Perhaps those who do not see spirits are partially blind.

I've never (yet) had that experience, but I don't doubt it.

I found your blog by total accident (was looking for some Japanese stuff), got hooked by this short account abt ur polio-stricken aunt, then got again, pierced?! by your ghosts... Why do I totally believe you? I neither believe nor fully disbelieve "ghosts" but how you tell it creates utter credibility. Why never told anyone before?

Maybe some transient stage between dream and wake-up? Like I dreamed someone coming in my room - danger - and tring to move, desperately, while being still paralyzed by sleep? I heard myself yelling, howling before I fully woke up. Ultimate terror?
Again astonished by my imagination of the blogger as male... turned out to be wrong. Ok, why do we make so much fuss abt gender?
Any coaxing abt the amazing paintings allowed?
Add to strange things here myself: German, finding ur blog during working hours in my dull office... can't do without strolling away from my dull work tasks.

I think maybe seeing ghosts is possible when "reality" is not questioned as a provable fact ("a willing suspension of disbelief"), just, as you say, in that dream-state, Oliver, a person is not totally grounded in "facts". I probably didn't tell anyone because I grew up in an environment that would not have been supportive of such information. It was the self-preservation instinct of a child, I suppose.