June 20, 2013 • 42 mins
According to a 2009 poll, more Americans believe in ghosts than don't. But what are ghosts exactly? If they do exist, what are they made of and why are they hanging around? Josh and Chuck explore both sides of the divide between belief and skepticism on the topic of ghosts and look at some pretty cool explanations for hauntings.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Don Josh Clark,
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and it's the stuff you
should know. Jerry's over there fiddling and fuxing around Halloween
and June. Right, remember when we had the horror fiction
(00:24):
contest last year? Actually this maybe July? Um, yeah, yeah, yeah,
and we I think that the the deadline for submissions
was in July. It was weird to be in that
kind of hallowing mindset while it was hot out. But yeah,
and I'm sure it was weird to ask the authors
are not to ask, but to have them get in
that mindset to write something creepy. We definitely didn't command
(00:45):
you talked me out of that. Yeah. That was a
good contest. Yeah, also known as the Contest that Will
Shall Never Happen again. Well, we also ended up with
the one that we're going to read this year, right,
I think, yeah, yeah, that's a good one. It is
a good one. Uh, you guys will have to see
in a few months what we're talking about's right, So, Chuck, Um,
I myself have never officially seen a ghost, but I
(01:09):
understand you have a ghost story. I do. I remarked
about it and I said, I'm gonna wait till we
do our ghost podcast. Well here we are. Pal is
this it? Should I go? Now? Yeah? Okay, I'm not
saying this is a ghost. What I'm saying is one
night I saw something very very very strange that I
cannot explain. Okay, okay, are you ready? I feel like
(01:30):
should have music or something Jerry that could probably be done.
Um So Athens Georgia College, I would say, I don't
remember the exact year, but it was probably my best
friend and I Brett had had gone out and um,
we're going back home, uh, and driving through five points,
(01:51):
you know the area. So we're coming from like let's
say the direction of campus, and you know there's a
cut through if you take a certain road and five
points that cuts you over to Alps Road and people
are gonna be like, what is he talking about? I
just I'm talking to you here. Uh. And so there's
this one area where you go around a road curves
(02:12):
ninety degrees and then about i'd say two hundred feet
after that there's a four way stop sign. It's very
NEIGHBORHOODI area. I think that's like where Ray Golf used
to live. He Vince Duley lives over there. That might
be what you're thinking. So we go around this ninety
degree curve and I'm looking, you know, I'm filling with
the radio or something, and my buddy Brett starts, uh
(02:33):
like kind of joke, screaming like, oh what is that?
But getting around and I look up and in the
middle of the intersection and I swear, people, I'm not
making this up and I did not hallucinate it. This
is God's honest truth. There was a what looked like
a hundred year old woman wearing a black robe with
a purple sash dagonal across her chest, and she was
(02:57):
standing in the middle of the intersection holding a Bible
like this kind of on her placed on her fingertips
as you would hold like like a waiter would hold
a platter about chess level, and she was sort of
looking in the other direction with kind of a vacant
look on her face like you have now or is
it just she was completely vacant, completely still didn't move
(03:19):
an inch and wasn't like an hazy apparition, I mean,
was solid and looked real, real, real dude, it's so freaky.
We pull right up on her to you know, take
that left, and we're both kind of jokes screaming, but
then as we get closer, we're like, you know, what's
going on here? But it all happened in like, oh,
(03:41):
fifteen seconds, so it wasn't a lot of time to register,
you know, what is this. We were just sort of
getting around and we pull right by her and take
a left, like, you know, if this is her. We
pull within feet of her, and she's on my side
at this point because we're turning right by her. She
doesn't blink, doesn't move a muscle, and we were one
probably an hour in this curve. He starts like he
(04:04):
can't drive a stick shift anymore because he's freaking out
the cars, like jerking and sputtering. He pulls over probably
fifty ft later. We both turned around out the back
window and there's nothing there. I'm getting looked chill bumps uh,
And to this day I have no idea what the
heck it was. And it was either a crazy, crazy
(04:25):
old woman who is really fast, which is really creepy
and really fast, or the most believable Madame Tusso's wax dummy,
I've ever seen someone ran and set out there and
we didn't see it, and then ran and took it away.
I'm not offering any explanation, not saying it was a ghost,
but I have no recollect or explanation for what it
(04:45):
could have been. And it was creepiest, weirdest thing I've
ever seen. And we both described it to each other immediately,
like what did you see? What did you see? Had
gold leafing? I mean, I can't say it was a
Bible because I didn't see the cover, but it, you know,
that gold leafing around it look like a bible. So
you both saw the same thing, exact same thing, purple sash,
black robe, silver hair. That is one of the pernicious
(05:08):
qualities of a ghost sighting is that frequently people will
see the same thing. Two different people will see the
same thing, which lends a tremendous amount of credence to
something because if one person just sees it, well, it's
a hallucination. Exactly you were clearly on something we were not.
But that's what somebody could say. Both of you saw it.
Even if you both were on something, that doesn't mean
(05:31):
you're going to see the exact same thing. Yeah, And
I wasn't like some big ghost guy. I'd never have
had looked for them or say, oh I believe in
ghosts that would just out of nowhere of boom, there
had happened, right exactly. Um. You can also go a
little further if you're a skeptic and say, well, I
mean Chuck and Brett Brett just kind of we're playing
off on another description and they came to some unconsciously
(05:55):
came to an agreement of this. You guys compiled the
story and you saw the same thing. Who knows that
however you approach that probably depends on whether you're part
of the or percent of Americans who don't believe in
ghosts or who do believe in ghosts. According to a
two thousand nine CBS News poll, I had never given
it much thought, but after that I was I was
(06:16):
definitely like, well, that was a ghost and I just
saw one. Yeah, And I researched a little bit, but
this was long ago before the Internet was born, and
so I couldn't find anything. And even look yesterday just
to see if I could find out anything, if there
was some sightings or some old lady that have been
killed or anything and nothing. Now, I couldn't find anything.
So that was just your own personal ghost maybe, or
(06:39):
just some creepy old woman who was still in not
blinking as a car barrel towards her. Either way, that
is very unsettling either way. Um, And that's a pretty
good ghost story. It was a good one. It was
not a mask, you know, I can say that for sure.
Like we pulled up within feet of her, Like I
looked in her face and she and she didn't move
a must didn't move a muscle man. That's it was
(07:00):
the scariest thing that's ever happened to me. And we
told that story many many times over the years, and
everyone's always like really, and I always say, I swear,
why would I make this up? So that's my ghost story.
That's a good ghost story. You can reach us on Facebook. Right,
it's time for message break. All right? Wait, wait, Jerry,
it's not really kind for message break. What she left
(07:21):
pretty quick. So we're talking ghosts. And like I said,
of Americans believe in ghosts, don't. Yeah, And I think
a lot of people, especially after reading this, there's the
whole you know, I really miss my deceased relative and
(07:41):
I go to seances, and I think those things the
mind can play tricks on you. But in my case,
it was just like those are the ones where I'm like,
what's going on here? You know, Well, it's pretty much
impossible to disprove something or to prove something doesn't exist, right,
which is one reason why belief in ghosts continues on.
(08:05):
But there's also a lot of, um, there's also a
lot of factors in ghosts that accumulated create this body
of you know, ghost belief, what our ghost ghostly sightings, hauntings, apparations,
all that stuff that um kind of over time have
taken on a life of their own or I should say,
have been around for thousands and thousands of years, um,
(08:27):
and have not been dispelled by science. Um. So we're
going to kind of approach this from like, you know,
here's what people believe ghosts are, and here's some scientific
explanations for it. But throughout this you will notice that
at no point are we ever going to say conclusively
science has proven that ghosts don't exist, because it kind
(08:49):
of can't. That's not to say that people aren't using
the scientific method to study ghosts, because some are, and
my hat is off to these people most of all.
So let's up ghosts man. All right, Well, I just
described my encounter, which, like I said, wasn't hazy or weird. Um,
well it's weird. It wasn't like a hazy apparition. But
many times as an apparition. Um, Sometimes it's lights, it
(09:12):
seems to hit every since. Sometimes it's a smell um
like Tracy pointed out in this article, like the smell
of deceased relative's favorite meal being cooked in the other room,
stuff like that, Or the smell of the deceased relative
just smelled something like rotting, but it was just a
scuirrel in the wall. Can be a song, can be
(09:35):
flickering lights, can be orbs in a picture. We'll talk
about that, or a ghost in a picture. Like there's
plenty of those. Hey, I got you got a Google.
It's pretty fun to look at those. Yeah, and there's
some that are like this one's not quite explained to
my full satisfaction. Yeah, some of the If you look
up famous ghost pictures, there's a handful that have made
(09:56):
the rounds over the years that are pretty good, like
the Lady of Brown on Hall. I believe is that
the girl with the fire no that's a good one.
