Right at the beginning, I must state that this is not meant to be Christian propaganda. It is the record of my personal belief.
When a bag of books was given to the proposed library in a college town, this was one of them. I took one look at the title and realize that it would not fit the Christian library setting. It went to the reject pile. A week later I sorted through the reject pile and noted the ghost book was published by Heinemann New Windmills. Now I must admit that throughout my teaching days and reading years, every book Heinemann books I have come across has been of a certain high standard.
Accordingly, this book went into the to-be-read box. Last night I finally read it. While I would hesitate to give it to a young child, I guess most teenager would be able to handle such issues as the Poltergeist and exorcism. Reading about such topics reminded me of two actual cases that I came across in Silver City.
Personally I think that upon death, human souls would go to heaven or hell. What was left behind that could masquerade as the deceased are familiar spirits. Just like our guardian angels, familiar spirits are fallen angels that would follow us everyday of our lives. I was present at my father's death bed. As I prayed to God about my father's destination after life, I have a dream within weeks of his death that comforted me greatly. Therefore I am convinced that as soon as I enter heaven, I will look for him in the heavenly library or any gathering places for scholars.
While I was in Silver City, a church friend accompanied her unbelieving sister to read tarot cards. When the said friend returned home, there was manifestation in her house. Vases would fall and lighter stuff would fly like there was a Category one storm happening in the family home. The church prayer team came, they have a praise session with bible reading, prayers and my friend confessed that she sinned by ignorance and repented. The leader anointed every door and window with olive oil and everything returned to normal.
The second case was a little more frightening, my husband's colleague was a demanding mother. Her first born son was depressed over struggling to meet the exacting standards of expectation in all things academic. He started seeing the School Psychologist but sad to say he had a failed suicide attempt. It seemed a church group went to exorcise some demons that brought a death wish to the youth. Thank God it was successful, today the son just graduated from some college. My husband who met the family by chance recently, he said that the eldest son put on some weight and looked rather relax.
The Ghost of Thomas Kempe is a work of fiction written to entertain youth. While I do not agree with the methods of exorcism that sounded much like Harry Porter, it is not a bad book if the parents care enough to explain things right in the beginning before letting the children read such books. I really disagree with the view that Christian children are only allowed to read Christian books: I think that is an unnecessarily narrow way of upbringing.
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