I ain't afraid of no ghosts - The science behind ghost sightings

Hey there, traveler!

In our last post, we discussed some cultural and psychological background about everyone’s favorite paranormal trope – the ghost stories. However, for some people, these spooky otherworldly apparitions go beyond the realm of fiction and myth and turn very real. Throughout history, some swore on their life that they experienced hauntings personally and raised the fascinating question: can ghost exist? 

Similar to many topics about people’s beliefs, there’s no hard answer. Since science considers anything possible until there’s concrete evidence against it, we can only dissect a number of particular events and consider circumstances that may drive people to believe what they saw, heard or otherwise experienced was indeed a ghost.

The very first ghost sightings happened early in history, and as such, people needed no concrete evidence, only credibility. If you are a 14th-century peasant and someone you trusted said they saw the ghost of Old McDiedhorribly in his spooky abandoned castle, you were likely to believe that person. 

The reason for this is a psychological phenomenon where you’re inclined to believe whatever fits your pre-existing view of the world. This is completely sincere and common in nearly everyone, yet it haunts (pun intended) statistical studies to this day. It’s similar to the placebo effect in medicine, the brain simply processes and remembers affirmative facts easier than contradictory ones. 

During a study conducted in 97’, 22 people visited a closed theatre and later described their feeling and impressions – only one group was told that the sight is haunted. As it turned out, that group experienced more spooky and mysterious things, saw strange shadows, and felt shivers running down their spines. I admit this is only a single study, and other experiments came up with various results, so this suggestive effect cannot be the only driving factor behind these sightings.

At one time, the first cynics raised their heads and said “Show me this ghost then!”. Since credibility was out of the question but ghost sightings were still at large, even those cynics must have seen something that convinced them. Or heard. Or felt. This is the part where some reality slips into this whole ordeal, as there are environmental effects that can create really strange things if you don’t know about them. 

One culprit here is low-frequency resonance, or (using her maiden name) infrasound. Some of you might know from science class that the human ears can only perceive sound in a 20Hz to 20.000Hz interval. Anything below 20Hz is infrasound, but just because we cannot hear it, it still exists. Animals use it frequently (another intended pun, bite me), whales and elephants communicate with each other through miles using low-frequency resonance, and that is one reason why animals react faster to natural disasters like earthquakes. 

There’s a story about Vic Tandy of Coventry University, who worked at a presumably haunted laboratory and experienced strange shapes moving from the corner of his eyes, accompanied by goosebumps and an unexplainable fear. Later as he investigated what could cause this, he found the lab had a “silent” fan that created infrasound that nearly matched the resonant frequency of the human eye. Yepp, that pesky sound he couldn’t even hear interfered with his eyes to show him distorted figures and snuck into his brain, causing the uneasy feeling. There are many other factors such as inhaling fungal spores (like the mold you can find in old buildings where these sightings usually happen) or sublimating fumes such as aldehydes.

Well, as time went on, our dear skeptics realized the brain can be tricked, so just showing them something wasn’t enough anymore. And since a new thing called science became a hot topic recently, they demanded these sightings be proven by scientific methods. 

Considering new inventions like the photograph, the answer was obvious: take a pic of these ghosts and everything will be proven. Well, pics were taken, although there was a slight problem: the first cameras exposed for much longer than modern machines, and during that time window any movement or even a change in the light resulted in a smudge that may or may not be a ghost. 

This overtime turned into the famous “Orbs” – tiny, normally invisible specs of dust that reflect the flashlight of modern cameras, creating a mysterious looking, obscure sphere on photos which were identified as anything from ghosts to guardian angels. These were so popular I even read about them recently on a webpage collecting the most ridiculous con-theo posts (they went with the angel theme that time, and called them “love-orbies”).

Luckily times changed, technology got better and those who still believed in the paranormal came up with more and more pseudo-scientific explanations that “proved” the spirits’ existence.

What do I mean by pseudo-scientific? Sometimes, like with the infrasound, you can identify the source of what seems like paranormal and make a scientific breakthrough – only to disregard it and morph it to prove ghostly presence instead of disproving. One notable case for this is EM fields.

 It is widely known that moving charged particles create an electromagnetic field around them, this simple fact is used frequently in engineering. Sometimes these fields appear where we least expect them, although they rarely cause any harm or get noticed – if you’re not a ghost hunter. Scientific researchers found a connection between unexplainable bad mood, headaches and other pain some individuals experience and the presence of random EM fields. 

One conclusion would be (although that’s still not really scientific, considering scary words like “confounding” and “metaanalysis”) that these fields cause the symptoms; another, a tad bit more freaky is that ghosts cause both the fields and the symptoms, and as such, you can find a ghost if you look for these fields.

As I said, there’s no hard answer. Can there be ghosts? Maybe, but considering how much of these alleged sightings have been disproved, I wouldn’t bet my life on it. Or I would, because if I lose, I’ll just return as a ghost and tell anyone the truth.

Have a really freaky-good week, my friends, and as always take care until we meet again.

Cheers, 

Dar