‘Ghost’ Film Taps Into Some Spooky Regions of Us All

Maybe it’s because it’s a love story.

Maybe it’s because Whoopi Goldberg is funny.

Maybe it’s because Patrick Swayze is such a hunk.

Maybe it’s because “Unchained Melody” is a great song, although if I hear it one more time on the radio, I’m going to puke.

Whatever the reason, “Ghost” just won’t go away. It’s still showing in some Orange County theaters, and many people no doubt are going back for the umpteenth time.

The movie about a ghost has become a monster.

There’s no doubt that “Ghost” has tapped into some powerful feelings about the fragile nature of our existence and of the Big Hurt that comes when we don’t get as much time as we want with the ones we love.

The movie brings to mind a Neil Diamond lyric from many years ago:

They have sweated beneath the same sun

Looked up in wonder at the same moon

And wept when it was all done

For being done too soon.

While we’re there in the theater, seeing Patrick Swayze as a ghost still in love with his wife and dancing one last dance with her, it’s pretty tempting to suspend disbelief.

Why can’t it be like that? Why can’t we talk to them just one more time? Have one last dance? Share one last laugh?

But not everybody has to suspend their skepticism to buy into “Ghost.” For them, the movie reaffirms what they already believe.

The Rev. Joan is one of them. She lives in a tidy little house in Fullerton and legally changed her name in 1979 so that she doesn’t have a last name. She’s a psychic who says she has seen spirits since she was a child and who has transmitted messages from the dead to the living.

We talked a few hours before she spoke Friday night at the Psynetics Foundation in Anaheim. “I believe ghosts exist,” she said. “You’d be amazed at how many people--very staid, very conservative, very stiff-collared--have had experiences--visions, if you will--of people appearing to them. Or of waking up and finding parents who are deceased standing at the foot of the bed, talking to them and hearing their message.”

At 62, she knows she won’t see widespread public acceptance of such things in her lifetime. But she thinks that the spectacular success of “Ghost” goes beyond escapist entertainment.

“What we’re seeing in the metaphysical realm is that instead of the ooga-booga woo-woo stuff, people are looking for something solid. They’re looking for something to really hold onto, a belief system that there is a God and that God loves them. What we teach is you’ve got to love yourself first, or you won’t trust that someone else loves you.”

Isn’t it more likely that people like the movie strictly as a fantasy film? “Some do, but that’s OK, because seeds are being planted in their higher minds. Millions of seeds are being planted in the ground every day, and only a few come up. The more that kind of stuff is presented to people, the more seeds that are planted, the more seeds are going to take hold, and our society is going to change.”

Although it surprised Hollywood, the Rev. Joan said she isn’t surprised by the movie’s hold on the public.

“We’re seeing more and more information coming out that love is forever, as it was in ‘Ghost.’ That was kind of the bottom line there. He loved this woman so much he stayed. He had the choice of leaving, but he wanted to stay and protect the woman he loved. And then, inevitably, he had to leave. He had to go back, but love was forever. That was the consciousness that metaphysical people have been teaching for a long time--that love is forever and outlives everything.”

The Rev. Joan knows there’s a big disbelieving public out there, but she doesn’t care. “I have dealt with people who didn’t want anything to do with this kind of hocus-pocus stuff, and all of a sudden when it hits them, they get confused and frightened.”

But just as mankind has begun discovering the dimensions of outer space, so too will there be understanding “that there are other dimensions within our physical realm,” she said.

That’s why “Ghost” is packing them in, she said, as I was about to leave. “People want to know there is something out there, that it’s not over when it’s over.”