I grew up after the golden age of classic horror movies: Bela Lugosi as Dracula, Boris Karloff as Frankenstein, and Lon Chaney as the Wolfman. Those movies showed up frequently on my television. As the baby of the family, I was pretty well left to my own devices to entertain myself, and I watched those movies over and over. Understandably, my developing and impressionable mind was frightened. To me, monsters, ghosts, and goblins were real. I couldn’t go to sleep at night because I was convinced they were coming to get me.
My parents tried and tried to convince me that those scary guys were not real, that monsters were just actors on TV, and that ghosts really did not exist.
Although I don’t remember it specifically, my parents told a story about me so many times that I grew to believe it. One day my dad was trying—for the thousandth time—to help me understand that there was no such thing as ghosts. Allegedly I replied, “Well if there’s no such thing as ghosts, what about the Holy Ghost?”
Supposedly the family erupted in laughter, and Dad was speechless.
My childlike-mind could not grasp it at the time. But being in church week after week and hearing the congregation recite the Apostles’ Creed had laid down a foundational truth for me. God was at work in my mind and in my heart (and maybe in Dad’s!) to help me understand that He is real and active in my life every day.