Do Muslims believe in ghosts?

[GoodKingQuintless]

Just like some Christian priests/pastors will help spirits over to the "other side", through prayer, etc, is there any room in Islam for the belief that some peoples souls stay behind as a ghost?

I am not wording myself well, but I hope you get the gist.

In a similar way, I think ideas can be said to metaphorically 'haunt' people. After all this has been reported to you as a 'feeling'.

And something might be perceived, regardless of belief in jinn, ghosts /spirits. Electrical fields are reported to affect some people. There is some scientific study which shows plants have language too, perhaps your friend perceives this on some level. Smell and music can also affect people in different ways bringing to remembrance past events, emotions and even causing instinctive responses - not always with the linking of the actual event.

My friend is very very sensitive, to animals and plants too. She speaks of forces in plants like a natural thing. Maybe "life energy" would be another way to describe it?

Well, I think what, if anything, your friend chooses to do is likewise governed by her beliefs. If she believes she's hallucinating, she should see her GP, if she believes she's being troubled by an uneasy spirit who needs help, she might consult a priest of her denomination, if she's religious....?

She is religious, so I think she is more likely to consult the Holy Mother!

Well, as far as I know, in scientific terms, plant communication is chemical. However humans can have quite a sensitive sense of smell so perhaps she is subconsciously picking up chemical changes?

Quintless Is she Pagan? (Thinking of Mother Earth type beliefs)

I think she is a strange mix of catholic, with a heavy influence of pagan world view.

She has a sensitive smell. She uses her nose a lot for work. (food industry related)

So all would perhaps lead to a predisposition to having a somewhat different perception of the environment. However whether this is/becomes a problem or not is a different matter.

Do you know what she sees as the best course of action? Exorcism perhaps? (either performed herself or asking a priest to perform this).

As an aside, there is also a Biblical association between smell and the spirit (sweet perfume references).

Well, you seem to have worked it all out today! Anyway, as for your whole dilemma I would have thought that if it is true that there are ghosts which are the souls of people who have died and perhaps not yet passed over to the other side for whatever reason, then there would be ghosts for every single person/animal on this earth regardless of what they chose to believe when they were alive.

I think it would be pretty hard to actually have lots of different religions all being true, some with ghosts, some not, some being reincarnated and so on. Surely there can only be one final truth out there when we die?

I don't know what it was that made your friend get the feeling when she went into the building. I also sometimes wonder how these psychic types know info abut peoples relatives who have died, it amazes me sometimes but for me the only explanation is that jins are feeding this information to the so called psychic. Either that or they are really good at digging up peoples past, who knows.

I have myself once been in a place where there was absolutely stuff going on that was not of this world. At the time I put it down to sensible reasoning but when I left the next day and mentioned the whole story to someone, as soon as I had finished it dawned on me what had happened and I probably went as white as a sheet!

Fascinating stuff!