Ghosts and ESP...

Those who are in the next dimension, the world of the spirit, are indeed 'alive' - in some ways more so than we who inhabit the three-dimensional, physical world with its limitations and problems.
However, for it is the living in this world who come in contact with the dead. Since ghosts don't necessarily seek us out, ghosts just ARE because of the circumstances of their deaths.
For us to be able to see or hear a ghost requires a gift known as psychic ability or ESP...extra sensory perception. Professor Joseph Banks Rhine of Duke University thinks of ESP as an extra sense. Some have referred to it as 'the sixth sense', although I rather think the gift of ESP is merely an extension of the ordinary senses beyond their usual limitations.
If you don't have ESP, you're not likely to encounter a ghost or connect with the spirit of a loved one. Take hart, however: ESP is VERY common, in varying degrees, and about half of all people are capable of it. It is, in my view, a NORMAL gift that has in many instances been neglected or suppressed for various reasons, chiefly ignorance or fear.
Psychic ability is being recognized and used today worldwide in many practical applications. Scientific research, business, and criminal investigations have utlized this medium to extend the range of ordinary research.
The problems of acknowledging this extra faculty are many. Proir to the nineteenth century, anything bordering on the occult was considered religious heresy and had to be suppressed or at least kept quiet.
The nature of ESP is spontaneous and unexpected. You don't know when you'll have an experience, you can't make it happen, and you can't fortell when and how it will happen. Conditions beyond your knowledge make the experience possible, and you have no control over it.
The ESP experience can take the form of a hunch, an uncanny feeling, or an intuitive impression. Or, it can be sronger and more definite, such as a flash, an image or auditory signal, a warning voice, or a vision, depending on who you are and your inborn talents as a receiver.
The strange thing about ESP is that it is really far more than an extra, sixth sense, equal in status to the other five. It is actually a SUPERSENSE that operates through the other five to get its message across.
It all adds up to this: Our normal human perception, even with instruments extending it a little, is far from complete. To assert that there is no more around us than the little we can measure is preposterous. It is also dangerous, for in teaching this doctrine to our children, we prevent them from allowing their potential psychic abilities to develop unhampered. In a field where thought is a force to be reckoned with, false thinking can be destructive.

~Excerpts taken from 'Ghosts~True Encounters With The World Beyond' by Hans Holzer