Question: Can everyone see ghosts, or just some people?

Sri Chinmoy: If they take a form, the spirits can be seen by everyone. They can take a beautiful or an ugly form. When I was only twelve years old, one of our servants was attacked by a ghost. He was about twenty-three years old. Around noon or one o’clock, he was walking along the street when suddenly, from a tree, the stupid fellow saw a beautiful woman calling for help. When he went to help her she started kicking him with her knees. The boy fell down and fainted. Afterwards he was taken to a hospital and they tried all kinds of medicine on him. How he suffered! It was not a mental hallucination or anything.

Usually the female spirits are more mischievous than the masculine ones. Female ones come with a very beautiful form and call someone, and when the person goes, they kick him like anything. One evening my elder brother and his friend were walking together near a bamboo tree. Bamboo trees are very tall, and they saw that this tree was bending very low. My brother actually saw a woman in the tree, but his friend did not. It was not his third eye or anything that let him see the woman while his friend did not; it was just that his friend was not paying attention. His friend was so delighted to see a bamboo tree bent to such an extent that he just grabbed hold of it. The tree snapped back up, and my brother’s friend was thrown to the top of the tree. When he fell back down he broke his elbow and his shoulder. Nothing happened to my brother.