What happens to us? (Go to the light little girl)

I was raised catholic.  I attended catholic school as a child and then a catholic jesuit prep high school.  I think I was about 12 when it all started to feel strange to me.  (Not a priest asking me to attend the theatre with him and then join him for a nightcap kind of strange, but strange.) The things I was taught seemed more ridiculous to me as I grew older.  Now I have nothing against the catholic church (except of course their stance on abortion, their propensity to start and encourage war, their hypocritical views toward sexuality and, well maybe I do have some things against the catholic church because this list can go on and on) however I wanted out.  Today, I'm not really sure what I believe in.  Certainly not heaven and hell.  I can't image there is one "being" who has some master plan for us all.

I think I'm more comfortable believing that we are all made of energy and when we die that energy simply moves on to something else or someplace else or maybe even someone else.  Perhaps we are reincarnated or maybe our energy joins the universe and we become something bigger than we can fathom in our current form.  It's a romantic idea to think our loved ones pass on and then become another being.  Is my son the reincarnated soul of my father, my wife's grandfather, my aunt?  Will I become someone that makes  a difference in the life of a relative or friend in the future?

So why am I babbling on about this?  Religion and life after death can be debate, as we all know, until the end of time.  It's just something that I've always thought about and as a practicing ashtangi spirituality comes up a lot.  Sometimes it's all very confusing.

Two days ago my sister was telling me about her good friend (who she works with every day) whose son believed (for a long time) that something was going on in his house.  His small daughter, a 5 year old claimed to be talking to someone in her room.  She gave a number of details about her multiple conversations.  Although the child's parents were pretty scared they certainly didn't show it to their daughter.  Hanging out in their living room two days ago the little girl was sitting on a chair playing with a doll.  Her father had his digital camera right next to him and took a picture.  As he was pressing the button and snapping the picture his daughter jumped up and ran out of the room.  He didn't give it a second thought but the picture shows something very strange.  When he saw it he couldn't believe what he was seeing.  Look at the faint image on the left side of this picture......................

It helped me to pull back from the monitor when I first opened the picture.  You can clearly see the image of a small child in a very old fashioned dress.  Now this isn't a friend of a friend or a whisper down the lane situation.  It's coming directly from this guy's mother.  It's a digital image, it's not some weird issue with an old fashion film camera.

So what is it?  Is it this little girl's energy, her spirit?  I know most people know someone with a ghost story (I can tell you one about my house if you're interested) but seeing something like this truly makes me wonder what happens to us.  I know if and when I die I hope I'm wearing a hip outfit.