💬 Do ghosts really exist?

My cousin swears she heard someone walking on the terrace of an empty house near her hostel. This was late one night in her second year. Slow steps, back and forth, 3 or 4 rounds. She sat on her bed with a pillow over her knees until the morning call to prayer. In the morning she went up with 2 friends. Nothing there but a bucket and some dry leaves. I laughed at her when she told me. I was 19 and sure I was too clever for that. Then she said it was the same house where an old man lived alone and died, years before. I stopped laughing. The next time I went past that area I walked a bit faster. That's how silly it is. I don't even believe it and my feet still speed up. Our own old house in Mehdipatnam had a door that opened by itself every night around 2. My grandmother said a draught. My uncle said a spirit. My father fixed the latch. It still opened. Years later someone noticed the floor sloped and the door was swinging on its own weight. I know that now. At 2 am as a kid it was still a ghost. So I don't know what I believe. Most stories I've heard fall apart if you ask 3 questions. But the footsteps story hasn't. My cousin isn't dramatic and she's still firm about it. She's 34 now, works in a bank, and still won't walk past that house after dark. Has anyone here had something like that, one that still bothers you when you think of it?

Lean skeptical myself, most of these stories fall apart once you account for old houses creaking, someone half asleep, and a culture that already primes you to expect something in the dark before you even walk in. That said, my cousin's terrace story from her hostel still gives me a slight chill even writing about it now, so make of that what you will.

My grandmother swore her childhood home in old Hyderabad was haunted by a relative who had passed there, used to leave a small plate of food out for years afterward just in case. Never saw anything myself growing up there during visits, but the conviction in how she told the story always made it land differently than any typical ghost story from a book.

Anyone who does not believe in ghosts is welcome to come stay at my place for one night. I can show them the exact spot where things get strange, where you can see, feel, and hear sounds that have no normal explanation. Plenty of jinn and spirits seem to linger around there and talk to anyone who stays long enough to listen. A few nights there usually changes people's minds pretty quickly.

Ghosts are everywhere in the world if you really think about it carefully enough. Some of the scariest things I have personally witnessed were not spirits or jinn at all, but the way certain people behave toward others without any real conscience.

Absolutely, from an Islamic perspective the Quran clearly mentions Jinn and Shaitan as part of the unseen world around us. People's individual experiences with ghosts or strange occurrences can vary a lot from person to person, and not everything reported can be taken at face value. Still, believing in the existence of Jinn and Shaitan itself is very much a part of Islam, regardless of whether someone has personally encountered anything unusual.

Yes, ghosts and spirits exist, there is no real question about not believing it for me personally.