People often ask how I got the strange name The Haunted Mansion, for a Christian book. Well, it goes like this. Christians always make the point that God doesn't just see the present as is the case with us. He also sees the past and the future. To Him, the past and future are just as real as the present. It is all there before Him. It turns out that around 100 years ago physicists discovered that the past, present and future are all equally real. So Christians had this idea long before science came along! Even so, it is difficult for us to think that the future is already out there and the past did not go away. To help make this idea really sink in I thought it would be good to compare the situation with an amusement park ride, such as the haunted mansion ride at Disneyworld. When you begin the ride, all that you are going to see in the future is already out there, you just haven't reached that future yet. And after you are done with the ride, all those places you saw at the beginning of the ride (those places in the past) are still out there and they are as real as where you are now. So, what is happening to us in the real universe is quite similar to being on an amusement park ride like the haunted mansion ride. Now, any amusement park type ride would make the point however with the haunted mansion ride there are two extra benefits. In the haunted mansion ride there are supposed to be spirits (ghosts) behind the scenes. From the Bible we know that there are indeed spirits (good and bad) operating behind the scenes in this world. Second, the haunted mansion ride is supposed to be scary in a fun sort of way and our real world is indeed scary some of the time.

Another nice feature of the analogy is that I can talk about how an amusement park ride like the haunted mansion ride is built and then use that process as an analogy about how God describes His creation of the heavens and the Earth in Genesis chapter 1.