Cue eerie music. Randa LeJeune shares her Sherman Hill house with four ghosts: a 1920s golfer who occupies the first landing of the staircase, the wife of the original owner who lives in an upstairs bedroom, a victim of a fire on the property, and a deep-voiced man in the parlor. She’s not scared of them; she says she finds their presence comforting.

LeJeune has become somewhat of an authority on ghosts. She runs Joie De Vie Tea Salon from her haunted house and gives Historic Gaslight Ghost Tours of Sherman Hill around Halloween.

These aren’t just ghost stories to her. She believes they’re real. She’s seen objects move and heard the deep voice of the ghost in the parlor. A paranormal team even recently recorded the ghost’s voice. She groups ghosts into three categories: people who have died abruptly or violently, poltergeists, and messenger spirits, which she says are also known as guardian angels. These ghosts, she says, are left when a person dies.

“Some believe that energy―you can call it the soul, the spirit, the ghost―actually is a mass, it has a weight, it has an energy,” LeJeune says. “You can’t destroy energy; it can only change form. Perhaps these little orbs of light in photographs are little balls of energy from the departed. We don’t know.

Dan Berger, the founder of the Iowa Paranormal Advanced Research Team, believes that ghosts are humans stuck between life and the afterlife. “A ghost is someone who was once alive that has not passed through the light for a number of possible reasons and are earthbound both literally and figuratively,” he says. “Ghosts are easier to see and hear because they are caught between the low frequency of earth and the high frequency of home.”

It turns out that a person’s view of what ghosts are depends on what they think happens after they die.

Dr. Ernie Schmidt, dean of the seminary at Faith Baptist Bible College in Ankeny, says that ghosts are one of three things: a hoax, a figment of imagination, or a demonic manifestation. If they're demons, he says, they are most likely trying to produce fear or fascination.

“I think curiosity is part of it. I think there’s built innately in human beings a knowledge that there’s something beyond ourselves,” Schmidt says. “And I think human nature and Satan would promote that because for some people it’s going to detract from God. Satan is not going to appeal to us with boring things, but with things that seemingly catch our fantasy.”

He refers to several places in the Bible where God forbids his people to engage in occult practices.

In Deuteronomy 18:9-15 the law states specifically not to practice divination or sorcery, interpret omens, engage in witchcraft, cast spells, or consult with the dead.

In 1 Samuel 28, King Saul consults the medium of Endor because he is afraid to battle the Philistines. The fact that Saul consulted a medium instead of God is listed as one of the reasons he lost God’s favor and David was made king instead. 1 Chronicles 10:13-14 says, “Saul died because he was unfaithful to the Lord; he did not keep the word of the Lord and even consulted a medium for guidance, and did not inquire of the Lord. So the Lord put him to death and turned the kingdom over to David son of Jesse.”

Jesus also distanced himself from the occult. For example, Luke 4:44 says, “Moreover, demons came out of many people, shouting, ‘You are the Son of God!’ But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew he was the Christ.”

Schmidt says, “The Lord never wanted that kind of a testimony because he obviously wanted to distance himself from anything of the occult, even though they spoke facts.” He says the notion that ghosts are people who simply must finish up their earthly business is also a distraction from the true message of Christ.

“One of the things it does is lessens the awareness that we have to be prepared to die. In other words, it lessens the fact that I have accountability to God,” he says. If people think the human realm continues after death, he says, they're not accountable to God.

Ghosts also provide something seemingly more tangible than God. “I think people are fascinated by the mystery of ghosts and the paranormal,” Berger says. “For some it may be a fascination with death and what happens after we die, what it is like. For many people it is the possibility of being witness to something that cannot be explained, or to capture that one in a gazillion snapshot of a true ghost.”

Whatever it is, LeJeune thinks we’ll be hearing more ghost stories soon. “Historically, when economic times and political times are very uncertain, like at the turn of the last century, people turn to the occult,” she says.

The fact that people turn to the occult when times are uncertain is evidence that people are searching for something outside of themselves—something only God can satisfy. No matter how LeJeune tries to explain the ghost teeing off on her staircase, it’s clear from scripture that the occult is more than a fascination; it’s dangerous. As Christians called to follow Christ’s example, we should distance ourselves from such practices.