Coming to the second time you go through the church, the Bell Killer uses the huge statue of the Virgin Mary to crush Rose. The real statue shatters, but the 'ghost' of the statue still exists in the courtyard - even with the shattered statue right there.
In his Near-Death Experience, Ronan is successfully rattling the doorknob and banging the door. Regardless they aren't opening for him.
It may be that he's not entirely dead yet and is having an out of body experience, until the Bell Killer finally finishes him off.
That's it exactly. He still appears in color before he gets shot and the bullet holes appear in him as he dies. He's not dead yet just out of body. And if spirits can interact with the living world in small ways then someone out of body likely can as well.
Why was Abigail the first person Ronan sees in the spirit world after he is murdered at the beginning of the game? Because Abigail was controlling the man Ronan was chasing, who turns out to be his wife's brother, and one of many victims that she used to portray the Bell Killer.
After Abigail explains the basics of ghost abilities, a hell pit just so happens to form between her and Ronan when she's done with speaking to him. Coincidence? Not even close.
At the start of the game your first task is to manoeuvre your hands and feet back inside your body - not that you ever use this again. You can't yet see limbo and your soul is still in colour even when outside of your body. Your body starts twitching and gasping, suggesting that you're having some kind of Near-Death Experience, and Ronan is still hopeful that he can survive. And then the Bell Killer comes down and shoots you seven times in the chest, and Limbo floods in, showing you that you've been killed just a few yards down the road from the ghost of the Salem Gallows.
Being shot seven times proves that the Bell Killer might not have been looking to kill you at first, but when you came along, the window wasn't enough - they definitely went for overkill.
It turns out that Abigail really did intend to kill Ronan since he was her tool for Sophia's murder, so the seven shots may have been her way of making sure he was dead and indulging in her sadism.
An NPC's mind-reading lines give them a voice different from their spoken ones. Comes across as strange, but then one recalls that this is actually Truth in Television. A person's voice sounds different to them than it does to other people — many people wouldn't recognize their 'outside' voice if they heard a recording of themselves.
Why is the Bell Killer so inhumanely strong? Abigail has likely learned how to use her People Puppets' full strength at some point, which a human's body usually actively prevents except in extreme circumstances to avoid damaging itself - which is something Abigail doesn't have to care about since she can always seek out someone else to possess.
This game's version of the afterlife is pretty horrifying if you happen to die with any sort of lingering business. **For starters, there are apparently no psychopomps on duty since Ronan seems to be fulfilling the role most of the time and most ghosts are usually confused as to their current status and how to resolve it, some don't even seem to be aware that they're actually dead, making it hard for them to resolve their situation themselves. Several ghosts at the asylum even seem to retain their mental illness in death, which is really horrifying if you take some of the Ghost Stories into account.
Mediums like Joy have it rough, not unusual in most depictions of them in fiction and probably exacerbated due to the lack of psychopomps; ghosts practically swarm her in the graveyard and her comment while entering the sanitarium may indicate that she's concerning about being committed if her I See Dead People talent is mistaken for mental illness. Not to mention the Bell Killer is specifically targeting mediums, believing them to have made a contract with the devil for their abilites.
Assuming Abigail was telling the truth about demons being what a ghost eventually becomes and they're not solely her creations, that means that every ghost you don't or can't help in the game is on their way to becoming a spiritual version of a cannibal.
A ghost like Abigail can eventually manifest abilities like complete possession of a person and the forming of hell pits. It's very unlikely that only one ghost ever learned to do this, so how many other Abigails are running around making demons and generally tormenting the living and the dead?
