What does the Ghost say?

Have you ever seen a ghost? Have you talked to it? Well, I guess if you did, you would have described the situation to one similar from a horror movie, right? However, Hamlet did not even run away across a corridor because he saw his death father, on the contrary, he just talked to him in a way similar to a Ghostbusters Elizabethan version.

I wish, I was as brave as him, but let’s stop a little bit to what the ghost actually said.

First, he claims that he is his father, and clearly looks like him. Then, he explains that his death is actually a murder committed by his brother; Hamlet’s uncle and actual king. Third, because of words like “doomed” and being in “tormenting flames”, thus the desperation of his words about being revenged in order to make his crimes “burnt and purged away”, we can infer that he is not in heaven at all. According, to the catholic perspective he would be in purgatory, because he actually can be saved. Then the contradictions begin, because seen from that perspective spirits who are in that state should not try to make other sin or they would stay where they are. So, why is he suffering from not being revenged?

From the other religious point of view; for Protestants purgatory does not exist at all. This is another contradiction, since it is said that Denmark is a protestant nation and actually Hamlet attended to Wittenberg a school where the protestant reformation began.  Therefore, he was not his father at all, just an evil force.

All in all, I think that what the ghost says does not really matters; it is hamlet’s reaction to his words what moves him in the direction to revenge. A clear example of this idea is the mouse trap, since he needed to be sure of the words of his father.

Hamlet, do you really believe in the Ghost? Or are you a super expert of spirits? Is that the reason you had to test it?