Hauntings & Ghosts / Biblical Misconceptions

Amelia Cotter is a writer and storyteller specializing in the supernatural, history, and folklore. In the first half, she discussed her work researching hauntings and ghosts, as well as her experience of exploring a haunted abandoned house and how she became tangled in the mysteries there after meeting a shy ghost called "Walter." The abandoned house was referred to by the locals as "Walter's house" and was next to an old restaurant called the Manor Tavern. An account was told of a janitor working early one morning at the restaurant when a beautiful woman in a Victorian dress came swooping into the room and asked him, "Where is Walter?" The janitor shook his head, not thinking too much of it. The woman proceeded to thank him politely and then disappeared into a wall that, 100 years ago, had been a doorway.

As a teenager, Cotter investigated "Walter's house," and she and a friend saw an apparition of a young man. "I saw him leaning out of one of the attic windows with both of his hands on the windows," she recalled. His face was a complete white blank-- it had no facial features whatsoever, but she could see he had curly hair and was wearing a shirt with gathered cuffs. As their car was pulling away, she observed "Walter" turn his head somewhat mechanically to watch. Later in life, Cotter moved to Chicago and has investigated a number of haunted locations there as well as others in the Midwest, such as the Old Baraboo Inn in Wisconsin. She has concluded that ghosts do represent something physical, "whether it is the spirit of a person who has passed on, or somebody that has...never lived, or if it's an echo that is held in stone and wood and rock and the earth."

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Former college philosophy instructor and atheist Jeff Grupp converted to Christianity and is currently a jail pastor/chaplain. In the latter half, he talked about his latest work on misconceptions about material in the Bible, including the book of Revelation. He argued that nowhere in the Bible does it say that people are burned in hell forever, though this is a widespread belief. The reference to a "Lake of Fire" in the Bible, rather than describing hell, is actually about the consuming fire of God, he explained. Grupp clarified that he is not denying the existence of hell, just that it is not a place where people are endlessly tortured. Additionally, he views the King James version of the Bible as one that lacks the contradictions of versions that came later.

Regarding the prophesied Antichrist, Grupp believes he will attract a massive number of worshippers through a kind of possession, where people may hear his voice inside their head, possibly through a new form of technology. He also talked about his role at the Kalamazoo Jail Ministry and how he finds the inmates exceptionally attentive and interested in religious ideas, mainly because they are cut off from other concerns and behaviors they would have when living on the outside.

News segment guests: Christian Wilde, Kevin Randle