ghosts be gone

I've long been into the paranormal - ghosts and cryptids and the like, but I just had this realization.

So, especially in big famous hauntings, there are stories that everyone tells and they get evidence that supports these stories.

For example, the Myrtles Plantation has a legend about a slave named Chloe and how she tried to win her way back into the favor of her master by 'lightly' poisoning his wife and children so she could nurse them back to health. But of course that goes poorly and they die and she is killed by the other slaves to try and avoid the master's wrath.

And there are all sorts of pictures of her ghost and 'evidence' of her haunting.

Of course the problem is that none of it is true.

You can find historical evidence of when the wife and children of this particular man's wife and/or children died and there's just no proof that Chloe existed let alone that her tragic story is true.

So then what's giving all these people their evidence of her?

There are some people who think it's like a tulpa, which is a concept I cannot totally explain, but basically they mean that the peoples' belief in Chloe's story has created Chloe.

Which seems....questionable. Because where did the story come from? A psychic? Okay, I don't believe in psychics anyway, but I have a hard time with the whole idea that collective thought creates a real thing.

But then I thought, today, I was listening to a ghost podcast, and I thought about what would be running around tricking people like that to believe in these stories and to keep digging deeper and deeper and just....

Demons.

Hear me out.

We are not supposed to talk to ghosts.

We're not supposed to raise the dead.

And people who ghost hunt tend to have iffy, wobbly ideas about religion and what happens after death. Which they then help to spread.

Who gains?

Demons.

Not the most complex theory, but um.

I'm not messing with that.

Not today, satan.

*flaps hands wildly*

I have to get rid of all my ghost stuff now.