Why Do Some People Become Ghosts After Their Death?
By: Melissa Van Rossum

In the movie, all of the disincarnates stay behind because they have unfinished business on the earth plane. So, do people stay behind after their death solely because of unfinished business?

Myth or Reality?

First, people choose to stay behind for numerous reasons, not just because they have unfinished business.

Second, some people do stay behind because they have unfinished business that they want to resolve. But there are several caveats to that. Staying behind (aka not crossing over to the Other Side) doesn't mean you'll be able help resolve anything. And even if the situation does get resolved, that may not be enough to get you home.

For example, I recently was contacted by a friend of mine who can see AND hear ghosts. But she hasn't yet found the courage to try to guide them home. Because she can see and hear them, she tends to attract a fair lot of them to her home. When they make noise or become annoying with their presence, she talks to them and tells them to knock it off. Hopefully one day she'll feel comfortable enough with her abilities that she'll use them to help these lost souls find Their Way Home.

In the meantime, she calls me if the ghosts get out of hand and don't respond to her.

The last time we talked she had two older female ghosts in her home that talked incessantly. Even her daughter heard them and would walk around the house trying to find the source of the voices.

Unable to get them to quiet down or leave, she called me.

I connected with them energetically and they 'saw' me immediately. I could tell from their energy that they were anxious for relief so I knew I'd be seeing them in my home very soon.

I continued with my work on the computer and they showed up within the hour. In my home, they were quiet and respectful as they waited for me to put my computer down and turn my attention to them.

Though I don't know that they had a relationship on the earth plane, one of the women functioned as a caretaker for the other woman. She wasn't going to leave until she knew the other woman had gone first.

I respected the friendship that had developed here, but I didn't agree with her choices. If she really wanted to help this woman, and it was clear to me that she did, she would have had a much stronger ability to help her if she herself had crossed over to the Other Side first.

As I began to guide the second woman home, she told me that she had stayed behind to help her son who was sick and dying. She resisted going home and kept repeating that she couldn't leave him.

The caretaker whispered to me that the woman's son was already dead. I had the sense she had told this to the woman several times, but the woman didn't believe her.

I wasn't for certain if this was true until I began trying to locate her son. At that moment I felt his presence behind me. He had already crossed over, and showed up in that moment to help his Mom to get to the Other Side.

She didn't see him at first, she was still too consumed with her reality as she knew it.

I used my energy to help connect the two of them, or in other words to help her to see him. After I did that, she saw him clearly. She dropped her reasons for staying on the earth plane and crossing her over became easy. Her caretaker went peacefully as well and she thanked me as she left.

So yes, some ghosts do stay behind because of unfinished business in their life. But resolving that situation may not be enough to help that person move on to the Other Side.

This is because the longer a person/a ghost stays on this side of the veil after their death, the more they begin to lose touch with reality. As in the case of one of my ghostly visitors, after a ghost has been here for a while, they may no longer have enough presence of mind or awareness to recognize what has happened or even that time has passed.

Ghosts always give us valuable mirrors and insight into our own lives.

In this case we see the expensive costs of trying too hard to hang on to what was, while resisting the gifts of what comes next.

There is a natural flow to Life that we have to learn to trust. It can be frightening when we can't see what comes next. When we're young, that curve in the road is exciting. By the time we've gotten older we've learned to fear the unknown and to expect the worst, and usually the risk is more than we're willing to bear.

But there's a spiritual reason for everything and although we can't always see these reasons clearly when we want to, those reasons are ultimately working for our highest good.

We play a role in creating everything in our lives, and I'm a huge believer that developing your awareness, setting goals, being proactive and deliberating creating your life can help you achieve what you want. Though none of that means that we can control everything that happens in our lives, much less the lives of others.

I think that this ghost story in particular, shows us the real value of trust. We need to learn to trust ourselves, trust our path, trust the inherent value in who we are, trust the Source and trust the flow of Life.

When we worry, fret and fear (even for others) we literally strangle the joy from our lives. In fact, the very word 'worry' comes from the Anglo Saxon word weregan which means 'to strangle'.

Without trust, without faith and belief, we're just like the ghostly mother from the story. A wanderer in the dark, without direction, bereft of insight of any kind.