People have believed in ghosts since ancient times. Some describe them as visions and strange lights, the feeling of someone being in the room, noises, or a sudden drop in temperature.
Others smelled the deceased person's favorite food, heard their favorite song, or saw objects fall off the shelves, and the doors opened and closed themselves. For many, this experience is incontrovertible proof of the existence of ghosts. But scientists have found several possible explanations for the phenomena that are often attributed to ghosts.
Are there ghosts? (Electrical brain stimulation)
Frightened eyewitnesses from different parts of the world claim to see the shadows of people. These dark entities, which are noticed out of the corner of the eye, disappear immediately after the person meets them face to face.
Many believe that these are demons, others that they are astral bodies, and still others claim that they are time travelers. But some researchers have proposed another unexpected version. When Swiss scientists used electricity to stimulate the brain of epileptics, the result was somewhat eerie.
One patient described the shadow of a person sitting behind her and copying her every movement. If the patient sat down, the shadow sat down with her; if she bent down and grabbed her knee, the shadow tried to hold her. When the doctors asked the woman to read from the card, the shadow tried to take it away.
As it turned out, the scientists stimulated the left temporo-parietal junction - the region of the brain that determines our idea of our own "I". By interfering with this area, which helps us to distinguish us from other people, doctors have interfered with the patient's ability to understand her own body, and this has led to the creation of a shadow of personality.
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Scientists believe this will help explain why so many people, healthy and schizophrenic, encounter ghosts, aliens and other creatures.
How to summon a ghost? (Ideomotor effect)
The Spiritualist movement gained popularity in the 1840s and 1850s and allowed people to communicate with deceased relatives. During the seances, a Ouija board was used, covered with letters, numbers and simple words ("yes" or "no"). People put their hands on the tablet and asked the spirits a question. The spirit responded by moving the tablet from the box to the letter, giving out the answer.
Another method of communicating with the spirits was the swinging table. During the session, people gathered at the table and laid their hands on its surface. To everyone's surprise, the table began to move, tilting on one leg, rising above the ground and moving around the room.
There may have been some scammers in many cases, but were all these sessions really nothing more than a scam? The famous physicist Michael Faraday conducted an experiment and found out that the table often moved due to the so-called ideomotor effect.
This effect occurs when the power of suggestion causes our muscles to move unconsciously. People expected the table to start moving and it began to move.
A similar event happened in 1853 when four doctors conducted an experimental session. When they told half of the participants that the table would move to the right and half that it would move to the left, the table did not budge. When they reported that he would move in one direction, the ideomotor effect worked again. The same can be said about the Ouija board when our muscles, not our spirits, point to words.
A real pi ghost? (Infrasound)
When British researcher Vic Tandy once saw a gray ghost near his desk, he thought that his laboratory was chosen by ghosts. But the next day, the scientist made an interesting discovery.
When he was preparing for a fencing competition, he put his sword in the holder and noticed that it vibrated by itself. Suddenly he realized that something that was making his sword shake was infrasound.
Humans can hear sounds up to 20,000 Hertz, but cannot pick up sounds below 20 Hertz. These “quiet” noises are called infrasound, and although we cannot see them, we can feel them as vibrations. We can feel these waves, especially in the abdomen, and this can create positive sensations, such as awe, or negative ones, anxiety. In a certain setting, such as an empty house, this can lead to feelings of panic.
Thunderstorms, wind, certain weather conditions, and even household items can produce infrasounds. When Zeke Tandy watched the trembling sword, he remembered that a new fan had been installed in the laboratory, which emitted vibrations below 19 Hertz. Since the resonance frequency of the eyeball is approximately 20 Hertz, the infrasound caused vibration and created images that were not there. After the fan was turned off, the ghosts no longer appeared.
Some scientists believe that vibrations explain paranormal activity in some places. So Richard Wiseman, exploring two underground places, discovered the presence of infrasound, which came from the traffic above.
How to see a ghost (Automatism)
Channeling - the ability of "otherworldly forces" to control the human body - was one of the oldest attempts of humanity to communicate with the spirit world. The idea was to clear your mind, connect with some kind of cosmic consciousness and allow an ancient spirit to take over your body.
It was believed that the shamans of ancient religions were able to receive information from the dead. Although modern mediums often resort to fraud, some people genuinely believe in what they are doing.
This can be explained by automatism or an altered state of consciousness, when a person speaks and thinks about things that he is not aware of. When a medium clears his mind, he begins to look for a spirit that enters his body and supplies him with secret knowledge of the world. In fact, at this time, random ideas and thoughts begin to appear in his head, and he believes that they came to him from another reality. However, ideas come from his own head, and our brain is able to generate them without any effort from the mind.
Remember how often something inspired you out of the blue? How often have you had strange nightmares and dreams? All this is not the other world, but our acting out brain.