That's a real good one. Um, there's a woman descending
a staircase like a ghostly woman. Um. Freddie Jackson the
World War two, World War One pilot killed or mechanic.
(10:17):
I'm sorry he was killed, and then he showed up
in a group photo two days later. Um. That one
was explained as a double exposure, which I mean, just
the coincidence behind it is in and of itself staggering
if that is the explanation for of course, it also
could be a hoax. But it's a pretty good on.
Freddie Jackson is my favorite one. I think my favorite
(10:38):
is the Old West. Did you see that one? It's
like boothill or something. It was in I think, and
this guy dressed up like a cowboy and you know,
had his picture made but with his friend. And then
in the back ground you see this guy. Yeah, I did,
like kind of peeking up maybe behind a tombstone. Yeah, um,
just in the brush. Yeah. And supposedly they say are
(11:00):
verified by photo experts and stuff is having been untouched.
So yeah, because photoshop is making it way easier to
screw with photography, but it's also fairly easy to detect too.
If you really dig into the individual pixels, you can say, well,
this is obviously, and especially these old photos when they're
(11:22):
examining negatives, it's not that those weren't photoshops, right, I mean,
it could be light playing tricks. But when you see
a girl standing by the rail of you know, with
the fire behind her, that one was explained as the
girl in the fire. Yeah, that one was explained as
a just a sheer chance mixture of smoke and light.
(11:43):
And then our um programming, like us being hardwired to
pick faces out of anything. I don't know, man, this
looked pretty much like it definitely does then it yeah, um.
And then of course there's the funny things like the
three men and a baby ghost cut out of that
dancing or the Wizard of Oz like Hanging Munchkin, which was,
although I have to say, since you bring it up,
(12:06):
one of the greatest short you know, I love short
horror fiction. Of course they were one of the greatest
um ones I've ever read. Was called The Hanging Man
of Oz. It's like, um, it was. It's only just
a few years old, but it's a good little short story. Really. Yeah. Yeah,
this guy who like gets kind of caught up in
like looking for it. It's good, yeah, good horror fiction. Um,
(12:30):
this doesn't have to do with ghosts. But supposedly there's
a murder captured on Google Earth. Have you seen that
making the rounds. It's an aerial shot obviously of a
dock somewhere in Europe, I think, by the water, and
it looks like a guys like dragging a dead body
in a big pool of blood towards the water. But they,
I think they've debunked that it was a dog who
(12:52):
had shaken off and gotten the ground wet, and people
verified later like yeah, that was me and my dog,
and yeah, stop asking questions because my dog, someone posted
on our Facebook call. But I mean you bring up
a that's that's a really good like you see what
you want exactly. Um. But again we say, you can't
really prove that ghost don't exists. So people are like,
(13:14):
prove it. It doesn't prove anything, you know. Um, if
you can prove that a photograph has been faked, then
you've proven it's been faked. But you can't just look
in and be like, oh, I'm sure it's a fake
that doesn't muster. Yeah, so they we we've covered photos
they show up in photos. Well why are they here?
I mean there's a lot of explanations, like they're delivering
(13:35):
bad news or good news, right. Yeah. There's a lot
of ghost stories where, um, the dead have suddenly appeared
to a relative on the other side of the planet
at the moment they died. Like the relative wakes up
the next day to find out that the person died
at twelve fifty nine am when they just saw them
sitting in their room at the same time. So sometimes
(13:57):
they're they're coming to say, hey, I love you, see
you in fifteen years um. Or they're coming to say
you're about to die, that's another long standing legend. Yeah,
or they're about to say like, um, it's it's a
should sell your Yahoo stock now, that'd be a good
(14:18):
ghost right. Um. You know, there's a lot of stuff
you can you can say that people have attributed to
ghosts and why they're here. Um, there's also that horrible
um experience as their last moments. Yeah, they they are
at the point where they died too young or uh,
(14:39):
maybe have just gone back to their favorite place in life. Um.
Earthbound spirits, I think is what paranormal investigators call those situations.
Like they're stuck here or it's like, you know, get
off my train type of situation. They're guarding a place.
Maybe there's not one, but to um ghost two women
(15:00):
at the Hotel del del Coronado and San Diego, very
famous late nineteenth century built hotels. UM, and both of
them took their own lives at the hotel when they
found out they were pregnant out of wedlock. Or one
was married but her husband and left her, and so
they're in two different rooms still. But that's an example
(15:21):
of a ghost being tied to a place. Yeah, and
UM we have an article on the site about haunted hotels.
That a lot of hotels and all around the world,
but especially in places like New Orleans and um like
old spooky Spanish. I guess the Coronado is probably one
of those. There's one, and I believe Colorado or the
one they used for the overlooking No. Um. It's it's
(15:43):
just like a plain o like regular cool hotel, but
it has like a stream running through the lobby. Yeah,
which is cool in and of itself. And I don't
remember where I saw this, but um, it was like
on some TV show or this it's like a super
Haunted Hotel supposedly the ghost waiter is it. I don't
I don't remember, I don't wait for the river. Yeah
(16:06):
he had his pants rolled up and yeah the caviary
pop is awesome. Uh, that was the best th of
muster right then, I'm sorry. Um. And you know, there
are mediums out there who uh you know, if you
saw the movie Ghost Whoopy Goldberg. Obviously there's many times
hucksters trying to take advantage of people saying they can
contact people, put you in touch with your relatives that
(16:29):
have passed. Um, but I'm sure they're very There are
a lot of mediums who really believe what they're doing
is for real, you know. Yeah, And what's what's kind
of ironic is um, there's this really great article, it's
just a little quick editorial actually from the Los Angeles
Times in two thousand and six, is called is Science
Afraid of Ghosts? Is written by Deborah bloom right, and
(16:50):
she basically points out that like we we used to
have psychical research societies like William James, effectively the founder
of psychology, like investigated the paranormal as well and conducted
like extensive real scientific experiments and along the way debunked
a lot of mediums, like the nineteenth century, the Victorian era. UM.
(17:15):
And so part of this investigation into the paranormal um
was not just it wasn't just to prove that ghosts existed.
It was just to understand the paranormal in its own terms.
And along the way, say this person is a fraud,
this person is a huckster. This ectoplasm is cheesecloth that
(17:35):
they had like stuffed in their cheek, you know. Um,
And and that was part of it. And over time,
I think science has just kind of thrown out the
whole thing, the baby with the bathwater, and now it's
just up to uh, kind of the more mean spirited
section of the skeptical world to just go after and debunk.
(17:57):
There's nobody looking for their very you people looking to
prove or disprove the existence of ghosts. It's more just
like this photograph was faked, right, you know what I mean? Yeah? Um,
And on photographs, I guess we should talk about orbs
um very famously. Orbs show up in pictures and uh,
(18:18):
some people, you know say that that is a very
um specific part of the journey of the ghost is
when they are an orb. I have an ORB picture
which I'll post on Facebook. Emily believes it is her grandfather.
We he had just passed away, and the photograph he
was the biggest dog lover I've ever known. And uh,
(18:41):
we had just finished our fencing in our backyard and
our house that we bought, so it had been like
six or eight months that our dogs couldn't go back there.
So we finally let them back there, and I had
a camera, was like, I gotta take pictures to this,
and they start playing around like crazy, and in one
of the pictures there's an ORB boom right there above
the dogs playing in Emily, it's like, that's Charlie, that's
(19:01):
my grandfather. He's coming to visit. So I didn't debunk that.
But supposedly skeptics will say that could be a camera
flash reflecting off thus particles I use, no flash, water
spots on the camera lens, bone dry uh defects, and
digital camera sensors. I guess it could be that although
(19:24):
it was a new camera and it's never done that
sense or printing errors. It was not printed or developed,
so who knows. I'm just saying I've got a great
ORB photo that I'll post my dog's playing. You raise
a really good question, and like, I mean, what's the
what's the value of debunking that? I don't know? Photo
it made him only feel nice? It still does why,
(19:45):
I mean, what is the value? I mean? I guess
we'll cover it later. Yeah, but there's this uh yeah,
that that question keeps coming up to me throughout the
researching this. It's like it's not hurting anybody, right, um
so chuck, Uh, I guess a really good question. If
we're gonna talk about how ghost work is, what would
ghosts be made of? Like we said, the Victorians believe
(20:06):
that they were made of ectoplasm. Today, if you talk
to a someone who believes in ghosts and like researchers
ghosts and like that's part of their world, they prevailing
idea is that they're made of energy of somehow I
can't remember which. A lot of thermodynamics state that energy
cannot be created or destroyed, just transfers states. That would
(20:29):
be a pretty good understanding of what ghosts are if
they are real. So a life force that had passed
from a live person is now a different kind of
energy exactly, um medichlorians, what is that? This is the
Star Wars. That is how they explained the force. Who
are the medic Chlorians? I don't remember. It was very disappointing,
though it sounds really familiar, was it from the newer three? Yeah? Yeah,
(20:52):
that was how they explained. Basically, they explained what the
force was, and everyone's like, oh, why don't you go
and do that? I got you, I remember that now. Um.
