Did I Ever Believe in Ghosts?

I'm reading Angelica, a 2007 novel by Arthur Phillips, whose complete novels I'm trying to finish. (It's not all that hard: (1) there are only six of them; (2) they are unique and fascinating--so it's not really any kind of labor.)

Angelica (I'm about halfway through) is, in some ways, a Victorian ghost story. A young woman--a clerk in a shop--marries a scientist who's somewhat older than she. They have a daughter, the eponymous Angelica. She's four.

And, as the marriage sours a bit, both Angelica and Constance (the mother) begin to see evidence of a ghost in the little girl's room. The evidence grows stronger and stronger. Constance eventually invites into her home (without her husband's knowledge) a kind of informal exorcist (she's not church-related). And away we go ...

(I've just reached the part where the point of view shifts from Constance to Anne, her ghostbuster, and is in the case of every Phillips novel I've read, things are not always what they seem. I'll post more here about the book when I finish it.)

Anyway, the novel has caused me to scan my memories ... did I ever believe in ghosts? Really believe?

When I was a little pre-schooler, sharing a bedroom with my older brother (three years older), he used to frighten me by telling me that there was a ... Man in the Closet. I don't recall my brother's ever describing that man, but I do remember this: I was afraid (a) to go into that closet, day or night, and (b) I was afraid to go to sleep. What if the Man came out? In order to ... what? Murder!?!!?

And then there was Casper, the Friendly Ghost, whom I kind of liked in those cartoons that were my favorite literary genre in boyhood. (Link to some video from 1945--when I was a year old.)

I liked him because he wasn't in the least scary--even the music in the cartoons, though occasionally ominous (only vaguely so), was usually light and playful. Just the way I preferred it.

As I watched that old cartoon just now, I imagined that Casper had been created by a man, who, like me, had feared the supernatural in his boyhood and invented Casper not just as entertainment but a kind of self-therapy.

Creator Seymour Reit, a children's author and Casper-creator, came up with the idea in the 1930s, says trusty Wikipedia. It was, for a while, quite a success. A New York Times article from 2001 says the comics are still occasionally published. Don't know if that's still true.

I remember liking ghost movies and TV shows--well, those that weren't too frightening. There was a great one called Topper, which ran from 1953-55, about a man who discovers that the ghosts of the previous owners of his place (man and wife, killed in a skiing accident) are still around. They also have a ghost dog, a St. Bernard named Neil. It was a gentle, funny show. (Link to some video.)

Later on, of course, here came Henry James and the Bard (Hamlet, Macbeth, Caesar).

And the movies--Ghost (1990), Ghostbusters (1983, 2016), and countless others, many of which were in the "horror movie" category, a category I avoid like the Man in the Closet.

Other than those two instances--the Man in the Closet and Casper--I can't say that I ever had any true (or fictional) spectral experiences. I can't remember if any of my boyhood friends did, either. I guess, as I think about it, ghosts just never came up. Or I've suppressed it all.

Now, of course, here is what's going to happen. Tonight--deep in the night--I'll awake--and ...