The Haunting of the Mind – Ghostly Phenomena Explained

[If you don't have time to go through the whole thing, scroll down to where the points begin. It's shorter then on].

As a child, my father would often have to spend nights in houses that were abandoned and were considered ‘haunted’, while traveling with his uncle, which he often did. His uncle was shrewd and a skeptic and didn’t mind living in places like that, in return for the incredible bargains he got as no one else would live in such houses on rent. In the nights, my father’s young and fertile mind would freak out as he often heard whispering trees, banging doors and windows, and ‘ghosts walking across the rooms’. He even felt the ‘presence of cold spirits’.

On investigation in the daybreaks, he often found the other residents of these houses: cats, dogs, squirrels, and once, even an entire family of monkeys! Add this to the creaky doors and windows, windy nights, knowledge of a history of death(s) in the house, and a popular culture awareness of the paranormal, and you had a perfect recipe for a haunting.

Of course, this does not by any means explain all ghostly phenomena. People often claim to have experienced encounters that are too real to them to easily refute. And it is for the most obvious reasons not possible to go dissecting each case to reach the root cause. Thus, the large number of ‘unsolved’ cases of hauntings and encounters and personal experiences by those we trust (including ourselves), has meant that the concept of ghosts and spirits has crept into and become a part of the perceptions of the society we live in.

There is a gap in human knowledge of what happens after death, and if humans have a ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ that never dies. This gap has been conveniently been filled by popular ideas of the society, that vary from region to region.

According to a 2005 Gallup Poll, about 32 percent believe specifically in ghosts. There is also a negative correlation of the percentage of people who believe in ghosts, and the GDP of the country they live in. In other words, the more ‘developed’ the country is, the lesser would be the proportion of its residents who believe in the paranormal.

Ghostly encounters have been reported to be of many kinds. People see apparitions or strange lights, sense a presence in a room, hear noises or feel a sudden drop in temperature. They smell a deceased relative’s favorite breakfast cooking in the kitchen or hear a favorite song playing while the stereo is off. Objects fall from shelves and doors open and close on their own. The electricity goes haywire, causing lights to flicker or televisions to turn on and off by themselves. Sometimes, people don’t experience anything unusual at all, but they notice strange apparitions or shapes when they look at pictures they’ve taken.

People report that there are ghosts who are simply stick around, either unwilling or unable to leave the Earth. Such earthbound ghosts may haunt specific locations, like its home, its favorite place to visit or the place that it died. It may be trying to pass a message to friends or loved ones, to complete a task that it started while alive or to hold on to its home or possessions.

For a lot of people, seeing, hearing or sensing a ghost is enough to prove their existence. But researchers have found several possible explanations for the phenomena most often attributed to ghosts.

Several studies have been conducted on this enigmatic subject. One research, carried out in Great Britain by Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire has found that people report more strange experiences in the areas where others have experienced unusual phenomena in the past. In other words, people have more ghostly experiences in the places that seem to be the most haunted. This is true regardless of whether people have any prior knowledge of the area or its ghostly history. People who say they believe in ghosts or who already know about supernatural activity in a particular area report strange events more often.

In addition to gathering reports of strange occurrences, this research group has evaluated physical conditions in each haunted area. It has used instruments to measure light, humidity, sound and magnetic fields. The measurements suggest that the signs that a building is haunted often have a rational, physical cause.

Across studies, many different explanations have been proposed (some even empirically proven) in order to explain ghostly phenomena. These studies mainly cite physical or psychological causes for strange experiences.

Some are simple – people can hallucinate or mistake reflections, shadows and unidentifiable noises for ghosts.

Other theories are more specific. Here are some examples:

1. Pareidolia,

Pareidolia is an innate tendency to recognize patterns in random perceptions, is what some skeptics believe causes people to believe that they have seen ghosts. Most people have this ‘ability’. If you have the ability to identify random patterns in clouds, you have it too!

2. Sensitivity of human peripheral vision

Reports of ghosts “seen out of the corner of the eye” may be accounted for by the sensitivity of human peripheral vision. According to skeptical investigator Joe Nickell:

“…peripheral vision is very sensitive and can easily mislead, especially late at night, when the brain is tired and more likely to misinterpret sights and sounds…”

3. Sensory Deprivation:

Sensory deprivation is caused when the reduction or removal of stimuli from one or more of the senses occurs. This happens when something cuts off sight and hearing, while more complex devices can also cut off the sense of smell, touch, taste, thermoception (heat-sense), and gravity.

Periods of sensory deprivation can result in extreme anxiety, hallucinations, bizarre thoughts, depression, and antisocial behavior.