Other theories are that um, if they are some sort
of energy, they could also be some form of matter.
So maybe they're made of some sort of quantum particles
(21:13):
or an arrangement of quantum particles, which I find kind
of an interesting explanation because think about it, ghosts can
are They're frequently said to be able to travel through
solid matter. Right. Well, if you go down to the
quantum level and you start looking at transistors, there's a
big problem in early transistor development and that individual electrons
(21:35):
can pass right through the wall of a transistor. It's
called quantum tunneling, and um, they had to figure out
how to use crystals to kind of block electrons in
to make them flow the way you wanted, rather than
just be like, oh, I'm over here now. So some
people say, well, maybe these are some sort of quantum
particles or an arrangement of quantum particles that were able
(21:55):
to perceive somehow. And then the question I would have
is is there a consistent explanation on why some people
might become a ghost and some others not? And the
answer is no, or are they everywhere and some you
just have a stronger energy force or something? Who knows? Yeah?
(22:16):
Because I mean if if people tend to perceive ghosts
more than others, and that typically from studies, has been
shown to be people who believe in ghosts tend to
see them more often report hauntings, Um, why wouldn't they
see them all the time? Yeah, Like why wouldn't so? Yeah,
that would indicate that there is something about an individual
(22:38):
person that would make them become a ghost. So many questions. Well,
the whole unfinished business like it died to a young thing.
I can wrap my head around that, Like an energy
force that was so strong that has now gone still
could be around. Um, I'm trying to decide what part
I'd lie in. Do I believe in ghosts? I think so.
(23:01):
So There's a dude named Richard Wiseman of a University
of Hertfordshire and He's done a lot of research in
gb Great Britain, and he has found some pretty consistent
results that people have generally reported the same things in
the same places, even if they didn't know there was
(23:23):
any ghost activity there, even if they did or didn't believe. Actually,
if they did believe, they were more, like you said,
more apt to see a ghost. But he had consistent
results of specific places. Yeah, I mean like he applied
the scientific method to researching ghosts, and he he documented what,
what parts, what areas in a reportedly haunted place sightings
(23:47):
were most frequently reported. Basically found that like you could,
you could map out areas where sightings were Okay, so
that's step one, and then step two. We had people
who who encountered ghosts described their experiences, and he kind
of compiled the data. Then he went back to see
what other commonalities there were for an area, like physical
(24:08):
conditions there, like how cold is it, is it humid?
Um Let me measure the light, let me measure the
magnetic field. Right. What he found, though, interestingly, was that
um there were specific areas where people who had no
understanding of the history of the place they were seeing
or had heard that the area was haunted had reported
(24:32):
seeing something. So there was something to a specific area
being quote haunted, and people who didn't necessarily believe in
ghosts or didn't know that the place was supposed to
be haunted had reported not only that they had seen
a sighting or something in this building, but in the
specific area of this building. Yeah, what does that mean?
(24:52):
It's a consistent study, right, So, and Wiseman is a
part of this kind of long but very um small,
smally sparsely populated um tradition of like paranormal researchers, like
legitimate ones. I could get into that. Man. When I
was a kid, I used to want to go to
Duke and study paranormal or para psychology there. Yeah, they
(25:16):
had a para psychology department. It was led by a
guy named Joseph Ryan, who was another like legitimate para
psychological researcher. Um. You could have gotten a TV show
on the Science Change, Yeah, totally. U c l A
used to have one from I think now they shut
it down and I think the mid eighties, but it
(25:36):
was around from like the fifties or sixties up to
the eighties and it was well respected. Um. William James
was another researcher. Uh as of the nineties, James Huron
and Renny Lange are still doing research and writing books. Um,
Harry Price was a very famous one. Yeah, he was
(25:58):
famous for investigating really Rectory, which was supposed to be
like the most haunted place in England. And then now,
if you want to get a degree in paras psychology,
you can go to the American University or you can
go to University of Edinburgh. Those are the two places,
as far as I know, in the Western world where
you can get a paras psychology degree. I could see
(26:18):
that the Great Britain's has a lot of um, ghostly
activity and paranormal investigators and they're into it over there.
And Edinburgh is supposed to be the most haunted city
in all of Europe. Really a bunch of dissatisfied Scotsman
roaming the bog right. Um, so we've kind of laid
it out right. Yeah, I feel like we've laid it
(26:39):
out like we've got them. We all understand what ghosts.
I don't think we really said anything that people are like,
oh yeah, I didn't realize that's what a ghost is. Um.
What I found interesting is that there's some really good
explanations for ghostly activity. Yeah, Sometimes Stracy points out, I
mean there are so many explanations. There's such a wide
(27:02):
range from this person just hallucinated something, right, and I
want to stay with that. Specifically, we're starting to understand
that hallucinations are way more common than anybody has admitted
for a very long time because we are afraid of
being put away or label is crazy. But people hallucinate
(27:23):
more than we generally understand they do. And specifically, grief
is supposed to be able to trigger hallucinations pretty really,
which would explain visitation dead relatives shortly after they die. Um.
We've talked about sleep paralysis before. That's an explanation that
you hear a lot about someone laying in bed. They
can't move and they are hallucinating um, spirits and things. Right,
(27:47):
they think they're awake, but they're not. Yeah, and you're
incapable of moving. There's also the hypnogogic trance, which comes
at the onset of sleep, and it's a sort of
trance that supposedly you can hallucinate. Yeah, I've had that
happened before, like a my wake, am I sleep that
it is here? Something? Oh? Yeah, yeah, sure, you know. Um.
(28:07):
And then sometimes it's just you know, the window shut
itself because it was loose in the wind blew it,
or the door shut because there was a draft where
it's cold in here, because you know there's a draft.
You know, a lot of times there's just literally an explanation,
a physical explanation for what happened. So, um, you you
(28:28):
hit upon. One of the hallmarks of haunting activity is
a change in temperature and unexplained change in temperature and
a haunted room when a ghost is present. And like
you said, it's often like a chimney or a drafty
window or something like that. But people who investigate this
kind of thing also often explain that phenomenon by um,
(28:49):
a lack of humidity, right, lower humidity can make a
room feel colder. And what about an area of a room?
Though I don't know, I mean, I I like, that's
that's a really good question, dude. How can an area
of a room be number one colder if if there
isn't a draft, if it's not a draft, it's just
(29:10):
like a static area in a room that's cold. Um,
if there's just a decrease in humidity, what causes the
decrease in humidity that makes it feel colder. And they
have found that um areas that are supposedly haunted. Well,
I should say, Richard Wiseman found in one place that
was supposedly haunted, UM, it tended to be less humid
(29:33):
than other areas, So that would explain the cold chill.
But how is one area just a part of a
room less humid than another. Yeah, and I'm curious about
what kind of temperature drop people have seen, um, like
how drastic it's been. I couldn't find any like reputable
information on that. Like in the movies, you walk into
the corner and you can see your breath all of
(29:53):
a sudden and you're freezing. Yeah, like the sixth sense, right, Yeah, yeah,
that poor kid. Um. But also I wonder then if
it's not even necessarily a real change in temperature, although
supposedly ghost hunters can measure changes in temperature in a
room and that means the ghost is present, Or if
it's just the sensation of a chill running through your
body and it's not actually thermal, it's psychological. Yeah, your
(30:18):
your central nervous system. Yeah, I just got chill bumps earlier.
You know, you did what about the electrical fields? That's um,
A very common thing is for a paranormal investigator to
measure magnetic field and electrical fields in an area. Um,
they will say that this is kind of proof that
there's some sort of presence there because the you know,
(30:40):
the Ghostbusters E meter is going crazy? Right exactly what
do they call that? I can't believe. I can't remember that.
I can't remember it either, the one that that Egan
held up to. Uh yeah, yeah, I don't remember what
it's called. We're going to get in trouble for that. Yeah,
sorry guys. Um, But sometimes, um, these fields can cause
wacky things happening with the brain, can cause hallucinations, can
(31:02):
cause dizziness or other neurological symptoms. And they're saying that
might play into it, the fact that you think you
have seen a ghost right there, they're saying. Investigators are saying, yeah,
there actually is something different here with the the area's
electrical field, electro magnetic field. There's something going on here.
