Do you believe in ghosts? According to a study by CivicScience, 41% of U.S. adults do, and a whopping 64% believe in “at least one kind of paranormal or supernatural phenomenon.” I’ve always been fascinated by this sort of thing, but I find it difficult to answer the question of whether or not I believe. There’s something about it that feels like entirely the wrong question to be asking.

The New Oxford American Dictionary defines “believe” as “[to] accept something as true; feel sure of the truth of” or to “have faith, especially religious faith.” This is interesting to me, that the word we use to discuss things supernatural and outlandish is the same word we use to discuss religious faith. Moreover, the word just feels too black and white to apply to this issue.

Usually, when I ask someone the question “do you believe in ghosts?” people give one of two responses. “No, that’s crazy,” “Yes, I or someone I know has seen them,” or the secret third option, the kind but unsure “I’d have to see it to believe it.” Despite the simple language of the question, the underlying nuances imply a suggestion like, “Do you believe that people can literally see, be visited by, and on occasion even interact with, the literal souls of the departed that are literally coming back to haunt us?” Despite firsthand supernatural encounters people claim to have, they might falter when the question is translated literally. 

Many people’s thoughts on the supernatural are affected by pop culture and by the fact that it becomes an issue of belief, and that problem exists because pop culture narrows the entire discussion and conflates ideas. Take aliens, for example. Even the adjacent question “Do you believe in UFOs?” garners a surprised response when answered affirmatively. That question is really just asking if you believe we have seen things in the sky that we cannot identify, which is just factually true and ultimately has nothing to do with aliens. Alien-conspiracy TV shows tend to focus heavily on UFO sightings, though, so it makes sense that these things are conflated in the public eye. These types of questions are often misinterpreted, as people will often take “Do you believe in aliens?” or even “Do you believe in life on other planets?” for “Do you believe in humanlike, possibly green, intelligent aliens from outer space?” and then you’re harshly judged for admitting you think there might be a microbe or two chilling on Mars.

Less polarized opinions need to be applied to things like paranormal encounters that seem very outlandish at first glance. Some things should just be allowed to exist: their origin, authenticity, or even the sanity of the person expressing their experience should not be brought into question simply because they are brought up to begin with. 

Not a uniform “belief,” but an openness to the world around us that allows us to decide what to make of each experience and what it means to us. When it comes to these “mysterious things,” I don’t really need or want an explanation — spiritual or scientific — to the firsthand accounts of people close to me that have had supernatural experiences.

For example, A few blocks from my house, there is a particularly unique tree. Every time I pass this tree, I tend to remark on it or point it out; I just find its shape particularly striking. This is not connected at all to what I believe or what my religion tells me about the tree’s origin. My appreciation for the tree really has nothing to do with my belief about anything. The only difference between this tree and, say, Bigfoot, is that the tree’s existence is not in question and my experience it is allowed to stand on its own without being accompanied by fanfare about whether or not trees actually exist.

Even describing my loved ones’ lived experiences as “supernatural” irks me. It automatically makes these events sound not just strange but controversial, something to be proved or disproved, something to be prefaced with “I know how it sounds” because words like these evoke a monolithic collage of amateur sleuths on TV chasing the trail of one phenomenon or another for the thousandth time and never really finding anything. Due to the way these things are often presented in media, they are disconnected from personal experience and instead become associated with debates of belief. 

This is harmful in several ways. People who self-describe as “believers” will call “non-believers” close-minded, just like religious fanatics, when really, both extremes are close-minded. Discounting someone’s experience not  because you don’t trust them, but because you don’t believe in the thing they experience, is close-minded. However, entangling yourself in a web of conspiracies and discounting a scientific explanation, or thinking that a scientific explanation inherently devalues your experience, is also close-minded. The rationality of a situation does not have to dictate its meaning.

In addition to this double-edged sword, the way is paved for people who have had potentially life-altering experiences to be condescended to or denied the right to nuance. Saying someone saw ghosts makes them sound crazy to around half the population, saying something like “they definitely saw something” or “they had a spiritual experience” makes their story sound illegitimate. It’s not government coverups and “mainstream archaeology” hiding the truth that make these things difficult to talk about, it’s the fact that legitimately unexplainable experiences are reduced to sensationalized buzzwords. Although some people can certainly become fanatics and take things too far, trying to describe a strange but true lived experience should never bring someone’s sanity into question.