One very common instance when sensory deprivation occurs is when it is dark (i.e., at nights). There is a lot more noise and activity in the daytime and eyes get accustomed to viewing many things in short time periods through the day. But at nights, human and animal activity reduces greatly, and as darkness falls, human eyes and ears have to suddenly deal with sensory deprivation. The sounds of the environs reduce to negligible levels, and the darkness causes humans to see little. This sensory deprivation causes the human mind to substitutes thoughts from its subconscious mind and mistakes such thoughts to be a product of physical activity. The human mind begins to imagine sounds and sights, which some people mistake to be sighting of paranormal activity.

This also explains why most people claim to have ‘ghostly encounters’ only at night time. Everyone deals with sensory deprivation and it is not some abstract medical ‘condition’.

4. Low Frequency Sound Waves:

Several experiments have demonstrated that low-frequency sound waves, known as infrasound, can cause phenomena that people typically associate with ghosts. Infrasound can cause humans to experience bizarre feelings in a room, such as anxiety, extreme sorrow, the chills, feelings of nervousness and discomfort as well as a sense of a presence in the room. The sound waves may also vibrate the human eye, causing people to see things that are not there. Usually, these waves have frequencies of less than 20 Hz, so they are too low-pitched for people to actually perceive. Rather than noticing the sound itself, people notice its effects.

Sometimes, researchers can locate the source of the sound. The article “The Ghost in the Machine” by Vic Tandy and Tony Lawrence describes a low-frequency standing wave originating from a fan. The sound wave disappeared after the researchers modified the fan’s housing. When the wave dissipated, so did the symptoms of haunting in the building.

5. Carbon Monoxide Poisoning:

Carbon monoxide poisoning, which can cause changes in perception of the visual and auditory systems, was recognized as a possible explanation for haunted houses as early as 1921. This “carbon monoxide poisoning” does not necessarily occur due to industrial leaks or pollution, but rather, can happen in regular households also. Having a source of carbon monoxide in the environs is common, and it’s not impossible to find one such source even in your household.

6. Temperature:

Cold spots are a common phenomena in buildings that are thought to be haunted. People describe sudden drops in temperature or localized cold areas in an otherwise warm room. Often, researchers can trace the cold spot to a specific source, like a drafty window or a chimney. The sensation of a lower temperature can also come from reduced humidity. In Wiseman’s study at Mary King’s Close, the locations reported to be haunted were significantly less humid than those that were not.

7. Electric Fields:

In some haunted locations, researchers have measured magnetic fields that are stronger than normal or which exhibit unusual fluctuations. These may be localized phenomena that stem from electronic equipment or geological formations, or they may be part of the Earth’s magnetic field.

These fields can interact with the human brain, causing hallucinations, dizziness or other neurological symptoms. Some researchers have theorized that this is one of the reasons people report more ghostly activity at night. Because of the way the solar wind interacts with the Earth’s magnetosphere, the planet’s magnetic field stretches out on the side that’s in darkness. Some researchers hypothesize that this expanded field interacts more strongly with people’s brains.

Medical researchers have also studied the effects of electrical fields on people’s brains. Electrical stimulation to the “angular gyrus” of the brain, for example, can cause the sensation of someone behind you mimicking your movements. Electrical stimulation to different parts of the brain has also caused people to hallucinate or seem to have near-death experiences.

There was a case of a haunting of an old house in Britain. Ghostly apparitions were observed time and again in a bedroom where legend had it that a lady was murdered. People who stayed in that room overnight often claimed of ghostly sightings. Investigation showed that the bed in the room had a base made of metallic wires and the positioning of objects and electrical appliances caused the bed to get magnetically charged. This hence caused hallucinations to those who occupied the room.

8. Use of sleep paralysis or a hypnogogic trance to explain encounters:

Sleep states and altered states of consciousness can lead people to believe that they have experienced something supernatural. For example, skeptics have used sleep paralysis or a hypnogogic trance to explain encounters in which people see spirits while in bed and are unable to move or escape. Most people experience a hypnogogic trance once or twice in their lives, although it is far more common in people with epilepsy or certain sleep disorders.

As we just saw, a lot has of these causes also explained why most ghost sightings happen only in the dark or at nights. This list is by no means comprehensive, and there are several other reasons cited by researchers that explain such paranormal activities.

Believers would nonetheless point out that these causes mean nothing to them and that it is easy to contend a skeptic viewpoint as skeptics “have never experienced anything like it, and will not understand unless they do”. But it must be remembered that at the heart of every skeptic enquiry has been a string of experiences (or at least one experience) that believers often claim monopoly over.

Since the existence of ghosts cannot be disproved (as one cannot disprove something that does NOT exist – the same way believers haven’t been able to prove what they claim exists), this issue will remain contentious. I doubt my own ghost-story telling sessions on camps as a child would have been half as interesting had I not believed in ghosts.

[Bonus question: statistically, how many people have been killed or injured by ghosts in modern history?]