(31:23):
But it's possible that that's what's making you think there's
a ghost here, rather than there's a ghost here and
it's affecting the field, it's hitting your angular gyrus. Right,
that's a part of the brain that UM. Evidently, if
it's stimulated you can get the sense that someone is
behind you mimicking your movements, which is pretty creepy. I mean,
we're we're all familiar with the transcranial magnetic stimulation the
(31:47):
thinking cap. That's a cool episode. UM. And when you
apply a magnetic pulse to different parts of the brain,
different things happen, and one of them is definitely hallucinations.
And then another example of UM magnetic field messing with us,
I guess is that a lot of haunting activity is
reported at night, supposedly UM, right exactly. That's that's number one.
(32:11):
But number two. The magnetosphere, you know, the the the
part of the Earth's atmosphere that protects us from the
charged ions of solar wind, the way that the Earth
is arranged to the Sun, the part that's in darkness.
UM has a larger part of the magnetosphere surrounding it,
more warped towards that. So that might explain it then, right,
(32:33):
so it looks like a spider, it does. But there's
a lot more UM magnetic field activity going on in
the darker side of Earth. So at night that one
could be a stretch. Yeah. I think my favorite UM
explanation that I had not heard about is infrasound. I
think that's pretty cool. This to me, is it? Yeah,
it's um low frequency sound waves that you cannot hear.
(32:57):
You know, with your naked ear, you won't notice it,
but it can cause your eyes to vibrate, It can
cause you to see things, You can cause a sense
of dread. UM and cracked. Actually, one of our favorite
websites that a test at a concert. Didn't they Well,
they reported on it. There's a they don't do test,
that's right, they report on tests. But yeah, there's a
(33:20):
great correct article on it. UM and they're talking about
In the fifties, a guy named Vladismir Vladimir Gavreaux, robotics engineer,
noticed that like one of his lab assistants was bleeding
from an ear and traced it to UM. To this infrasound,
I think it's like seven to nineteen hurts and UM.
(33:40):
You can't hear it, like you don't realize you're hearing sound,
but you're reacting to it. And like you said, it
causes all sorts of like weird psychological effects like a
sense of dread, a sense that there's somebody else near you. Um,
all the classic telltale signs of hauntings, so much so
that they've traced literal like hauntings back to infrasound. Yeah,
(34:04):
The Ghost in the Machine is an article um by
Victandy and Tony Lawrence that the same thing was going
on there, and they traced it back to a fan
and then they modified the fans housing. The sound went
away and the supposed haunting went away, right exactly. I mean,
isn't that weird that, like, surely you've been in a
room before that you just had to turn around and
(34:24):
run out of it because you just knew that there's
somebody else in there with you. You have, I have
plenty of times, But I think it's like I've been
in like Savannah near you know, on the ghost tour.
Like I'm highly suggestible what I'm saying. But isn't it
strange to think that a sound that you can't hear
it was responsible for producing that that? Like we're our
(34:45):
brains are that malleable that like just the sound we
can't even hear, but the vibrations we can still sense
somehow are having an effect on our brain and scaring
us and making us turn around and run out of
room and potentially twitching your eye causing hallucinations. Right, so
this sound has been shown. NASA showed that, um that
an infrasound at that frequency can make your eye vibrate imperceptibly.
(35:10):
But then something close to your vision, like say the
rim of your glasses or something appear. Your brain confuses
and things that that's moving, so it looks like there's
a little dark figure moving out of the corner of
your eye. Infrasound can actually cause visual and audit well
not auditory hallucinations yea, psychological effects and visual hallucinations. So
(35:33):
and the creation of a sense of dread. That's yeah,
I want to get an infrasound machine. It's just like
played around the office. You know, there may already be
one here. Well, I don't even think we said what
the guy did though at the concert? Did we know
he played did he play it? Under the concert and
people were freaking out? Yeah? I think like a quarter
(35:54):
of the people at the concert reported feeling like horrible
dread and like some nausea. Um, maybe because it was
a doctor John show. That's the first awful thing I
could think of Dr John's Crest. I know, I knew
you were gonna say that. It really I mean, like
you sued to see that guy played two pianos at once. Yeah,
(36:16):
he's he's he's a legend. What am I talking about?
You're thinking of? Um, maybe Dr hook and the Medicine Show.
No Dr Demento. I was trying to think of the
worst band I could think of, and that's the first
thing that came to my mind. That's who you thought of.
Nickelback is out there, Yeah, it was a Nickelback show.
We can fix this in editing, okay. Um, so what else?
(36:41):
I think? The last thing Tracy has here is that, um,
the National Science Board is actually come out and said
that if you believe in paranormal it can be dangerous
because that means you have reduced critical thinking skills and
can't make great day to day decisions. It's kind of mean.
That irked me because on the other end of the spectrum,
you can definitely make the case that just poo poo
(37:03):
ing out of hand as non existent anything that science
can explain. It shows a distinct lack of critical thinking
and even more dangerously, a lack of imagination and that
irks me to no end. Yeah, I enjoyed that you
sent me the skep dyd Brian Dunning his article, and
I kind of appreciated his approach with this, was like,
(37:25):
you know, uh, maybe that means there's other cool ways
to explain these things, like don't poopo it. Maybe open
your mind to other interesting phenomenon that can be explained. Well,
he was saying, don't just assume that if you just
stop at it was a ghost, then there wasn't. Right,
(37:46):
then you're you're pursuing. You're just you're not pursuing any longer,
one way or another. And yeah, you're you're kind of
shutting down these avenues that could be really interesting and
eye opening. Appreciated that. I appreciated his approach too, because
he's a huge skeptic and he's not He didn't take
like a James Randy esque glee or delight and destroying
the illusions of idiots, you know. Yeah, And I think
(38:07):
that's his deal period as people. Uh, I think he
gets accused of that oftentimes, as you know, a fun killer,
and he's like, that's not what I'm trying to do here.
I'm trying to apply research and real science too. Things.
I think he likes killing fun a little bit. Maybe
a little bit. So that's ghosts. Yeah done, yeah, uh
(38:29):
for now. If you if you want to learn more
about ghosts and read a ghost story first firsthand account
of a ghost story from Tracy Wilson, you can type
ghosts in the search part how stuff works dot com.
It will bring up this article. And I said, how
stuff work. So it's time for a message break. I'll
bet now. Listener mail now, listener mail. All right, Yeah,
(38:56):
this is from a teacher. We always like reading these
um Chuck, Josh and Jerry have been listening for over
a year now and was never more grateful than about
a month ago. I wound up driving three preteen boys
to Space Academy in Huntsville, Alabama. Remember Space Camp? Great movie?
Uh not really, I never saw the movie. I just
(39:17):
remember if you didn't see Space Camp. Oh man, that
was right in the wheelhouse. No, all right, you see.
I'm a middle school teacher in Morgantown, North Carolina, recently
relocated from Decatur, Georgia, where I worked at the brick
Store and Squash Boston. Jerry's old hunts Um every two years.
(39:39):
Our six and seventh grade students going a trip to
the Science Academy. And we're a tiny school, just twenty
four kids in the entire middle school teachers frequently end
up driving on field trips themselves. It's about a seven
hour drive, and on the journey we were played with traffic, rain,
and car sickness. At about hour four, when tensions were high,
was white and knuckled and began questioning my career voice,
(40:00):
and I said, screw it, I'm gonna put on your
podcast about ninjas. They were mesmerized. During the rest of
our trip, we learned about sword swallowing, bigfoot, and surfing,
just to name a few. So thank you for saving
us in our time of need. More pointingly, creating a
podcast that appeals to all ages. There's a show. With
my thanks, I'd like to teach you a tried and
true car game, like your podcast, only requires uh that
(40:21):
a person be young at heart. It's called pass around
the ether rag as you drive down the road. As
you drive down the road, take note of all the
car models you pass in front of the model name,
Insert any potty word of your choice. With middle school
boys and most likely you two as well. Toilet, puke
(40:43):
and poop work marvelously. Uh so we ended up with
a few gyms like the Toilet Avalanche, the Puke Avenger,
and the poop Fusion. So many thanks and congratulations on
all your success. That is Sierra Benton makes a lot,
So your Benton. That's a great email. I'm play we
could help you out keep your saying the poop Fusion
that's pretty solid band name. Yeah yeah, um yeah, we
(41:07):
get a lot of email about how like we keep
people saying during their everyday lives. So yeah, glad that
we're helping. Uh, if you have a story about how
we kept you saying, we'd like to hear those obviously. Um,
we want you to tweet to us seriously s y
s K podcast. We want you to hang out with
us on Facebook because it's fun over there. That's Facebook
(41:29):
dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send
us an email the Stuff Podcast to Discovery dot com
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(41:58):
destination for guys Here is why everything on the site
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k and o W stuff that's Jack threads dot com
slash no stuff
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Don Josh Clark,
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and it's the stuff you
should know. Jerry's over there fiddling and fuxing around Halloween
and June. Right, remember when we had the horror fiction
(00:24):
contest last year? Actually this maybe July? Um, yeah, yeah, yeah,
and we I think that the the deadline for submissions
was in July. It was weird to be in that
kind of hallowing mindset while it was hot out. But yeah,
and I'm sure it was weird to ask the authors
are not to ask, but to have them get in
that mindset to write something creepy. We definitely didn't command
(00:45):
you talked me out of that. Yeah. That was a
good contest. Yeah, also known as the Contest that Will
Shall Never Happen again. Well, we also ended up with
the one that we're going to read this year, right,
I think, yeah, yeah, that's a good one. It is
a good one. Uh, you guys will have to see
in a few months what we're talking about's right, So, Chuck, Um,
I myself have never officially seen a ghost, but I
(01:09):
understand you have a ghost story. I do. I remarked
about it and I said, I'm gonna wait till we
do our ghost podcast. Well here we are. Pal is
this it? Should I go? Now? Yeah? Okay, I'm not
saying this is a ghost. What I'm saying is one
night I saw something very very very strange that I
cannot explain. Okay, okay, are you ready? I feel like
(01:30):
should have music or something Jerry that could probably be done.
