Ghosts Pale in Contrast to the Nanga Parbat

In writing recently about fear, I said, “Ghosts do not exist.”

I was aware that this would annoy people who have actually seen ghosts, just as my assurances that there are no visitors from outer space on Earth annoy people who have seen them .

Ghost stories are among the most enduring of our myths; their credibility is not damaged by their often humorous nature. One does not disbelieve in the ghost of mean old Uncle Angus merely because his appearances are closer to slapstick than to horror. Ghosts never really seem to do any harm.

We often read of some gullible young couple who buy a big old house that turns out to be haunted. Certain alarming sounds, as of doors slamming or steps being ascended, might easily be explained, but the romantic tenants are more likely to telephone the police, or the newspapers, and call in a professional ghostbuster to rid the house of its intruders, as we call in a bug man to banish our roaches.

Reader Tillie Teller pretends with irony to agree: “Without an eyebrow of doubt, there are no ghosts any more than there are colors beyond our visual spectrum, sounds beyond our range of hearing, or consciousness outside our own vibrational range. Those who claim, for example, that dogs can hear whistles that we cannot are out-and-out shysters. . . .”

We know that colors beyond our visual range and sounds beyond our hearing are natural phenomena, easily proven. I’m not sure what Teller means by “consciousness outside our own vibrational range.”

She recalls that in 1970, after meditating for about a month, she saw a vaguely outlined apparition whose aura was like fire. Its appearance was preceded by a pure, liquid and melodic tinkling, a bright spark and a mild shock.

She also recalls that several years ago, about six weeks after the death of her father, the old gentleman appeared before her, looking younger and robust in his suit and tie, and urged her to follow him down a labyrinthine stairway. She turned back.

“If you’d still rather fear death than be known as belonging to the lunatic fringe that believes in ghosts,” she concludes, “you may tell yourself that I dreamed or imagined these incidents. Quite so, anyhow--just as we have imagined or dreamed our entire lives.”

As for my speculations about fear, Eve Lichtgarn of Santa Monica recalls some fascinating definitions of fear that she received from famous persons a few years ago while preparing an article on the subject for a literary magazine.

Reinhold Messner, the first man to climb Mt. Everest without supplementary oxygen, answered cryptically that what he feared was “Nanga Parbat.” Lichtgarn found that Nanga Parbat, meaning Naked Mountain, is a 26,658-foot peak in the Pakistani Himalayas. Messner’s younger brother was killed by an avalanche in an unsuccessful attempt on the mountain in 1970. Messner suffered frostbite and lost most of his toes.

Eight years later he made a solo ascent of the mountain, surviving an earthquake that loosed numerous avalanches and rearranged the mountain’s face. He wrote: “I don’t climb mountains simply to vanquish their summits. What would be the point of that? I place myself voluntarily into dangerous situations to learn to face my own fears and doubts, my innermost feelings.”

Is that what Sir Edmund Hillary meant by his reason for climbing Mt. Everest: “Because it was there”?

Film maker Federico Fellini gave Lichtgarn this response: “I am afraid of pain, physical pain; of anguish, when you suddenly find yourself slipping into it; a woman who is madly in love sometimes alarms me a bit; an ignorant who holds power; interviews frighten me slightly; and then feeling uninhabited, empty, non-creative. Ah, yes; approximation, things done or said approximatively, with that haughtiness and assurance which approximative people usually have. Or not noticing I’m becoming a dotard.”

Margaret Thatcher did not answer personally, but her secretary did, on officially crested stationery with the motto Honi Soit Qui Mal y Pense-- (approximately) “Evil to Him Who Evil Thinks.” The secretary said: “Mrs. Thatcher adopts a positive approach to real, not imagined, issues and that requires a special kind of courage, not fear.”

Can there be courage without fear? Does Rambo know fear? As Mark Twain said: “Courage is resistance to fear--mastery of fear--not absence of fear.”

Like Fellini, I fear not noticing the onset of my dotage.