SYSK Selects: How Ghosts Work

Published Oct 31, 2020, 9:00 AM

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? In this classic episode airing for Halloween, 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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Hey, everybody, it's your old pal Josh Ghoulish Clark. And for this week's special Halloween edition of s Y s K Selects, I've chosen our classic episode How Ghosts Work, which it turns out we recorded in July weirdly enough, but it seems appropriate to release this Saturday. So I hope you endured and boo. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles debe Chuck Bryant, and this is Stuff you should Know. Jerry's over there twiddling and fuxing around Halloween and Julie right, remember when we had the Horror fiction contest last year, Actually this may be July. Um yeah, yeah, yeah, and we I think that the deadline for submissions was in July. Was weird to be in that kind of Halloween mindset while it was hot out, but yeah, and I'm sure it was weird to ask the authors, or not to ask, but to have them get in that mindset to write something creepy. We definitely didn't command. You talked me out of that. Yeah, that was a good contest, also known as the contest that 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, it'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 is right, so chuck. Um, I myself have never officially seen a ghost, but I understand you have a ghost story. I do. I remarked about it and I said, oh, 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 was 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? Yeah? I feel like she could have music or something. Year that could probably be done. Um so Athens Georgia College, I would say, I don't remember the exact year, but it was probably is. Um my best friend and I, Brett, had had gone out and um, we're going back home, uh and driving through five points 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 know, I just I'm talking to you here. Uh. And so there's this one area where you go around a road curves 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 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 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 an inch and wasn't like an hazy apparition, I mean, was solid and looked real, real, real, dude. It was 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, 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 going probably fifteen minur in this curve. He starts like he can't drive his 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 old woman who is really fast, which is really creepy and really fast, or the most believable Madam Tusso's wax dummy I've ever seen. It was also really fast that 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 could have been. And it was the 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, had that gold leafing around it looked 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 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, right, that doesn't mean you're gonna 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. It would just out of nowhere of boom, there it 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 one another description and they came to some unconsciously came to an agreement of this. You guys compiled the story and you saw the same thing that. However you approach that probably depends on whether you're part of the or the forty 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 definitely like, well, if that was a ghost and I just saw one, Yeah, And I researched a little bit, but this was long ago before the internets was born, and so I couldn't find anything. And even looked yesterday just to see if I could find out anything, if there was some sightings or some old lady have been killed or anything, and nothing. Now I couldn't find anything. So that was just your own personal ghost. Maybe we're 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 mustle, didn't move a muscle. Man. That's scary. It was 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, Yeah, it's time for message break. All right. Wait, wait, Jerry, it's not really time for message break. But she left pretty quick. So we're talking ghosts. And like I said, forty percent 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 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, which is one reason why belief in ghosts continues on. 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, appversions, all that stuff. Sure 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, 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'll notice that at no point are we ever going to say conclusively science has proven that ghost don't exist, because it kind 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. Yeah, so let's hug cohosts man. All right, well I just described my encounter, which, like I said, wasn't hazy or weird. Um, well, it was weird. It wasn't like a hazy apparition. But many times as an apparition, um, sometimes it's lights, it seems to hit every sense. 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 roll in the wall, right exactly. It can be a song, can be flickering lights, can be uh, 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 the rounds over the years that are pretty good. Like the Lady of Brown Hall, I believe is that the girl with a 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. 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, and for of course it also could be a hoax. But it's a pretty good on. Freddy Jackson is my favorite one. I think my favorite 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. Um, just in the brush. Yeah, And supposedly these things were 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 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 a fire behind her, that one is explained as the girl in the fire. Yeah, that was explained as a just a sheer chance mixture of smoke and light. And then our um programming, like us being hardwired to pick faces out of anything. I don't know, man, that looked pretty much like a girl to me. It definitely doesn't it. Yeah. Um, And then of course there's the funny things like the three minute a Baby Ghost, which was a cut out of Dead Dancing, or The Wizard of Oz, like Hanging Munchkin, which was although I have to say, since you bring it up, one of the greatest short you know, I love short horror fiction. Of course they're 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. Yeah. Yeah, this guy who like gets kind of caught up in like looking for it. It's good, good horror fiction. Um. This doesn't have to do with go But supposedly there's a murder captured on Google Earth. Have you seen that making the rounds? No, it's an aerial shot obviously of a dock somewhere in Europe, I think, by the water, and it looks like a guy's like dragging a dead body in a big pool of blood toward the water. But they I think they've debunked that it was a dog who had shaken off and gotten the ground wet, and people verified later like, yeah, that was me and my dog, and yeah, I stop asking questions because my dog soone posted in on our Facebook wall. 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 stone exists. So people are like, prove 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 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 nine a m. When they just saw them sitting in their room at that same time. So sometimes 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 that's the worst 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 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, 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 two um ghost women at the Hotel del del Coronado in San Diego, very famous late night eighteenth century built hotel resort um and both of them took their own lives at the hotel when they found out they were pregnant at a 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 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 Cornetto 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 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, see like the ghost Waiter, is it? I don't I don't remember. I don't wait through the the river, Yeah, he had his pants rolled up and yeah, flipp the caviary pop is awesome. Uh that is the best of must 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 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 Los Angeles Times in two thousand and six, is called The Science Afraid of Ghosts is written by Deborah bloom Right, and 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. 