Stuff You Should Know - How Ghosts Work

Episode Date: June 20, 2013

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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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See terms and learn more at discover.com slash online privacy protection. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from house.works.com Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this is Stuff You Should Know. Jerry's over there fiddling and futzing around. Halloween and dream.

Right. Remember when we had the horror fiction contest last year? Actually this may be July. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think the deadline for submissions was in July. It was weird to be in that kind of Halloween mindset while it was hot out. 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. Yeah. You talked me out of that. Yeah, it was a good contest. Yeah. 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? What do you think? Yeah, yeah. It's a good one. It's a good one. You guys will have to see in a few months what we're talking about. That's right. So Chuck, 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, no, I'm going to wait until 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. You ready? Yeah.

I feel like I should have music or something. Jerry? That could probably be done. Okay. So Athens, Georgia College, I would say, I don't remember the exact year, but it was probably 1994-ish. Okay. My best friend and I, Brett, had gone out and we're going back home

and driving through Five Points, you know, the area. Yes. 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 in Five Points that cuts you over to Alps Road. Okay. And people are going to be like, what is he talking about?

I know it's so much. Just, I'm talking to you here. And so there's this one area where you go around the road curves 90 degrees and then about, I'd say, 200 feet after that, there's a four-way stop sign. It's a very neighborhood-y area. I think that's like where Ray Goff used to live. He, well, Vince Dooley lives over there.

Okay. That might be what you're thinking. So, we go around this 90-degree curve and I'm looking, you know, I'm filming with the radio or something. And my buddy, Brett, starts, like, kind of joke screaming like, oh, what is that? But, kidding 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 100-year-old woman wearing a black robe with a purple sash diagonal 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. Okay. About chest 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 a hazy apparition. I mean, was solid and looked real, real, real. Oh, man. Dude, that was so freaky. We pulled right up on her to, you know, take that left. And we're both kind of joke screaming. But then as we get closer, we're like, you know, what's going on here?

But it all happened in like 15 seconds. So it wasn't a lot of time to register, you know, what is this? We were just sort of kidding around. 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 15, 20 miles an hour in this curve. He starts like, he can't drive a stick shift anymore because he's freaking out the cars like jerking and sputtering. He pulls over probably 50 feet later. We both turn around out the back window and there's nothing there. Wow. I'm getting, look, chill bumps. 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 Madame Tussauds wax dummy I've ever seen. It was also really fast. Someone ran and sat 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 recollection 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? It had gold leafing. I mean, I can't say it was a Bible because I didn't see the cover, but it had that gold leafing around. It looked like a Bible. So you both saw the same thing.

The 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. Yeah. 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. Sure. Both of you saw it. Even if you both were on something, that doesn't mean you're going to see the exact same thing. Yeah.

And I wasn't like some big ghost guy. I'd never had looked for them or say, oh, I believe in ghosts. It would just, out of nowhere, boom, there it happened. Right. Exactly. You can also go a little further. If you're a skeptic and say, well, I mean, Chuck and Brett, Brett just kind of were playing off on another's description

and they came to some unconsciously, came to an agreement of this. You guys compiled the story and you saw the same thing. Yeah, impossible. Who knows? That, however you approach that, probably depends on whether you're part of the 45% or the 48% of Americans who don't believe in ghosts

or who do believe in ghosts according to a 2009 CBS News poll. I had never given it much thought. But after that, I was definitely like, well, if that was a ghost, then I just saw one. Yeah. And I researched a little bit, but this was long ago before the internet was born. Yeah.

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 that had been killed there or anything. Nothing. No, I couldn't find anything. So that was just your own personal ghost? Maybe. Or just some creepy old woman who was still

and not blinking as a car barreled towards her. Right. Yeah. Either way, that is very unsettling. Either way. And that's a pretty good ghost story. It was a good one. It was not a mask.

I can say that for sure. We pulled up within feet of her. I looked in her face. And she didn't move a muscle? 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? