We know, because God tells us in his Word, that people – not places – are haunted.

Again – there are no haunted places, just haunted people (and some haunted animals).

Jesus never cast a demon out of any place. He did cast demons out of many people and once cast demons out of a person and into a herd of pigs, but there are no instances of Jesus casting out demons from a place or sending demons into a house or the wilderness or any other Earthly habitation.

If places could be haunted, don’t you think Jesus would have gone there to cast out a few demons, and don’t you think this would have been recorded in scripture?

Things can’t be haunted, either. In the Old Testament, the prophets state that pagan statues are made of stone and wood and have no life in them. People in those days were bowing down before lifeless statues that had no power whatsoever to help them and clutching amulets for “good luck”. Some people still do, even in so-called Christian religions.

I mention this spiritual fact about the impossibility of places and things being haunted because Hallowe’en is coming and it’s a good time for us to remind ourselves about spiritual fact and spiritual fiction, since so much of what we’re being told by the world is spiritual fiction.

When I say “haunted”, I mean infested by demons or other fallen spiritual entities.

So – here’s the reminder:

There’s no such thing as a haunted house.

There’s no such thing as a haunted graveyard.

There’s no such thing as a haunted forest.

Demons don’t lurk in dark closets or under a bed, waiting for some hapless victim to show up. There are no monsters in the closet and there never were. Darkness is nothing to be afraid of, in and of itself. It can be hazardous because you can’t see where you’re going and you might trip (and other dangers can lurk in darkness), but demons don’t hide out in dark spaces waiting for people to show up so they can ambush them. That’s just Hollywood nonsense.

Rings, amulets, statues, mirrors, jewelry boxes, board games, etc., don’t have “special powers”. Things cannot be spiritually inhabited. Things can be physically moved by spiritual forces (God and his angels do that all the time, to help believers as well as non-believers), but the things in themselves are spiritually inert.

The long and the short of it is: demons and other fallen spirits will only manifest their presence around a “haunted” person, in much the same way as God’s Spirit manifests his presence in and around those who are born-again. It’s the same spiritual concept but completely different entities.

Unbelievers who claim to have seen “ghosts” or experienced “paranormal activity” are people in need of prayer.

Remember that the dark spiritual forces want us to fear them because that’s one of the few ways they have to gain a degree of power over us.

Jesus tells us who it is we should actually fear: The One who has power to cast both body and soul into Hell. God is the only one we should fear, and in a reverential not a frightened way.

At Hallowe’en, as at every other time of the year, we should be afraid of nothing except not doing God’s will.