Is it common for teenagers to have encounters with ghosts?

The existence of spirits (or ghosts) is accepted in Buddhist culture and as such it is more common for the topic to be discussed informally. It might not necessarily be a matter of religious culture because it can be due to societal culture too. In the Philippines, discussion of ghosts, supernatural topics, and paranormal phenomenon is not rare and is usually accepted.

Strangely it is not just Asians - even in a western Christian culture, non-Buddhists were reported by Abby Day in her "Believing in belonging: An ethnography of young people's constructions of belief", Culture and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 10(3), 2009: 263-78, that teenagers believe so much in their family members that when they pass away, they continue to see them and feel their presence. With Buddhists, it is not just projection of family loyalty beyond the grave....my Buddhist interviewees reported seeing ghosts of people they didn't recognize as late family members.

I teach a creative writing course for teenagers in the USA, and I begin the class with a declaration that "I collect real ghost stories," and proceed to listen to spontaneous storytelling of some really astounding examples of personal experiences: haunted houses, visitations. I have come to recognize that, after hundreds of stories, some, because of the individualization, the emotional expression, the spontaneity, are genuine. None, so far, seem to be religious in nature, so much as akin to something strange and unexpected going on. I have had students share examples of photographs of apparitions that could be nothing other than what one would have to say are genuine ghosts. Yes, USA television currently has some shows about "investigations", so the popular culture has some impact. But, much of what I have heard does not even reflect these shows, rather, spontaneous descriptions of locations and details that are not what I call "summer campfire" stories, and lack the context of religious practices. I have had some experiences corroborated by other reliable mature adult individuals. These are mostly Protestant /Catholic children, 15 - 18. I have heard stories that were "visitations" by relatives who had passed, but the children never give "religious" connotation. One child related that the family sought help from Protestant clergy, but this came to no resolution.

Further note that these students are often relieved that they had a chance to vocalize their experience, and are eager to hear the stories of others. A small number approached me after class to tell me what they had experienced. Some express anxiety, some relate that the experience is on going because their home or where the work or visit is "haunted". A couple of related that they ahve always have been able to see the "un-living". I have been continuing this exercise in public school for about twenty years, and have quite a collection.

The basis for my "project"is what I call "The Bee Sting Principle", wherein, one can generate a storytelling community within almost any age group by asking the simple question: "Has anyone here ever been stung by a bee?" The group (at any age that can relate a story) will explode, compelled to relate spontaneous, personal, vivid stories about their own experience, or someone they know was "stung by a bee". This establishes a communal atmosphere that is conducive to storytelling, even among strangers. It has worked well with ghost stories.

Personal experience: I was a substitute teaching for a gym teacher in a public middle school (ages 13-15, roughly), and was sitting in the teacher's office reconciling attendance between classes. Hearing someone crying, I looked up and out to the hallway where a group of girl students were clustered around a girl (about 13 years old) who was sobbing, her hands covering her face. I thought she had caught a miss-fired ball in the face, so, I stepped over to determine what happened. The crier wasn't bleeding but was really distraught, and not knowing the story, I told her to get a drink of water from water fountain down the hall to collect herself. When she was gone, I asked the other students "what happened?" "She saw her grandfather!" was the consensus. "Over there!" pointing to the stair case. This was alarming, given the place -- the end of a school building hallway, with a set of glass doors connecting to some stairs going up and going down. I needed to know if this "grandfather" was making trouble. The crier came back, red faced, and hiccuping, and I calmly asked her where she had seen her grandfather. ""He was right there, on the stairs (pointing to the glass doors). He wanted to give me something!" Oh boy. Pursuing the line of questioning, I asked her what was so upsetting. "When I got back from a trip this summer, we went straight to the hospital where he was, and my mom said he wanted to give me something, but he died before I got to go in to see him. So he was here just now, on the stairs - he wanted to give me something, but he walked away down the stairs before i could find out what it was. He disappeared."

I still get shivers when I remember this. The only thing down those stairs at this time (oddly enough) was a locked room that contained a cemented-over swimming pool that had been closed and sealed up years before after a child who had skipped class drowned.

I believe this is what you are exploring. I can only vouch for the conviction with which this child related the story, and the possible notoriety of the stairs. I recall that none of the students were Asian, but cannot vouch as to their religious beliefs.

As a pastor/spiritual caregiver, there are websites I participate in as a counselor that are centered around the search to prove/disprove paranormal experiences, and where one often finds a disproportionate number of teen posters. I consider that this deep teen interest in the paranormal is part of a natural process: denying or rejecting parental values as part of growing up, and denying or rejecting family religious values in favor of that which is appealing to the solitary nature of teens -- as in wicca and nature religions where being different is acceptable. In response to Jonathan Edwards' personal experience, paranormal investigators, who normally can disprove about 90% of paranormal experiences, do acknowledge the possible validity of some incidents where a departed family member may return "in visitation," to convey to someone that they are OK. Paranormal researchers also have noted that pre-teens and teens are often present in homes reporting poltergeist activity. This, it is believed, is less a consequence of "pranking," than it is a matter of a correlation between the emotional turmoil of those undergoing hormonal fluctuations and physical changes, and some yet unknown connection between the release of energy that can produce, rarely, forms of psychokinesis of objects in the household. Investigations continue in this area.

Story told by a student and corroborated by both parents: " My father and I were playing basketball in our driveway one afternoon, and we hear a baby crying. There's no houses around us, just woods, so we stopped playing because we thought a car had stopped out on the road. Suddenly, a woman walked out from along side our garage and started yelling at us to keep quiet, that we were waking the baby. This was very strange, because the side of the garage is built into the side of the hill, so there's on way of walking there. My father and I were startled, and then I noticed that the woman didn't seem to have anything below her waist, no legs. We both screamed and the woman disappeared. We ran into the house and told my mother who didn't believe us. She said she would pour salt on the door sills and window sills to keep the ghosts out. Two weeks later, w my dad and mom and my brother and I were in driveway, talking, and the whole thing started over -- the baby crying and the woman walked out from along side the garage, we all yelled, and the woman disappeared. We went to out church and talked to the pastor about doing something, but they said they couldn't do anything."

Meeting the parents later, they felt the apparition was a remnant of the nearby immigrant wagon trail that had been there for a quite a while, and were coping with the situation.

I have a new theory that ghosts are being seen by people who have mutated cells in the brains caused by chronic insufficient blood supply (same as cancers). It is likely that the event could be triggered by external environment factors (i.e. cold and damp, fungus, unusual frequencies, stress hormones, etc.). In this case, the seeing-ghost event is more like a vivid dream to be experienced by a single person rather than a group of people. I do not exclude the possibility of paranormal phenomenon like flying objects caused by the persons who have extensive brain damages that their body functions have changed some what. To exorcise these people, I believe that pumping more blood to their brain will be the best method. Since brain cells are much different from skeletal cells in terms of microcirculations, you cannot pump more blood to brain cells by doing normal exercises (because blood would go to skeletal muscles). I have discovered through extra slow exercise taichi that you can only pump more blood to brain cells if you can raise your heart rate moderately without moving your body, which is not easy. I believe that this is what exorcists do by raising their voices and authority in order to raise the heart rates of their patients. But they don’t know that once their patients get used to their voices in a matter of 1 to 2 weeks, their heart rates won’t go up anymore. The following exercise called the 30-time start-stop interval training should be more effective. Anyway, I do not see how age or religion has anything to do here.