Scientists say there are explanations for why people see ghosts.
Can't they leave ghosts alone?
Believing in ghosts doesn't hurt anyone, and in some cases it actually helps people, and
also it's fun.
But nooo, scientists can't resist endlessly telling us how wrong we are about why people
see ghosts.
If you're a believer in the paranormal and someone tells you that the place you're about
to enter is haunted, you're more likely to have a paranormal experience when you walk
into that place.
That makes sense.
It makes so much sense, in fact, that we don't really need a study to tell us it's true,
but we got one anyway.
In 1997, researchers put 22 people into a creepy theater and told them to make observations.
Half of the subjects were told the theater was haunted, and the other half were told
that it was under construction.
Predictably, the half who thought they were visiting a haunted theater were more likely
to report intense perceptual experiences.
So those results seem to suggest that paranormal experiences happen mostly because people have
been led to believe they might happen.
In 2012, some researchers published a paper called "Supernatural Agency: Individual Difference
Predictors and Situational Correlates" which suggested that people who have paranormal
experiences tend to be more open to the idea of spiritual experiences in general.
It also found that people in threatening environments are more prone to having non-religious paranormal
experiences.
In other words, instead of seeing an angel or talking to God, a person experiencing environmental
stress might see a shadow figure or a full-bodied apparition.
That research has been backed up by other studies, including one that specifically looked
at whether stress can cause women to report paranormal experiences.
This study looked at a group of women in a town in central eastern Turkey, and determined
that women who suffered trauma in childhood or had post-traumatic stress disorder were
more likely to say they'd experienced things like possession, precognition, and extra-sensory
perception.
In 2006, a neurologist in Switzerland was attempting to isolate the part of the brain
responsible for a 23-year-old woman's seizures when he blundered into a strange phenomenon.
When he applied current through a certain part of her brain, she told him she sensed
a mysterious, shadowy person standing behind her.
Even more creepy, the shadow person was mimicking her every time she moved, he would move.
Some scholars think that researchers were simply stimulating the part of the brain that's
responsible for that creepy feeling you sometimes get that you are being watched or followed
by something that isn't there.
But wait, there's more.
Research using a device called "the God helmet," which sends magnetic signals to the wearer's
head, showed that a person can be artificially induced to feel like there is a ghostly presence
in the room.
In other words, it's literally all in your head.
You've almost certainly seen examples of this sort of "proof" of the paranormal a photo
of an otherwise innocuous person, place or thing that contains eerie looking balls of
light, also known as spirit orbs.
Similar manifestations can be seen on your favorite ghost hunting shows.
The orbs that appear in photographs are usually just specks of dust or pollen, insects, moisture
in the air, or something on the camera's lens.
When the photographer engages the flash, these things reflect the light and create the image
of a large, creepy-looking ball of ectoplasm.
The phenomena is actually exacerbated by modern camera design the closer the flash is to the
camera's lens, the easier it will be for the light to reflect off of particles in the air,
and the more likely it is that the camera will capture something that can be mistaken
for a ghost.
Paranormal investigators often talk about "cold spots," but haunted houses do tend to
be old and old buildings do tend to be drafty.
However, according to party-pooper scientists, cold spots are probably a natural phenomenon.
When researchers actually try to find a reason for a temperature change, it can usually be
traced to something like a chimney or a drafty window.
The sensation of a sudden drop in temperature can also be related to a drop in humidity.
Although it's also been suggested that paranormal experiences people have could have something
to do with natural phenomena like magnetic fields and lighting levels.
Either way, it's a lot less exciting than ghosts.
"So this place isn't haunted?"
"It rarely is.
There's usually some sort of rational explanation."
If you've ever fallen asleep in front of the tv, you may have experienced a phenomenon
known as "sleep paralysis."
When you experience sleep paralysis, you'll be deep in the REM dream state, but then you'll
half-wake and experience a sort of hybrid state of consciousness, where you're still
experiencing dreamlike hallucinations.
And just so the whole thing will be that much more terrifying, you also won't be able to
move.
Paralysis is actually necessary for safe REM sleep it happens mostly so you won't punch
your spouse in the face while acting out your fighting dreams.
But when you experience it in a state of near-wakefulness, it can be really scary.
Add a few dream demons to the mix, and it can feel like a genuine paranormal experience.
Sleep paralysis is actually common about 8 percent of us will report experiencing it
at least once and for some people, it's a regular thing.
But those feelings of a ghost at the end of the bed are just a feature of sleep paralysis,
they aren't really paranormal visitations.
Similar to sleep paralysis, exploding head syndrome is a condition that happens to you
while you're sleeping.
The experience usually goes like this: You're nodding off and suddenly you could swear you
just heard a massive explosion or a huge crash somewhere in your house.
So what's the deal?
Maybe you're hearing the paranormal echoes of something terrible that happened in the
distant past?