Ghost stories
Drafts
Imagine that you are walking through a frightening, dilapidated house in the middle of the night and suddenly feel the coldness in the air. But as soon as you take a few steps to the left or right, the temperature returns to normal. Parapsychologists call this phenomenon a "cold place" - a place of paranormal activity. They explain this by the fact that the spirit needs energy, and in order to appear, it receives it from the environment, including people.
But scientists have a simpler and more boring explanation for this phenomenon. When skeptics studied haunted houses, they tended to find cool air entering the house through a chimney or window.
But, even if the room is isolated, this can be reasonably explained. Every object has a different temperature, and some surfaces are hotter than others. To balance room temperature, an object attempts to release heat in a process called convection.
In this case, hot air rises and cool air descends. When dry air enters a humid room, dry air settles on the floor, and moist air rises to the ceiling. This circulating air will feel cold on a person's skin, giving the impression of a cold place.
Camera
Many also claim that the luminous spheres of light are the spirits of deceased people who have not completely left this world. These spheres are invisible to the eye, but they can be seen in photographs.
However, skeptics are relentless and explain that when a particle of dust or a small insect is very close to the camera, it will appear in the photographs as a fuzzy circle. The flash makes the sphere appear luminous and can be easily mistaken for a ghost.
Even most of those who believe in ghosts are quite skeptical about the spheres in photographs. Parapsychologist Pamela Heath believes there are several natural causes for them, including fine hairs, dirty or wet lenses, lens reflections, and movement during shooting. Many sites stopped accepting such photos, as there were too many fakes among them.
Carbon monoxide poisoning
In 1921, ophthalmologist William Wilmer published an unusual paper in the American Journal of Ophthalmology. It told the story of the N family and the ghosts in their house, the house was filled with the sounds of slamming doors, moving furniture and the sounds of footsteps in an empty room. One of the children felt something land on him, while the other was attacked by a mysterious stranger.
At night, the hostess of the house woke up and saw a man and a woman at the foot of the bed, which then disappeared. Family members felt tired and depressed, and the plants in the house began to die. And then they found a faulty boiler in the house, which was supposed to raise smoke to the chimney, and instead, smoke filled the house. As it turned out, the family suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Carbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless gas that is very difficult to detect. It is dangerous because red blood cells absorb carbon monoxide more readily than oxygen, and oxygen deprivation leads to symptoms such as weakness, nausea, confusion, hallucinations, and ultimately death, as happened in this family.
A similar incident happened in 2005 when a woman saw a ghost in her bathroom. As it turned out, the paranormal activity was caused by a leaky water heater that filled the house with carbon monoxide.
Real events and ghosts
Mass hysteria
In June 2013, more than 3,000 workers went on strike at a garment factory in Gazipur, Bangladesh. They did not complain about long working hours or insufficient wages, but asked to deal with the ghost in the toilet. An angry ghost attacked workers in the women's restroom, causing widespread panic. A riot ensued, and the police had to restore order.
A similar event happened at Latong School in Phuket, when 22 students were hospitalized after seeing the ghost of an old woman.
Both workers and students have become victims of a psychological phenomenon called mass hysteria. These collective illusions arise when people are under intense stress, usually in an oppressive environment (strict school or busy work).
The pent-up stress leads to symptoms such as headaches, nausea and severe cramps. If you add religious or cultural beliefs to this, other people will start to catch the same strange symptoms and they will spread like a disease.
It is interesting to note that only a few of the 3,000 factory workers encountered the ghost, and the woman who sparked the conflict saw nothing at all. She got sick and decided it was the work of an evil spirit. The circumstances were so perfect that it caused panic.
Jonah
Ghostbusters use an ion counter that reads ions. An ion is an atom with an unequal number of protons and electrons. If an electron is attached to an atom, it becomes a negative ion, and if it loses an electron, it becomes positive.
Ghostbusters believe that the ions indicate a paranormal entity. They argue that the presence of the spirit interferes with the amount of ions in the atmosphere, and ghosts draw on the energy of the ions if they want to appear and scare people. However, the presence of ions causes a variety of natural phenomena, including weather, solar radiation and radon gas.
Interestingly, both positive and negative ions affect our mood. Negative ions are soothing, while positive ions can cause headaches and discomfort. This may explain why people living in haunted houses often describe feelings of fatigue and tension, as well as headaches.
Ghosts and Ghosts (Quantum Mechanics)
Quantum mechanics studies small types of matter, leading to amazing discoveries in science. Physicists even try to explain spirits and ghosts with it.
For example, Dr. Stuart Hameroff and physicist Roger Penrose believe that human consciousness is located in microtubules inside brain cells, and they are responsible for quantum information processing.
Scientists believe that with clinical death, all this quantum information leaves the brain, but continues to exist. It is for this reason that some people have out of body experiences and see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Many scientists disagree with this theory, but there are those who support them. So Dr. Henry Stalp believes that a person's personality can survive death and exist as a "psychic entity". If such entities can return to the physical world, then it will be possible to explain paranormal phenomena.
“Interesting newspaper. Incredible №21 2013