Humans can hear sounds up to 20,000 Hz, but we cannot distinguish between sounds below 20 Hz. This “quiet” noise is called infrasound, and although we cannot hear it, we can feel it as vibrations. Dr. Richard Weissman believes that we can feel these waves with our body, especially our stomach, and they can cause both positive emotions like awe, and negative ones like fear, anxiety or even panic.
Infrasound can occur due to storms, wind, weather conditions and even household appliances. But back to Vic Tandy: after observing the vibration of his sword, he learned that a new fan was installed in his laboratory, and, of course, it was the source of sound at a frequency of about 19 Hz.
Dr. Weissman believes that these fluctuations often cause "paranormal activity" in haunted areas. For example, when examining two sewers, he found evidence of infrasound - overhead movement by cars and people. Weissman believes that this explains the appearance of ghostly figures and creepy steps in such places.
4. Automatism
What do sorcerers and Shirley MacLaine have in common? They create channels to another world. Such tunneling is one of the oldest attempts by humanity to reach the spiritual world. The idea is to clear your mind, connect with some cosmic consciousness, and then let the ancient spirit that entered your body, which absolutely does not seem threatening, do everything.
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The shamans of ancient religions believed that they were escorting the dead to another world, and the telepsychologist John Edward claims that he can talk with those who have already crossed the fatal line. The medium JZ Knight claims to be in constant contact with an entity named Ramtha - the spirit of Atlantis, which is more than 35 thousand years old. Of course, there are many scammers here, but what about people who sincerely believe in what they are doing?
The answer to this is automatism, or an altered state of consciousness, when people express some thoughts, but do not realize it. Therefore, when a medium clears his mind, he allegedly begins to seek a benevolent spirit. It is assumed that a spiritual guide enters his body and then communicates secret knowledge about the universe. When the mind is cleared, random ideas and images begin to appear in the medium's head, but the setting suggests that they come from an otherworldly entity.
However, all these ideas represent nothing more than our own incompletely formed opinions. Our brains are able to come up with the craziest ideas without the slightest interference from our side. How many times have you suddenly had inspiration? How many times have you had strange dreams or nightmares? The otherworldly advisor has nothing to do with it, it is your own brain, which is constantly at work.
5. Convection
Imagine: you are exploring a creepy, desolate mansion in the middle of the night, and suddenly the air gets cold. However, when you take a few steps to the right or left, the air temperature becomes normal - parapsychologists call this a cold spot. According to ghostbusters, a cold spot is a sign of paranormal activity. When a ghost decides to appear out of thin air and scare people to death, it needs energy, so it takes heat from the environment (including a person) and appears.
However, scientists have a much simpler and more boring explanation. When skeptics explored haunted houses, they usually found cool air entering the house through chimneys or windows. But even if the room is completely insulated, there is another explanation: each object has its own temperature, and some surfaces are warmer than others.
In an attempt to equalize the temperature in the room, objects try to get rid of excess heat - this process is called convection: warm air moves up, and cold air remains below, in a similar way, dry air in a humid room also goes down. Such swirls of air are felt by a person as coolness, which gives the impression of a cold spot. So the next time you feel the presence of a ghost, turn on the heater.
6. Problems with the camera
Ghostbusters love and at the same time hate … balls. These balls of light are supposedly the spirits of people who have already passed away, but have not yet managed to get to the next world. Balls invisible to human eyes can only be seen in photographs, but here everything is a little more complicated.
Skeptic Brian Dunning argues that when a speck of dust or a bug is too close to the lens, it appears in the photo as a blurred circle. And thanks to the flash, this ball becomes bright - thus, it is mistaken for a ghost. Quite understandable error, isn't it?
Even most of those who believe in ghosts are skeptical about photographic evidence. Although parapsychologist Pamela Heath believes that there are photographs of real ghosts, he points to several natural causes of the balls appearing in photographs - fine hairs, dirty or wet lenses, reflections in lenses, or movement during exposure.
Many paranormal websites have stopped accepting photographs because they receive too many errors. So, due to the general idea of how photographic technology works, the balls in photographs cannot be considered evidence of the existence of ghosts.
