormal investigation has also changed the way she thinks about what humans understand about the world.
“There’s a lot we do not understand about the natural world, and we definitely don’t understand a lot about the supernatural world,” she said.
Cann explained how the meaning of a ghost story does not necessarily depend on proving that a ghost exists.
A story about someone who died can reflect grief, unanswered questions, social anxieties or a desire to remember someone whose death might otherwise be forgotten — and it doesn’t always need to invoke the supernatural.