Or maybe it's just exploding head syndrome.
You may have actually experienced this phenomenon, but the name for it is still pretty new.
It was coined by a neurologist named JMS Pearce, who seems to think it's caused by a sort of
syncing error in the brain.
As you're drifting off to sleep, your body starts shutting down things like muscles,
eyes, and ears.
When you suddenly hear a phantom "bang" during this process, it might be because the part
of your brain that's in charge of shutting down all those functions gets a little mixed
up.
Instead of shutting down all the auditory neurons, it just fires them all at once instead.
People who have lost close family members often report having paranormal experiences,
especially in those early stages of grief.
These could include vivid dreams of being visited by their deceased loved one, or feelings
of being watched over, or even fleeting images of the person who died.
According to the BBC, science thinks it can explain these experiences by calling them
"coping strategies" of the grieving brain.
The theory is that it's easier to accept the passing of a loved one if you think that person
still exists in some form, than it is it to just believe that the person is gone forever.
So the brain invents these spiritual encounters with the deceased person as a way of easing
those feelings of grief.
"Why would I want to see my Carl like that?"
"Because it's better than never seeing him again."
If your once-peaceful house suddenly seems to be haunted, it might not necessarily be
a ghost, and it might not be you, either.
In fact, it could potentially be something really lethal, like a malfunctioning furnace.
So before you call an exorcist, make sure your carbon monoxide alarms are working and
if they're not, get out and don't return until your utility company says its safe to.
In the 1920s, the Journal of Ophthalmology documented the strange case of a couple who
believed they were living in a haunted house.
The woman reported hearing footsteps and the sound of someone pushing furniture around,
even though there was no one else there.
She also felt like she was being followed around the house, and at one point she woke
to see two apparitions at the foot of her bed.
The couple spoke to doctors but it wasn't until they had experts look at the house that
they discovered the real cause of the haunting: A carbon monoxide leak in the furnace, which
was bad enough to cause hallucinations but not quite bad enough to cause death.
So if you've ever wondered if ghosts can kill, yes they can.
Or at least, the carbon monoxide that makes you hallucinate ghosts can certainly kill
you.
If you haven't changed the batteries in your CO alarm in a while, now would be a good time
to do that.
So your house is clearly haunted and you've already swapped out your CO alarm batteries
and then you tossed your CO alarm and got a new one and ghosts are still throwing your
stuff around and hoovering creepily in doorways.
Well, it might still be poison-induced hallucinations, just a different kind of poison.
Some researchers think there may be a link between the mold that tends to grow in dark,
creepy places and the paranormal experiences people say they have in those places.
This is of particular interest to Shane Rogers, who is a professor of civil and environmental
engineering at Clarkson University.
He cites a 2009 study which showed that certain types of mold can cause problems like delirium,
movement disorders, and issues with balance and coordination.
From there, it's not a huge leap to think that maybe mold could also cause the sorts
of hallucinations that make people think they're seeing ghosts.
So in 2015, Rogers and a team of researchers set out to find out if their hunch might be
correct.
That's been a few years ago now, and we're still waiting patiently for the results of
Rogers' research.
If you're starting to think that some of these scientific explanations sound only slightly
less outlandish than "it's a spirit trapped on the corporeal plane," here's another theory
that seems a bit out there.
According to ProSoundWeb, ghosts could be low frequency illusions caused by "standing
waves."
In basic terms, it's when low-frequency sound creates a ghostly apparition.
So how does that happen, exactly?
Well, the author of the article had an experience involving a fencing sword and a fan — the
fan was emitting a low-frequency sound that made the sword vibrate, and was evidently
also making him feel like he was being watched.
Even stranger, he also saw an apparition.
Infrasound, which is sound below the normal range that humans can hear, can cause physical
and emotional sensations like feelings of dread.
It isn't just fans that create infrasound, it's also things like ocean waves, vibrating
pipes, and even some animals like whales and elephants.
When the sound happens at just the right frequency, it can also make the eyes vibrate, which explains
why some people who are experiencing infrasound believe they've literally seen a ghost.
"I see dead people."
If you don't believe any of those other scientific explanations for the existence of ghosts,
here's one that's pretty hard to deny: It's just fun to believe in ghosts.
It's fun in the same way that a roller coaster or a horror movie is fun.
We like to be scared, and because we're fundamentally attached to the idea that ghosts are real,
that makes it hard for us to accept scientific logic.
Belief in ghosts also serves another purpose it helps us confront our own mortality.
The presence of spirits in a house or an old hotel does more than just satisfy that sense
of fun, it also helps us cling to the notion that there's something after death.
A belief in ghosts makes us feel like we can glimpse an afterlife that we're all a little
afraid might not actually exist.
Even if you look at all these potential scientific explanations for ghostly experiences as a
whole, they can't possibly explain away every single paranormal experience that's ever happened
anywhere on Earth.
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