Hauntings and Hope: The Superior Specter of the Holy Spirit

I believe in ghosts. No, not the ones that rise from the ether of moonless moors or the shifting mists from houses long abandoned by the living. No, not those. 

But the things that haunt us, the things that float through our minds at midnight, are specters in old photographs—those whose plaintive eyes foreshadow chasms of confusion, portents of pain. 

As Emily Dickinson penned: 

One need not be a chamber to be haunted, 
One need not be a house; 
The brain has corridors surpassing 
Material place. 

Far safer, of a midnight meeting, 
External ghost 
Than an interior confronting, 
That whiter host. 

Far safer through an Abbey gallop, 
The stones achase, 
Than, moonless, one’s own self encounter 
In a lonesome place. . . . 

The prudent carries a revolver, 
He bolts the door, 
O’erlooking a superior specter 
More near.¹

A Superior Specter

Of course, I am referring to the long shadows cast by the pangs of childhood abuse—whether through omission (neglect) or through commission (anger, violence, sexual exploitation). These are the “interior ghosts” that roam the corridors of our minds well into adulthood—the apparitions of worthlessness, insecurity, anxiety, fear, and a terrible longing for love. 

But what can evict these unwelcomed tenants from our souls? Who can exorcise these veiled visitants so that they no longer cross the threshold of our minds to work their woe? Dickinson wrote of “a superior specter” referring to the overshadowing of these “spiritual squatters” that do indeed haunt us. 

Ah, but there is a specter, far superior, the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of the Living God, who alone can drive away the shrouded memories of the past. He replaces the lies of condemnation and worthlessness with the truth of His unconditional love, His open-armed acceptance, His healing grace, and promises of a restored soul through the forgiveness of sin.

Do we sometimes need counseling? Yes—if it has the cross in it. Do we need friends who listen and come alongside us? Yes—if they point us to the cross. 

Phantoms of the Past

The most scathing rebuke in the New Testament came from Jesus after Peter, hearing of His coming suffering, declared with his usual bravado, “Oh no, Lord! This will never happen to you!” (Matt. 16:21–23).There was no equivocation in our Lord’s lightning response: “Get behind me, Satan!” Indeed, it is Satan’s policy to keep us from the cross because there is no healing, no restoration, no freedom, no salvation—past, present or future—apart from it. Whenever I go to the cross and die to myself, Christ increases and there is an expulsive light, driving away every phantom of the past. 

I have no criticism toward those who need to process the past or seek treatment for trauma. Only God knows what each of us needs in order to heal. I can only say that approach doesn’t work for me. The more I dwell on my past, the more I find myself trapped by the very thing I want to escape. 

What worked? Jesus. And His more than conquering, indwelling Spirit. When I was literally taken out of Adam's fallen, hell-bound race and placed in Christ, my past no longer had a claim on me. And the residual ghosts that still “go bump in the night” are ones I can, by His enabling grace, take captive before they rout me into dark passages of self-pity, hopelessness, or fear (2 Cor. 10:5). 

The girl in the photograph, with her plaintive eyes, is me—a small soul, like so many others, battered by the wounds of abuse. But Jesus saved me, granting me repentance from sin and the guilt and shame that accompany it. When He came into my life, the ghosts began to dissipate, like the fog lifting at sunrise. As Scripture promises, “The sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings, and you will go out and playfully jump like calves from the stall” (Mal. 4:2).

Haunting to Hope

Almighty God is the Superior Spirit. In Him, all haunting gives way to hope—hope of being a victor rather than a victim, hope of being set free from even the worst of abuse, and hope that every longing for love will one day be fully satisfied. 

To Him be all glory. 

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, 
and see, the new has come! —2 Corinthians 5:17 

 ¹ Emily Dickinson, “One need not be a Chamber to be haunted,” accessed October 27, 2025, http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/dickinsonchamber.pdf.