As far as I know, there’s only one ghost story in the Bible. 

There are a handful of scriptures that mention ghosts, including when Jesus walks on the water toward the disciples, who think he is a ghost. There are also commands against trying to speak to those who have died (called variously “ghosts” or “spirits”), as first the Israelite people and later the Christians were to allow the dead to “rest in peace.” They understood that when people die, their spirits rest in Sheol, also known as “the place of the dead” until the day when God would raise the dead to new, everlasting life. The Jewish people and the early Christians, therefore, buried their dead and, though they trusted in a reunion on the day of the resurrection, did not think that the dead could see, hear, or otherwise interact with the living in any way. Because of this separation between the dead and the living, which God alone could rightly cross, the people were commanded not to try and summon up their departed loved ones to speak to them. 

Of course, God’s people are not always good listeners. Enter King Saul, the first king of Israel, and King David’s predecessor. At first, he was a good king (as kings go), but as his reign went on, he became more and more obsessed with holding onto power, even at the cost of obeying God. When this happened, God turned away from Saul and chose David to be king. As Saul’s reign slid further and further down, Saul became desperate for guidance from God– who refused to answer Saul. Finally, Saul decided that if he couldn’t get an answer from God, he would do the forbidden and get a medium to summon the spirit of a departed prophet from whom Saul might cajole a divine revelation.

It doesn’t work. I mean, the spirit of Samuel certainly arises to face Saul. And Samuel speaks to Saul. What he says, though, is hardly encouraging. Samuel reminds Saul of his failure to heed God’s words and declares to Saul that by the end of the following day, Saul and all his sons would be as dead as Samuel. Yikes. (You can read it all in 1 Samuel 28:3-19.)

The story shows that there’s good reason to avoid messing around with mediums, spirits, and the like. No good comes of Saul’s effort to summon Samuel back from the dead. Surely this story was repeated among the people as a kind of fable, warning young and old alike to respect the boundary between death and life, even while assuring them that both the living and the dead are within God’s presence and care. Eventually, it was recorded in the Bible as the one and only ghost story in Scripture.

So what, then, about Halloween? Certainly we can agree that as Christians, we should not seek to manipulate or speak with the spirits of the dead. We should also recognize that frightening others can be mean-spirited and harmful. It’s clear that some of the ways American culture celebrates Halloween are not consistent with Christian living. 

Other aspects of Halloween are less black-and-white. Some faithful Christians decide not to have anything to do with Halloween, feeling that it’s too close to the prohibition against meddling with ghosts and spirits. That’s a fine conviction to take. Other faithful Christians see Halloween as it’s celebrated today as diminishing the power of spirits and ghosts by turning them into pretend characters, giving weight only to God as a power worthy of attention. That’s okay, too. Still other faithful Christians see a church celebrating Halloween as a kind of victory over the powers of death and evil, even as a taunt to those powers that they cannot compete with God’s power. Martin Luther said something simultaneously serious and silly about his own spiritual battles: “I resist the devil, and often it is with a fart that I chase him away.”

Whether your conscience leads you to avoid or enjoy Halloween, we can all agree that on a day where the presence and power of death looms large, it is good to be reminded that God has power over death itself. It’s God’s gracious power and protection we trust in, especially when life is scary or spooky.