Um So Athens Georgia College, I would say, I don't
remember the exact year, but it was probably my best
friend and I Brett had had gone out and um,
we're going back home, uh, and driving through five points,
(01:51):
you know the area. So we're coming from like let's
say the direction of campus, and you know there's a
cut through if you take a certain road and five
points that cuts you over to Alps Road and people
are gonna be like, what is he talking about? I
just I'm talking to you here. Uh. And so there's
this one area where you go around a road curves
(02:12):
ninety degrees and then about i'd say two hundred feet
after that there's a four way stop sign. It's very
NEIGHBORHOODI area. I think that's like where Ray Golf used
to live. He Vince Duley lives over there. That might
be what you're thinking. So we go around this ninety
degree curve and I'm looking, you know, I'm filling with
the radio or something, and my buddy Brett starts, uh
(02:33):
like kind of joke, screaming like, oh what is that?
But getting around and I look up and in the
middle of the intersection and I swear, people, I'm not
making this up and I did not hallucinate it. This
is God's honest truth. There was a what looked like
a hundred year old woman wearing a black robe with
a purple sash dagonal across her chest, and she was
(02:57):
standing in the middle of the intersection holding a Bible
like this kind of on her placed on her fingertips
as you would hold like like a waiter would hold
a platter about chess level, and she was sort of
looking in the other direction with kind of a vacant
look on her face like you have now or is
it just she was completely vacant, completely still didn't move
(03:19):
an inch and wasn't like an hazy apparition, I mean,
was solid and looked real, real, real dude, it's so freaky.
We pull right up on her to you know, take
that left, and we're both kind of jokes screaming, but
then as we get closer, we're like, you know, what's
going on here? But it all happened in like, oh,
(03:41):
fifteen seconds, so it wasn't a lot of time to register,
you know, what is this. We were just sort of
getting around and we pull right by her and take
a left, like, you know, if this is her. We
pull within feet of her, and she's on my side
at this point because we're turning right by her. She
doesn't blink, doesn't move a muscle, and we were one
probably an hour in this curve. He starts like he
(04:04):
can't drive a stick shift anymore because he's freaking out
the cars, like jerking and sputtering. He pulls over probably
fifty ft later. We both turned around out the back
window and there's nothing there. I'm getting looked chill bumps uh,
And to this day I have no idea what the
heck it was. And it was either a crazy, crazy
(04:25):
old woman who is really fast, which is really creepy
and really fast, or the most believable Madame Tusso's wax dummy,
I've ever seen someone ran and set out there and
we didn't see it, and then ran and took it away.
I'm not offering any explanation, not saying it was a ghost,
but I have no recollect or explanation for what it
(04:45):
could have been. And it was creepiest, weirdest thing I've
ever seen. And we both described it to each other immediately,
like what did you see? What did you see? Had
gold leafing? I mean, I can't say it was a
Bible because I didn't see the cover, but it, you know,
that gold leafing around it look like a bible. So
you both saw the same thing, exact same thing, purple sash,
black robe, silver hair. That is one of the pernicious
(05:08):
qualities of a ghost sighting is that frequently people will
see the same thing. Two different people will see the
same thing, which lends a tremendous amount of credence to
something because if one person just sees it, well, it's
a hallucination. Exactly you were clearly on something we were not.
But that's what somebody could say. Both of you saw it.
Even if you both were on something, that doesn't mean
(05:31):
you're going to see the exact same thing. Yeah, And
I wasn't like some big ghost guy. I'd never have
had looked for them or say, oh I believe in
ghosts that would just out of nowhere of boom, there
had happened, right exactly. Um. You can also go a
little further if you're a skeptic and say, well, I
mean Chuck and Brett Brett just kind of we're playing
off on another description and they came to some unconsciously
(05:55):
came to an agreement of this. You guys compiled the
story and you saw the same thing. Who knows that
however you approach that probably depends on whether you're part
of the or percent of Americans who don't believe in
ghosts or who do believe in ghosts. According to a
two thousand nine CBS News poll, I had never given
it much thought, but after that I was I was
(06:16):
definitely like, well, that was a ghost and I just
saw one. Yeah, And I researched a little bit, but
this was long ago before the Internet was born, and
so I couldn't find anything. And even look yesterday just
to see if I could find out anything, if there
was some sightings or some old lady that have been
killed or anything and nothing. Now, I couldn't find anything.
So that was just your own personal ghost maybe, or
(06:39):
just some creepy old woman who was still in not
blinking as a car barrel towards her. Either way, that
is very unsettling either way. Um, And that's a pretty
good ghost story. It was a good one. It was
not a mask, you know, I can say that for sure.
Like we pulled up within feet of her, Like I
looked in her face and she and she didn't move
a must didn't move a muscle man. That's it was
(07:00):
the scariest thing that's ever happened to me. And we
told that story many many times over the years, and
everyone's always like really, and I always say, I swear,
why would I make this up? So that's my ghost story.
That's a good ghost story. You can reach us on Facebook. Right,
it's time for message break. All right? Wait, wait, Jerry,
it's not really kind for message break. What she left
(07:21):
pretty quick. So we're talking ghosts. And like I said,
of Americans believe in ghosts, don't. Yeah, And I think
a lot of people, especially after reading this, there's the
whole you know, I really miss my deceased relative and
(07:41):
I go to seances, and I think those things the
mind can play tricks on you. But in my case,
it was just like those are the ones where I'm like,
what's going on here? You know, Well, it's pretty much
impossible to disprove something or to prove something doesn't exist, right,
which is one reason why belief in ghosts continues on.
(08:05):
But there's also a lot of, um, there's also a
lot of factors in ghosts that accumulated create this body
of you know, ghost belief, what our ghost ghostly sightings, hauntings, apparations,
all that stuff that um kind of over time have
taken on a life of their own or I should say,
have been around for thousands and thousands of years, um,
(08:27):
and have not been dispelled by science. Um. So we're
going to kind of approach this from like, you know,
here's what people believe ghosts are, and here's some scientific
explanations for it. But throughout this you will notice that
at no point are we ever going to say conclusively
science has proven that ghosts don't exist, because it kind
(08:49):
of can't. That's not to say that people aren't using
the scientific method to study ghosts, because some are, and
my hat is off to these people most of all.
So let's up ghosts man. All right, Well, I just
described my encounter, which, like I said, wasn't hazy or weird. Um,
well it's weird. It wasn't like a hazy apparition. But
many times as an apparition. Um, Sometimes it's lights, it
(09:12):
seems to hit every since. Sometimes it's a smell um
like Tracy pointed out in this article, like the smell
of deceased relative's favorite meal being cooked in the other room,
stuff like that, Or the smell of the deceased relative
just smelled something like rotting, but it was just a
scuirrel in the wall. Can be a song, can be
(09:35):
flickering lights, can be orbs in a picture. We'll talk
about that, or a ghost in a picture. Like there's
plenty of those. Hey, I got you got a Google.
It's pretty fun to look at those. Yeah, and there's
some that are like this one's not quite explained to
my full satisfaction. Yeah, some of the If you look
up famous ghost pictures, there's a handful that have made
(09:56):
the rounds over the years that are pretty good, like
the Lady of Brown on Hall. I believe is that
the girl with the fire no that's a good one.