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 on its own terms. And along the way, say, this person is a fraud, this person is a huckster. This ectoplasm is cheesecloth that 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 bath water, 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. There's nobody looking for There are very few 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, 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 our grandfather. We he had just passed away, and the photograph he was the biggest dog lover I've ever known. And Uh, 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. It 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, and Emily was like, that's Charlie, that's 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 with 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 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 then, 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, so why I mean, what is the value? I mean, I guess we'll cover it later. Yeah, but there's this, uh 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 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 okay I can't remember which, a lot of thermodynamic state. That energy cannot be created or destroyed, just transferred states. That would 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, medic Chlorians, what is that? This is the Star Wars? Okay, 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, it was how they explained. Basically, they explained what the force was, and everyone was like, 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, right, so maybe they're made of some sort of quantum particles 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 um development and that individual electrons 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 trans 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 to perceive somehow, right, And then the question I would have is is there a consistent uh 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? 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 person that would make them become a ghost. So many questions. Well, the whole unfinished business, like it died too young. Things 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? Okay. 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 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 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. Yeah, like physical conditions there, Yes, 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 where it heard that the area was haunted, had reported 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'd seen a sighting or something in this building, but in the specific area of this building. Yeah, what does that mean? 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 had a para of 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 Science Chip, 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 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 famous for investigating Borderley 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 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 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, sure, 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 Tracy points out, I mean there's so many explanations. There's such a wide range from this person just hallucinated something, right, And I want to say 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 more than we generally understand they do. And specifically, grief is supposed to be able to trigger hallucinations. Pretty really which would explain visitation and dead relatives shortly after they die. Yeah. 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, 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 is a sort of trance that supposedly you can hallucinate in. Yeah, I've had that happen before, Like in my wake am I sleep that I just hear something? Oh yeah, yeah, sure, you know. Um. And then sometimes it's just you know, the window shut itself because it was loose and the wind blew it, or the door shut because there was a draft, or 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 hit upon. One of the hallmarks of haunting activity is a change in temperature and unexplained change in temperature in 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, a lack of humidity. Right, Lower humidity can make a room feel colder. Right? And what about an area of a room? Though I don't know, I mean, I don't 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 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 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 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. 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 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 parent noormal 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, the Ghostbusters E meter is going crazy? Right, exactly what do they call that? I can't believe. We 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 cause dazziness or 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 UM. The area's electrical field, electro magnetic field. There's something going on here. 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's behind you mimicking your movements. Yeah, which is pretty creepy. I mean, we're we're all familiar with the transcranial magnetic stimulation the 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, the magnetic field messing with us. I guess is that a lot of haunting activity is reported at night, supposedly UM. And that's right exactly, that's that's number one. 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 toward that. So that might explain it then, right, 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 that, Yeah, it's UM low frequency sound waves that you cannot hear. 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 did a test at a concert, didn't they Well, they reported on it. There was a they don't do test, that's right, they report on test. But yeah, there's a 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. It's not good, and traced it to UM to this infrasound. I think it's like seven and nineteen hurts and UM. 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, 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? Though? Like, surely you've been in a room before that you just had to turn around and run out of because you just knew that there's somebody else in there with you. You have, I have plenty of times sort of. 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 brains are that malleable that like just a 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 yeah, and potentially twitching your eye and 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. 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 hallucination, psychological yeah, psychological effects and visual hallucinations. So and the creation of a sense of dread. Yeah, 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 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 correct. I know, I knew you were gonna say that. It really is. I mean, like you shoul see that guy played two pianos at once. Yeah, 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 can 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. There. We can fix this in editing, Okay, Um, so what else? 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 you 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 pooh pooing 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 skepdoid. Brian Dunning is that the same his article, and I kind of appreciated his approach with this was you know, uh, maybe that means there's other cool ways to explain these things, right, like don't poopo it. Maybe open your mind to other interesting phenomena 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, then you're you're pursuing. You're just you're not pursuing any longer, one way or another. Yea. And yeah, you're you're kind of shutting down these avenues that could be really interesting and eye opening. I appreciated that. I appreciated his approach to because he's a huge skeptic, but he's not. He didn't take like a James Randy esque glee or delight in destroying the illusions of idiots, you know. Yeah, And I think that's his deal period as people. Uh, I think he gets accused of that oftentimes, is 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, two things. I think he likes killing fun a little bit. Maybe a little bit. So that's ghosts. Yeah, done, Yeah 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 bar at how stuff works dot com. It will bring up this article. And I said, how stuff works so it's time for a message break. I'll bet now. Listener mail now, listener mail. All right, yeah, 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 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 Blossom Jerry's old hunts Okay Um. Every two years, our six and seventh grade students go on 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, about a seven hour drive, and on the journey we were plagued with traffic, rain, and car sickness. At about hour four, when tensions were high, was white and knuckled and began questioning my career choice, 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 a person be young at heart. It's called passed 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 and poop work marvelously. Uh So we ended up with a few gyms like the toilet Avalanche, the puke Avenge, and the poop Fusion. So many thanks and congratulations on all your success. That's Sierra Benton. Thanks a lot, Sierra Benton. That's a great email. I'm glad we could help you out. Keep your saying the poop fusion. That's pretty solid band name. Yeah yeah yeah, um yeah. We get a lot of email about how like we keep people saying during their everyday lives. Yeah, I'm glad, I'm but 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 dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email to stuff podcast. How Stuff Works dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my Heart Radios, at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or where ever you listen to your favorite shows.

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