7. Carbon monoxide poisoning
In 1921, ophthalmologist William Wilmer published a strange story in the American Journal of Ophthalmology - he told about the family "H" and their haunted house. This house became for the family a branch of hell on earth: the doors in it were constantly slamming, furniture moved by itself, and footsteps were heard in the empty rooms. One child felt someone sat down on him, another was attacked by a mysterious stranger, and the mother woke up in the middle of the night and saw a man and a woman standing at the foot of the bed, and a moment later they disappeared.
The ghosts appeared over and over again, all family members were tired of it and were constantly in a depressed mood, and then the houseplants began to die. It was then that they discovered a faulty stove - the smoke was supposed to go into the chimney, but instead went into the house. It turns out that the family suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Carbon monoxide (CO) is odorless or colorless and very difficult to detect. This is dangerous because our red blood cells absorb CO much more readily than oxygen, and oxygen deprivation leads to symptoms such as weakness, nausea, confusion and ultimately death. But before you play the box, you may experience hallucinations, just as with the "H" family.
In 2005, a woman saw a spirit in her bathroom. It turned out that the paranormal activity was associated with a leaking water heater filling the house with CO. Stay away from carbon monoxide, otherwise you are more likely to see ghosts.
8. Mass hysteria
In June 2013, over three thousand workers went on strike at a garment factory in Gazipur, Bangladesh. They did not protest the irregular working hours and did not demand higher wages, but simply wanted someone to remove the ghosts from the restroom: an angry spirit attacked a worker in the ladies' room, after which all the workers panicked. A riot followed, and the police had to intervene to restore order.
A similar incident occurred at a school in Patong, Phuket, when 22 students were hospitalized after seeing the ghost of an old woman. The owner of a factory in Bangladesh, by the way, invited an exorcist, but perhaps he should have called a psychotherapist instead.
Both workers and students became victims of a psychological phenomenon - mass hysteria. These collective obscurations occur when people are constantly under stress, which tends to happen in suppressive environments - in schools with strict regulations or workplaces. This delayed stress then translates into physical symptoms such as headache, nausea, or cramping. Add religious or cultural prejudices to this relatively isolated environment, and you have a recipe for disaster. Other people will "catch" the same strange symptoms that spread like a disease, and then panic ensues.
It should be noted that very few of the three thousand factory workers actually encountered a ghost, even the woman who started it all didn't actually see anything. She fell ill and simply assumed that the evil spirit was to blame for everything, but her conviction was so strong, and the circumstances were so successful that everyone believed. Fortunately, even though there was no human sacrifice, there was bread.
9. Jonah
Unfortunately, real ghost hunters don't carry proton packs with them, but they use tools like an ion counter. Ion counter - you won't believe it! - counts ions, atoms with an odd number of protons and electrons. If an atom gets an electron, then it becomes a negative ion, and if it loses something positive.
Ion Ghostbusters are crazy because they supposedly indicate the presence of something paranormal. Some say that the presence of a ghost prevents a normal amount of ions from forming in the atmosphere, while others argue that ghosts feed on ionic energy when they want to appear and scare people to death.
Ions appear under the influence of natural phenomena: weather, solar radiation, radon, so it all comes down to how the hunter interprets the evidence. Ghostbusters look at their ion meters and think, “Yes! Paranormal Activity!.
Interestingly, both positive and negative ions can affect our mood. Negative ions can make us feel calm and relaxed, while positive ions can cause headaches and feel unwell. This can explain why people living in haunted houses often complain of fatigue and headaches.
10. Quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics studies the smallest types of matter, and this has led to some pretty amazing inventions. However, when physicists start talking about ghosts and spirits, it seems somewhat odd. Take, for example, Dr. Stuart Hameroff and his friend the physicist Roger Penrose.
Hameroff and Penrose hypothesize that human consciousness comes from microtubules in brain cells, and these tubules are responsible for quantum processing - mainly in our souls. Hameroff and Penrose believe that when people have near-death experiences, all quantum information leaves the brain, but continues to exist outside of it, which is why some people report leaving the body and light at the end of the tunnel.
As you might expect, many scientists disagree with this theory, but this is not the case for Dr. Henry Stapp. As a respected quantum physicist who worked with the famous Heisenberg, Stapp believes that a person's personality is able to survive death and continue to exist as a "mental entity".
Stapp put forward the theory that dead people can return to the physical world, which means that spirit possession or tunneling is indeed possible. The question is, are all these scientists wishful thinking? Or could they very well turn out to be modern Galilees?