That's a real good one. Um, there's a woman descending
a staircase like a ghostly woman. Um. Freddie Jackson the
World War two, World War One pilot killed or mechanic.
(10:17):
I'm sorry he was killed, and then he showed up
in a group photo two days later. Um. That one
was explained as a double exposure, which I mean, just
the coincidence behind it is in and of itself staggering
if that is the explanation for of course, it also
could be a hoax. But it's a pretty good on.
Freddie Jackson is my favorite one. I think my favorite
(10:38):
is the Old West. Did you see that one? It's
like boothill or something. It was in I think, and
this guy dressed up like a cowboy and you know,
had his picture made but with his friend. And then
in the back ground you see this guy. Yeah, I did,
like kind of peeking up maybe behind a tombstone. Yeah, um,
just in the brush. Yeah. And supposedly they say are
(11:00):
verified by photo experts and stuff is having been untouched.
So yeah, because photoshop is making it way easier to
screw with photography, but it's also fairly easy to detect too.
If you really dig into the individual pixels, you can say, well,
this is obviously, and especially these old photos when they're
(11:22):
examining negatives, it's not that those weren't photoshops, right, I mean,
it could be light playing tricks. But when you see
a girl standing by the rail of you know, with
the fire behind her, that one was explained as the
girl in the fire. Yeah, that one was explained as
a just a sheer chance mixture of smoke and light.
(11:43):
And then our um programming, like us being hardwired to
pick faces out of anything. I don't know, man, this
looked pretty much like it definitely does then it yeah, um.
And then of course there's the funny things like the
three men and a baby ghost cut out of that
dancing or the Wizard of Oz like Hanging Munchkin, which was,
although I have to say, since you bring it up,
(12:06):
one of the greatest short you know, I love short
horror fiction. Of course they were one of the greatest
um ones I've ever read. Was called The Hanging Man
of Oz. It's like, um, it was. It's only just
a few years old, but it's a good little short story. Really. Yeah. Yeah,
this guy who like gets kind of caught up in
like looking for it. It's good, yeah, good horror fiction. Um,
(12:30):
this doesn't have to do with ghosts. But supposedly there's
a murder captured on Google Earth. Have you seen that
making the rounds. It's an aerial shot obviously of a
dock somewhere in Europe, I think, by the water, and
it looks like a guys like dragging a dead body
in a big pool of blood towards the water. But they,
I think they've debunked that it was a dog who
(12:52):
had shaken off and gotten the ground wet, and people
verified later like yeah, that was me and my dog,
and yeah, stop asking questions because my dog, someone posted
on our Facebook call. But I mean you bring up
a that's that's a really good like you see what
you want exactly. Um. But again we say, you can't
really prove that ghost don't exists. So people are like,
(13:14):
prove it. It doesn't prove anything, you know. Um, if
you can prove that a photograph has been faked, then
you've proven it's been faked. But you can't just look
in and be like, oh, I'm sure it's a fake
that doesn't muster. Yeah, so they we we've covered photos
they show up in photos. Well why are they here?
I mean there's a lot of explanations, like they're delivering
(13:35):
bad news or good news, right. Yeah. There's a lot
of ghost stories where, um, the dead have suddenly appeared
to a relative on the other side of the planet
at the moment they died. Like the relative wakes up
the next day to find out that the person died
at twelve fifty nine am when they just saw them
sitting in their room at the same time. So sometimes
(13:57):
they're they're coming to say, hey, I love you, see
you in fifteen years um. Or they're coming to say
you're about to die, that's another long standing legend. Yeah,
or they're about to say like, um, it's it's a
should sell your Yahoo stock now, that'd be a good
(14:18):
ghost right. Um. You know, there's a lot of stuff
you can you can say that people have attributed to
ghosts and why they're here. Um, there's also that horrible
um experience as their last moments. Yeah, they they are
at the point where they died too young or uh,
(14:39):
maybe have just gone back to their favorite place in life. Um.
Earthbound spirits, I think is what paranormal investigators call those situations.
Like they're stuck here or it's like, you know, get
off my train type of situation. They're guarding a place.
Maybe there's not one, but to um ghost two women
(15:00):
at the Hotel del del Coronado and San Diego, very
famous late nineteenth century built hotels. UM, and both of
them took their own lives at the hotel when they
found out they were pregnant out of wedlock. Or one
was married but her husband and left her, and so
they're in two different rooms still. But that's an example
(15:21):
of a ghost being tied to a place. Yeah, and
UM we have an article on the site about haunted hotels.
That a lot of hotels and all around the world,
but especially in places like New Orleans and um like
old spooky Spanish. I guess the Coronado is probably one
of those. There's one, and I believe Colorado or the
one they used for the overlooking No. Um. It's it's
(15:43):
just like a plain o like regular cool hotel, but
it has like a stream running through the lobby. Yeah,
which is cool in and of itself. And I don't
remember where I saw this, but um, it was like
on some TV show or this it's like a super
Haunted Hotel supposedly the ghost waiter is it. I don't
I don't remember, I don't wait for the river. Yeah
(16:06):
he had his pants rolled up and yeah the caviary
pop is awesome. Uh, that was the best th of
muster right then, I'm sorry. Um. And you know, there
are mediums out there who uh you know, if you
saw the movie Ghost Whoopy Goldberg. Obviously there's many times
hucksters trying to take advantage of people saying they can
contact people, put you in touch with your relatives that
(16:29):
have passed. Um, but I'm sure they're very There are
a lot of mediums who really believe what they're doing
is for real, you know. Yeah, And what's what's kind
of ironic is um, there's this really great article, it's
just a little quick editorial actually from the Los Angeles
Times in two thousand and six, is called is Science
Afraid of Ghosts? Is written by Deborah bloom right, and
(16:50):
she basically points out that like we we used to
have psychical research societies like William James, effectively the founder
of psychology, like investigated the paranormal as well and conducted
like extensive real scientific experiments and along the way debunked
a lot of mediums, like the nineteenth century, the Victorian era. UM.
(17:15):
And so part of this investigation into the paranormal um
was not just it wasn't just to prove that ghosts existed.
It was just to understand the paranormal in its own terms.
And along the way, say this person is a fraud,
this person is a huckster. This ectoplasm is cheesecloth that
(17:35):
they had like stuffed in their cheek, you know. Um,
And and that was part of it. And over time,
I think science has just kind of thrown out the
whole thing, the baby with the bathwater, and now it's
just up to uh, kind of the more mean spirited
section of the skeptical world to just go after and debunk.
(17:57):
There's nobody looking for their very you people looking to
prove or disprove the existence of ghosts. It's more just
like this photograph was faked, right, you know what I mean? Yeah? Um,
And on photographs, I guess we should talk about orbs
um very famously. Orbs show up in pictures and uh,
(18:18):
some people, you know say that that is a very
um specific part of the journey of the ghost is
when they are an orb. I have an ORB picture
which I'll post on Facebook. Emily believes it is her grandfather.
We he had just passed away, and the photograph he
was the biggest dog lover I've ever known. And uh,
(18:41):
we had just finished our fencing in our backyard and
our house that we bought, so it had been like
six or eight months that our dogs couldn't go back there.
So we finally let them back there, and I had
a camera, was like, I gotta take pictures to this,
and they start playing around like crazy, and in one
of the pictures there's an ORB boom right there above
the dogs playing in Emily, it's like, that's Charlie, that's
(19:01):
my grandfather. He's coming to visit. So I didn't debunk that.
But supposedly skeptics will say that could be a camera
flash reflecting off thus particles I use, no flash, water
spots on the camera lens, bone dry uh defects, and
digital camera sensors. I guess it could be that although
(19:24):
it was a new camera and it's never done that
sense or printing errors. It was not printed or developed,
so who knows. I'm just saying I've got a great
ORB photo that I'll post my dog's playing. You raise
a really good question, and like, I mean, what's the
what's the value of debunking that? I don't know? Photo
it made him only feel nice? It still does why,
(19:45):
I mean, what is the value? I mean? I guess
we'll cover it later. Yeah, but there's this uh yeah,
that that question keeps coming up to me throughout the
researching this. It's like it's not hurting anybody, right, um
so chuck, Uh, I guess a really good question. If
we're gonna talk about how ghost work is, what would
ghosts be made of? Like we said, the Victorians believe
(20:06):
that they were made of ectoplasm. Today, if you talk
to a someone who believes in ghosts and like researchers
ghosts and like that's part of their world, they prevailing
idea is that they're made of energy of somehow I
can't remember which. A lot of thermodynamics state that energy
cannot be created or destroyed, just transfers states. That would
(20:29):
be a pretty good understanding of what ghosts are if
they are real. So a life force that had passed
from a live person is now a different kind of
energy exactly, um medichlorians, what is that? This is the
Star Wars. That is how they explained the force. Who
are the medic Chlorians? I don't remember. It was very disappointing,
though it sounds really familiar, was it from the newer three? Yeah? Yeah,
(20:52):
that was how they explained. Basically, they explained what the
force was, and everyone's like, oh, why don't you go
and do that? I got you, I remember that now. Um.
