Have you, or anyone you know, experienced spooky stuff? In a country as superstitious as Singapore, it’s no surprise that many people believe in ghosts. According to a 2013 Huffpost/YouGov poll, 45% of people believe in their existence. If you’re not part of this percentage, then you’ll probably appreciate these scientific explanations behind spooky happenings.
Seeing things
Have you seen an apparition in the corner of your eye, and then it vanishes when you turn to look at it?
When researcher Vic Tandy saw a grey ‘ghost’ near his desk, he discovered that the vibrations from a fan one floor below was causing a ‘silent’ noise (anything under 20Hz). Called infrasound, it causes a whole host of strange things to happen to your body, including vibration of your eyeballs; human eyeballs resonate at 18Hz, and exposure to infrasound of that frequency can cause hallucinations.
Infrasound can be created by a whole host of events – traffic, lighting, the weather, even animals. You can’t hear infrasound because our ears can only register vibrations of 20Hz or more.
Another explanation for the presence of an ethereal being is the state of your own body; if you’re sleep deprived or doing a routine chore in a daydream state, your mind will fill in some creative blanks (a lady in red, perhaps?) at the corner of your eye.
Paralysed in bed
Have you ever felt paralysed while lying in bed wide awake, with someone trying to strangle you or drag you across the bed, but you’re unable to scream?
This phenomenon is all part of sleep paralysis, which happens when there’s a disconnect between body and mind while coming in and out of REM sleep, and has been recorded countless times over the centuries. This paralysis mainly renders us helpless in a threat situation, and could explain demons of the Middle Ages (like succubus), or even alien abductions.
There’s someone next to you
We’ve all heard spooky tales of people being shadowed or visited by a dark being. In one report, a woman stated that a shadow copied her every move and even ‘held’ her.
This was part of a Swiss experiment, when scientists electrically stimulated the brain of a patient. The left temporoparietal junction of the brain defines the idea of ‘self’, and by interfering with that area, the confused brain creates, and projects a copycat person.
In another experiment at Laurentian University, participants who’ve been applied with electromagnetic bursts to their right temporal lobes reported the presence of ‘people’, and in one case, a volunteer felt her leg ‘dragged up the wall’.
Electromagnetic exposure also lowers melatonin levels, which makes people more prone to micro-seizures and hallucinations.
The House of Horror
If you’ve watched Poltergeist, you’ll be familiar with the observations of a 1925 paper by William Wilmer – he documented a family home that was plagued by a host of ghostly scenarios including footsteps in empty rooms, dying plants and random hostile apparitions.
The cause? A faulty furnace that leaked carbon monoxide (CO). CO poisoning causes oxygen deprivation that can lead to symptoms like delirium and hallucination right before death.
Another cause for a poltergeist affair could be electromagnetic (EMF) pollution. Neuroscientist Michael Persinger found the correlation between locations with reported hauntings and places with increased geomagnetic activity. In a 1996 article in NEXUS by Alfred Budden, high levels of EMF (emitted from a nearby 40ft radio mast) were detected in a home that reported heavy paranormal activity including electrical items switching on and off, vases of flowers flying across a room and a heavy table that overturned itself regularly.
We all know that magnetic fields can affect electronic circuitry and cause metal objects to move (much like Magneto’s power). The movement of non-ferrous materials can also be attributed to the effects of EMF, including the Hutchison Effect (when strong electromagnetic fields create a zero-gravity atmosphere), and acoustic levitation, when sound waves (like ultrasound) are able to move an object.
Moving Ouija Boards
Ouija boards (or similar games) have always been a part of growing up – who wasn’t curious about the afterlife? But did all the ‘answers’ really come from beyond?
When a group of people place their hands on the board, the pointers seem to move and indicate an answer. However, what they don’t realise is that they are subconsciously moving it themselves. This is called the ideomotor effect – a slight movement in our muscles caused by the power of suggestion from our minds.
