Do you believe in ghosts?

A friend recently asked me this question. My answer surprised him. I said that I do. He asked how this squared with Judaism's beliefs regarding the afterlife. He had a point. Through most of my life and through most of his, we'd always heard that Jews don't really talk too much about the afterlife. It's not clear what happens when you die. Some argue that we lie dormant until the Messianic age when we are all resurrected. Some believe that we move to Sheol for a bit and then move on to heaven or hell. Many believe that heaven and hell are internal rather than external constructs and that our belonging to either is a state of mind...take this famous rabbinic story:

In the afterlife people cannot bend at the elbow. For those that can feed others, this is heaven, for those that cannot feed themselves, it is hell.

My own views on this are too convoluted to even attempt to write in this blog nor are they appropriate for it. I'm just tossing out the questions.

So where does that leave us? The afterlife is clearly a bit of a mystery in Judaism. So, why then would I Samuel 28:8-19 have a story about King Saul talking to the ghost of Samuel. I Judaism doesn't believe in an afterlife, where the heck has Sammuel been hiding?

More importantly, how can the afterlife be such a mystery when the Hebrew bible itself talks about it. In his book, Does the Soul Survive, Elie Kaplan Spiz argues (and provides examples) that Judaism actually has a pretty robust view of the afterlife.

I have no idea, but I think it's interesting that so many Jews are certain that Judaism really isn't that into the afterlife, despite one of its most important books talking about it.