Other theories are that um, if they are some sort
of energy, they could also be some form of matter.
So maybe they're made of some sort of quantum particles
(21:13):
or an arrangement of quantum particles, which I find kind
of an interesting explanation because think about it, ghosts can
are They're frequently said to be able to travel through
solid matter. Right. Well, if you go down to the
quantum level and you start looking at transistors, there's a
big problem in early transistor development and that individual electrons
(21:35):
can pass right through the wall of a transistor. It's
called quantum tunneling, and um, they had to figure out
how to use crystals to kind of block electrons in
to make them flow the way you wanted, rather than
just be like, oh, I'm over here now. So some
people say, well, maybe these are some sort of quantum
particles or an arrangement of quantum particles that were able
(21:55):
to perceive somehow. And then the question I would have
is is there a consistent explanation on why some people
might become a ghost and some others not? And the
answer is no, or are they everywhere and some you
just have a stronger energy force or something? Who knows? Yeah?
(22:16):
Because I mean if if people tend to perceive ghosts
more than others, and that typically from studies, has been
shown to be people who believe in ghosts tend to
see them more often report hauntings, Um, why wouldn't they
see them all the time? Yeah, Like why wouldn't so? Yeah,
that would indicate that there is something about an individual
(22:38):
person that would make them become a ghost. So many questions. Well,
the whole unfinished business like it died to a young thing.
I can wrap my head around that, Like an energy
force that was so strong that has now gone still
could be around. Um, I'm trying to decide what part
I'd lie in. Do I believe in ghosts? I think so.
(23:01):
So There's a dude named Richard Wiseman of a University
of Hertfordshire and He's done a lot of research in
gb Great Britain, and he has found some pretty consistent
results that people have generally reported the same things in
the same places, even if they didn't know there was
(23:23):
any ghost activity there, even if they did or didn't believe. Actually,
if they did believe, they were more, like you said,
more apt to see a ghost. But he had consistent
results of specific places. Yeah, I mean like he applied
the scientific method to researching ghosts, and he he documented what,
what parts, what areas in a reportedly haunted place sightings
(23:47):
were most frequently reported. Basically found that like you could,
you could map out areas where sightings were Okay, so
that's step one, and then step two. We had people
who who encountered ghosts described their experiences, and he kind
of compiled the data. Then he went back to see
what other commonalities there were for an area, like physical
(24:08):
conditions there, like how cold is it, is it humid?
Um Let me measure the light, let me measure the
magnetic field. Right. What he found, though, interestingly, was that
um there were specific areas where people who had no
understanding of the history of the place they were seeing
or had heard that the area was haunted had reported
(24:32):
seeing something. So there was something to a specific area
being quote haunted, and people who didn't necessarily believe in
ghosts or didn't know that the place was supposed to
be haunted had reported not only that they had seen
a sighting or something in this building, but in the
specific area of this building. Yeah, what does that mean?
(24:52):
It's a consistent study, right, So, and Wiseman is a
part of this kind of long but very um small,
smally sparsely populated um tradition of like paranormal researchers, like
legitimate ones. I could get into that. Man. When I
was a kid, I used to want to go to
Duke and study paranormal or para psychology there. Yeah, they
(25:16):
had a para psychology department. It was led by a
guy named Joseph Ryan, who was another like legitimate para
psychological researcher. Um. You could have gotten a TV show
on the Science Change, Yeah, totally. U c l A
used to have one from I think now they shut
it down and I think the mid eighties, but it
(25:36):
was around from like the fifties or sixties up to
the eighties and it was well respected. Um. William James
was another researcher. Uh as of the nineties, James Huron
and Renny Lange are still doing research and writing books. Um,
Harry Price was a very famous one. Yeah, he was
(25:58):
famous for investigating really Rectory, which was supposed to be
like the most haunted place in England. And then now,
if you want to get a degree in paras psychology,
you can go to the American University or you can
go to University of Edinburgh. Those are the two places,
as far as I know, in the Western world where
you can get a paras psychology degree. I could see
(26:18):
that the Great Britain's has a lot of um, ghostly
activity and paranormal investigators and they're into it over there.
And Edinburgh is supposed to be the most haunted city
in all of Europe. Really a bunch of dissatisfied Scotsman
roaming the bog right. Um, so we've kind of laid
it out right. Yeah, I feel like we've laid it
(26:39):
out like we've got them. We all understand what ghosts.
I don't think we really said anything that people are like,
oh yeah, I didn't realize that's what a ghost is. Um.
What I found interesting is that there's some really good
explanations for ghostly activity. Yeah, Sometimes Stracy points out, I
mean there are so many explanations. There's such a wide
(27:02):
range from this person just hallucinated something, right, and I
want to stay with that. Specifically, we're starting to understand
that hallucinations are way more common than anybody has admitted
for a very long time because we are afraid of
being put away or label is crazy. But people hallucinate
(27:23):
more than we generally understand they do. And specifically, grief
is supposed to be able to trigger hallucinations pretty really,
which would explain visitation dead relatives shortly after they die. Um.
We've talked about sleep paralysis before. That's an explanation that
you hear a lot about someone laying in bed. They
can't move and they are hallucinating um, spirits and things. Right,
(27:47):
they think they're awake, but they're not. Yeah, and you're
incapable of moving. There's also the hypnogogic trance, which comes
at the onset of sleep, and it's a sort of
trance that supposedly you can hallucinate. Yeah, I've had that
happened before, like a my wake, am I sleep that
it is here? Something? Oh? Yeah, yeah, sure, you know. Um.
(28:07):
And then sometimes it's just you know, the window shut
itself because it was loose in the wind blew it,
or the door shut because there was a draft where
it's cold in here, because you know there's a draft.
You know, a lot of times there's just literally an explanation,
a physical explanation for what happened. So, um, you you
(28:28):
hit upon. One of the hallmarks of haunting activity is
a change in temperature and unexplained change in temperature and
a haunted room when a ghost is present. And like
you said, it's often like a chimney or a drafty
window or something like that. But people who investigate this
kind of thing also often explain that phenomenon by um,
(28:49):
a lack of humidity, right, lower humidity can make a
room feel colder. And what about an area of a room?
Though I don't know, I mean, I I like, that's
that's a really good question, dude. How can an area
of a room be number one colder if if there
isn't a draft, if it's not a draft, it's just
(29:10):
like a static area in a room that's cold. Um,
if there's just a decrease in humidity, what causes the
decrease in humidity that makes it feel colder. And they
have found that um areas that are supposedly haunted. Well,
I should say, Richard Wiseman found in one place that
was supposedly haunted, UM, it tended to be less humid
(29:33):
than other areas, So that would explain the cold chill.
But how is one area just a part of a
room less humid than another. Yeah, and I'm curious about
what kind of temperature drop people have seen, um, like
how drastic it's been. I couldn't find any like reputable
information on that. Like in the movies, you walk into
the corner and you can see your breath all of
(29:53):
a sudden and you're freezing. Yeah, like the sixth sense, right, Yeah, yeah,
that poor kid. Um. But also I wonder then if
it's not even necessarily a real change in temperature, although
supposedly ghost hunters can measure changes in temperature in a
room and that means the ghost is present, Or if
it's just the sensation of a chill running through your
body and it's not actually thermal, it's psychological. Yeah, your
(30:18):
your central nervous system. Yeah, I just got chill bumps earlier.
You know, you did what about the electrical fields? That's um,
A very common thing is for a paranormal investigator to
measure magnetic field and electrical fields in an area. Um,
they will say that this is kind of proof that
there's some sort of presence there because the you know,
(30:40):
the Ghostbusters E meter is going crazy? Right exactly what
do they call that? I can't believe. I can't remember that.
I can't remember it either, the one that that Egan
held up to. Uh yeah, yeah, I don't remember what
it's called. We're going to get in trouble for that. Yeah,
sorry guys. Um, But sometimes, um, these fields can cause
wacky things happening with the brain, can cause hallucinations, can
(31:02):
cause dizziness or other neurological symptoms. And they're saying that
might play into it, the fact that you think you
have seen a ghost right there, they're saying. Investigators are saying, yeah,
there actually is something different here with the the area's
electrical field, electro magnetic field. There's something going on here.
