Not the kind that used to be your uncle.
Seventh-day Adventists generally do not treat ghosts as the spirits of the dead. The reason is the doctrine of soul sleep, sometimes called conditional immortality. At death a person stops being conscious. Body and life return to God, and the person sleeps until Christ raises the dead. The dead do not come back, haunt a house, or send messages.
That teaching rests on a plain reading of a few texts. Ecclesiastes 9:5 says the dead know nothing. Psalm 146:4 says thoughts perish. In John 11, Jesus calls death sleep, then says Lazarus is dead. First Thessalonians 4 places the waking of the dead at the second coming, not at a séance. If the person is not awake, the person is not available.
Adventists still hear the stories. Apparitions and voices get one of two explanations: something ordinary, or something demonic. Isaiah 8 warns against consulting the dead. First Timothy 4 warns that some will listen to deceiving spirits. The medium at Endor is usually read as an impersonation, not Samuel’s return. Ellen G. White, still influential in the church, treats spirit manifestations as part of Satan’s last deception.
None of this empties the world of the supernatural. Adventists affirm angels, demons, and a real conflict between them. They expect a resurrection of the righteous and the wicked, a final judgment, and the end of the unsaved rather than endless conscious pain. The church’s beliefs on human nature and the state of the dead say as much. Members differ on how strictly they hold it.
Death, on this account, is not a change of address. It is an interruption. The next waking, if the promise holds, belongs to the resurrection.
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