My wife and I sometimes watch a TV show called Ghost Whisperer. Its about a young women who can hear and see the ghosts of the departed. It seems that these ghosts are often trapped on the earthly plane -- earthbound -- and need help to be set free. This freedom is called the Light, and seems to be some sort of heavenly realm.
Melinda Gordon, the ghost whisperer, goes about as a sort of post-modern ghostbuster, communicating with the deceased spirits and figuring out why they are stuck. Usually there is unfinished business such as reconciliation between, for example, a deceased father and a remaining son, or perhaps it is a little girl that has died, and needs to be reassured that mummy and daddy still love each other and always loved her.
The series actually reminds me of Ghost, you know, the "1990 romantic drama-fantasy-thriller film starring Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg". In this film it is Whoopi Goldberg who is the "ghost whisperer". Again, we have the concept of earthbound spirits which are trapped on earth and therefore have not been taken up into the Light. The film also showed a somewhat different fate for evil/nasty characters: when they die, a horde of dark beings appeared to drag the soul into some sort of ethereal darkness.
I haven't watched enough of Ghost Whisperer to see if they have an equivalent to the Darkness seen in Ghost. Or perhaps in their world every single ghost can be redeemed, set free, and released into the Light. Does anyone know?
I'll post more on this theme soon, feel free to join in the conversation and comment on anything related...