(31:23):
But it's possible that that's what's making you think there's
a ghost here, rather than there's a ghost here and
it's affecting the field, it's hitting your angular gyrus. Right,
that's a part of the brain that UM. Evidently, if
it's stimulated you can get the sense that someone is
behind you mimicking your movements, which is pretty creepy. I mean,
we're we're all familiar with the transcranial magnetic stimulation the
(31:47):
thinking cap. That's a cool episode. UM. And when you
apply a magnetic pulse to different parts of the brain,
different things happen, and one of them is definitely hallucinations.
And then another example of UM magnetic field messing with us,
I guess is that a lot of haunting activity is
reported at night, supposedly UM, right exactly. That's that's number one.
(32:11):
But number two. The magnetosphere, you know, the the the
part of the Earth's atmosphere that protects us from the
charged ions of solar wind, the way that the Earth
is arranged to the Sun, the part that's in darkness.
UM has a larger part of the magnetosphere surrounding it,
more warped towards that. So that might explain it then, right,
(32:33):
so it looks like a spider, it does. But there's
a lot more UM magnetic field activity going on in
the darker side of Earth. So at night that one
could be a stretch. Yeah. I think my favorite UM
explanation that I had not heard about is infrasound. I
think that's pretty cool. This to me, is it? Yeah,
it's um low frequency sound waves that you cannot hear.
(32:57):
You know, with your naked ear, you won't notice it,
but it can cause your eyes to vibrate, It can
cause you to see things, You can cause a sense
of dread. UM and cracked. Actually, one of our favorite
websites that a test at a concert. Didn't they Well,
they reported on it. There's a they don't do test,
that's right, they report on tests. But yeah, there's a
(33:20):
great correct article on it. UM and they're talking about
In the fifties, a guy named Vladismir Vladimir Gavreaux, robotics engineer,
noticed that like one of his lab assistants was bleeding
from an ear and traced it to UM. To this infrasound,
I think it's like seven to nineteen hurts and UM.
(33:40):
You can't hear it, like you don't realize you're hearing sound,
but you're reacting to it. And like you said, it
causes all sorts of like weird psychological effects like a
sense of dread, a sense that there's somebody else near you. Um,
all the classic telltale signs of hauntings, so much so
that they've traced literal like hauntings back to infrasound. Yeah,
(34:04):
The Ghost in the Machine is an article um by
Victandy and Tony Lawrence that the same thing was going
on there, and they traced it back to a fan
and then they modified the fans housing. The sound went
away and the supposed haunting went away, right exactly. I mean,
isn't that weird that, like, surely you've been in a
room before that you just had to turn around and
(34:24):
run out of it because you just knew that there's
somebody else in there with you. You have, I have
plenty of times, But I think it's like I've been
in like Savannah near you know, on the ghost tour.
Like I'm highly suggestible what I'm saying. But isn't it
strange to think that a sound that you can't hear
it was responsible for producing that that? Like we're our
(34:45):
brains are that malleable that like just the sound we
can't even hear, but the vibrations we can still sense
somehow are having an effect on our brain and scaring
us and making us turn around and run out of
room and potentially twitching your eye causing hallucinations. Right, so
this sound has been shown. NASA showed that, um that
an infrasound at that frequency can make your eye vibrate imperceptibly.
(35:10):
But then something close to your vision, like say the
rim of your glasses or something appear. Your brain confuses
and things that that's moving, so it looks like there's
a little dark figure moving out of the corner of
your eye. Infrasound can actually cause visual and audit well
not auditory hallucinations yea, psychological effects and visual hallucinations. So
(35:33):
and the creation of a sense of dread. That's yeah,
I want to get an infrasound machine. It's just like
played around the office. You know, there may already be
one here. Well, I don't even think we said what
the guy did though at the concert? Did we know
he played did he play it? Under the concert and
people were freaking out? Yeah? I think like a quarter
(35:54):
of the people at the concert reported feeling like horrible
dread and like some nausea. Um, maybe because it was
a doctor John show. That's the first awful thing I
could think of Dr John's Crest. I know, I knew
you were gonna say that. It really I mean, like
you sued to see that guy played two pianos at once. Yeah,
(36:16):
he's he's he's a legend. What am I talking about?
You're thinking of? Um, maybe Dr hook and the Medicine Show.
No Dr Demento. I was trying to think of the
worst band I could think of, and that's the first
thing that came to my mind. That's who you thought of.
Nickelback is out there, Yeah, it was a Nickelback show.
We can fix this in editing, okay. Um, so what else?
(36:41):
I think? The last thing Tracy has here is that, um,
the National Science Board is actually come out and said
that if you believe in paranormal it can be dangerous
because that means you have reduced critical thinking skills and
can't make great day to day decisions. It's kind of mean.
That irked me because on the other end of the spectrum,
you can definitely make the case that just poo poo
(37:03):
ing out of hand as non existent anything that science
can explain. It shows a distinct lack of critical thinking
and even more dangerously, a lack of imagination and that
irks me to no end. Yeah, I enjoyed that you
sent me the skep dyd Brian Dunning his article, and
I kind of appreciated his approach with this, was like,
(37:25):
you know, uh, maybe that means there's other cool ways
to explain these things, like don't poopo it. Maybe open
your mind to other interesting phenomenon that can be explained. Well,
he was saying, don't just assume that if you just
stop at it was a ghost, then there wasn't. Right,
(37:46):
then you're you're pursuing. You're just you're not pursuing any longer,
one way or another. And yeah, you're you're kind of
shutting down these avenues that could be really interesting and
eye opening. Appreciated that. I appreciated his approach too, because
he's a huge skeptic and he's not He didn't take
like a James Randy esque glee or delight and destroying
the illusions of idiots, you know. Yeah, And I think
(38:07):
that's his deal period as people. Uh, I think he
gets accused of that oftentimes, as you know, a fun killer,
and he's like, that's not what I'm trying to do here.
I'm trying to apply research and real science too. Things.
I think he likes killing fun a little bit. Maybe
a little bit. So that's ghosts. Yeah done, yeah, uh
(38:29):
for now. If you if you want to learn more
about ghosts and read a ghost story first firsthand account
of a ghost story from Tracy Wilson, you can type
ghosts in the search part how stuff works dot com.
It will bring up this article. And I said, how
stuff work. So it's time for a message break. I'll
bet now. Listener mail now, listener mail. All right, Yeah,
(38:56):
this is from a teacher. We always like reading these
um Chuck, Josh and Jerry have been listening for over
a year now and was never more grateful than about
a month ago. I wound up driving three preteen boys
to Space Academy in Huntsville, Alabama. Remember Space Camp? Great movie?
Uh not really, I never saw the movie. I just
(39:17):
remember if you didn't see Space Camp. Oh man, that
was right in the wheelhouse. No, all right, you see.
I'm a middle school teacher in Morgantown, North Carolina, recently
relocated from Decatur, Georgia, where I worked at the brick
Store and Squash Boston. Jerry's old hunts Um every two years.
(39:39):
Our six and seventh grade students going a trip to
the Science Academy. And we're a tiny school, just twenty
four kids in the entire middle school teachers frequently end
up driving on field trips themselves. It's about a seven
hour drive, and on the journey we were played with traffic, rain,
and car sickness. At about hour four, when tensions were high,
was white and knuckled and began questioning my career voice,
(40:00):
and I said, screw it, I'm gonna put on your
podcast about ninjas. They were mesmerized. During the rest of
our trip, we learned about sword swallowing, bigfoot, and surfing,
just to name a few. So thank you for saving
us in our time of need. More pointingly, creating a
podcast that appeals to all ages. There's a show. With
my thanks, I'd like to teach you a tried and
true car game, like your podcast, only requires uh that
(40:21):
a person be young at heart. It's called pass around
the ether rag as you drive down the road. As
you drive down the road, take note of all the
car models you pass in front of the model name,
Insert any potty word of your choice. With middle school
boys and most likely you two as well. Toilet, puke
(40:43):
and poop work marvelously. Uh so we ended up with
a few gyms like the Toilet Avalanche, the Puke Avenger,
and the poop Fusion. So many thanks and congratulations on
all your success. That is Sierra Benton makes a lot,
So your Benton. That's a great email. I'm play we
could help you out keep your saying the poop Fusion
that's pretty solid band name. Yeah yeah, um yeah, we
(41:07):
get a lot of email about how like we keep
people saying during their everyday lives. So yeah, glad that
we're helping. Uh, if you have a story about how
we kept you saying, we'd like to hear those obviously. Um,
we want you to tweet to us seriously s y
s K podcast. We want you to hang out with
us on Facebook because it's fun over there. That's Facebook
(41:29):
dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send
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Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this
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(41:58):
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