There is of course life after death – just not for the dead people.

“Boo!”

Scared ya!

Readers of this mornings ‘Press’ were greeted with the headlines ‘Christchurch – it’s a spooky town’ and a new re-hashed self proclaimed group of ‘paranormal investigators’ (photo above)

Their web site is http://www.ghosthunters.co.nz/ , which upon examination gives its mailing address as a post office box in Motueka (a town more renowned for its illicit drug trade rather than being a hotbed of living-dead)

This isn’t the first time our local newspaper has pandered to this motley-crew, comprised largely of what appears to be the over-imaginative, dateless and desperate.

Still everyone knows when creeping shadows, unidentifiable sounds combine with a journalist after a sensationalist story – it’s gotta be a ghost!

This is their head ghost-hunter, Anton Heyrick, pictured at the former Addington Prison, just a couple of months back.

Now one would suppose The Press may well have had the fortitude to ask Anton exactly what they had found in terms of evidence in their earlier search for apparitions at the Addington site, before their four-man team charged around other supposedly haunted sites in Canterbury.

But they didn’t need to ask a rational and logical question like that, now did they?

Along with the readers, of what was formerly was called a newspaper but is now little more than a tabloid - they already knew the answer to the million-dollar question “Hey fella, what have you found so far in terms of evidence?”

So far they found fucking nothing and they will find sweat fuck-all in terms of the after-life in any other places they care to stake-out – be it in Christchurch, Canterbury, New Zealand, Kazakhstan, Outer Mongolia or the back-blocks of The Amazon.

This is why: ghosts & spirits don’t exist.

The idea of ‘spirits’ or ‘gods’ stranded in a parallel existence, from which they communicate with those of the living with special abilities or can be detected by equipment purchased at Dick Smith Electronics, has in principal been about since time immemorial. The Delphic Oracle any one?

Life after death is a man-made invention.That’s why only dead humans communicate from an after-life, rattle chains in 13th century castles, and we don’t hear the barks from the deceased family Labrador coming from its old kennel.

If you believe in an afterlife and the ability for the 60 billion dead spirits to communicate (and seemingly so, only via psychics who charge for the privilege) with the 10 billion humans alive today and in some form survive-death, you must therefore believe that at some level:

*That every living minute of your life, is being snooped on by at least ten spirit beings, and they take an interest in you. Yes, that includes every time you have a piss, shag the wife, go to sleep etc. Why would these spirits be remotely interested in the mundane lives of you and me, when they can say voyeur the day to day activities of the drummer for Green Day? Following this logic is say Paris Hiltons shower room, the place to be in spooksville?

* What happens when the last living contact of these spirits dies? Who do they go around and watch then? Miss Hilton’s bed-room or the set of the next Porn Blockbuster - the living-world is your oyster. Why the fuck waste a single minute in a fucking re-converted Jail in Christchurch?

* All spirits apparently speak the same language, which fortunately means they avoid taking a crash Berlitz course in Serbo-Croation etc, the moment they pass-over.

* When you die you always prefer a crappy old building to live, the more derelict and unattractive the better. Ever heard of the ghost wandering the passages of the six-star Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubai?

* In the after-life you retain the physical appearance and body at the moment of your death. With all those old people floating round it must be a fairly quite in the ‘after life’ and the zimmer-frame franchise-holder would be doing a roaring trade, along with sales in Viagra. Put it this way, I wouldn’t be opening a night-club in the next life. I pity the likes of Douglas Bader and invalids who must crawl their way through eternity - what a miserable existence it must be for these poor sods.

*If you are decapitated or placed in a vat of acid, you can still magically communicate and still keep your entire human-form when paranormal investigators open the cupboard you are hiding-in. Wow! Still on the positive, this leads to the conclusion that there's still hope for the ugly people in the after-life.

* The dead must take night classes. That’s so that when a bronze-aged peasant is called upon to communicate with a modern psychic, they know what say a ‘radio’ or ‘car’ is.

Lets be frank - the whole idea of dead talking to the living, spirits wandering spooky old houses is a load of crap.Those who claim to talk to the dead are nothing but crude charlatans with over active imaginations and a gift for cold-reading.

Those that chase ghostly spirits in the hope of finding evidence that when they die they get a second shot at things, are delusional and should get down to the pub and engage in sex more often (masturbation doesn’t count either)

In other-words start enjoying their one & only shot at life!