Vsauce, Kevin here.
On November 15th, 1912, an innocent family
moved into a large, rambling house with narrow windows
seemingly incapable of welcoming the sun's rays.
Soon after, the sound of a door slamming shut by itself
and footsteps inside the walls terrified the parents.
The children heard voices— someone, or something,
called out from beyond, and all of the plants
withered and died.
This house truly was haunted by carbon monoxide.
The furnace was broken, filling the entire home
with poisonous gas, causing headaches, dizziness,
and auditory hallucinations, but not ghosts.
What the FAK?
The facts and knowledge on (not so) real ghosts.
A legendary ghost ship known as the Flying Dutchman
roamed the waters, collecting the souls of those who died at sea.
Witnessing the phantom vessel sailing the sky above the water
was an omen of doom— a sign you'd never see land again.
What sailors were actually seeing, however, was a superior mirage effect
known as Fata Morgana.
Light reflecting off cold water can be bent
by an unusual layer of warm air above,
making a normal ship look like a ghostly, glowing ship
that's sailing inside a wave or flying over the sea.
Reports of poltergeist activity often reveal themselves
to be the work of kids throwing household objects
when their parents aren't looking, and purported haunted hotels
have been busted having employees perform many not-so-paranormal activities,
such as flicking the lights on and off.
But in 1973, the Knocking Ghost of Boise
baffled police and frightened a woman and her daughter.
The ghost could successfully answer questions,
like how many people were in the room,
by rapping on the floorboards,
a knock so forceful the officers felt the vibration
in the soles of their shoes.
They couldn't explain the ghost in the crawl space.
A news team came to investigate and noticed the ghost
only knocked when the woman stood in a certain peculiar way.
When confronted, she admitted an abnormal condition in her ankle
caused a loud knocking sound when she flexed her leg muscle.
The mystery of the knocking ghost was just a messed up ankle.
Bloody Mary is a legend whereby staring into a mirror
in a room lit only by candlelight and repeating the name
will summon her apparition.
Originally, this ritual was performed by a young woman
hoping to see the face of her future husband,
and if she saw a skull instead, it meant she would die before being married.
Staring into a mirror in a dimly-lit room
can cause the Caputo Effect, or strange face illusion,
which distorts our face-specific interpretation system,
really making it look like another face is in the mirror.
But whether you think it's your future husband
or Queen Mary the First is up to you.
The science behind understanding haunt events
that don't have logical explanations, like a bum ankle
or an optical illusion, is currently not so clear cut.
We know that magnetic fields can cause hallucinations
that result in rushes of fear and experiencing apparitions.
This has led to the suggestion that haunted locations
may actually contain anomalous magnetic fields,
which induce hallucinations,
thereby causing haunt events.
But a lot more research is needed to prove this theory.
Psychologist Richard Wiseman suggests infrasonic vibrations
as a cause for ghost sightings.
Infrasound is lower in frequency than human hearing,
but can be felt in parts of the body.
For instance, it can cause an eyeball to resonate,
making it appear like a mysterious object
is floating in your periphery, but when you turn to look, it's gone.
An infrasound around 19 hertz can cause feelings of fear and shivering.
But even so, magnetic fields and infrasound
are external triggers creating unknown sights and sounds
that human brains may then interpret as coming from the supernatural,
because we're obsessed with giving agency to the unexplained,
seeing human-like behavior in meaningless stimuli.
Psychologists in the 1940s set up an experiment
in which they showed people a meaningless cartoon
of a large triangle, small triangle, and circle
moving in and out of a box.
Instantly, people created detailed stories about the shapes,
such as the circle being in love with the little triangle,
with the big triangle trying to steal the circle away,
constructing a meaning for something devoid of one.
So with illusions, gas leaks, and inaudible sound waves,
will science eventually bust all of the ghosts,
or just leave us alone in the dark with whatever is left out there?
And as always, thanks for watching.
[Vsauce 2]
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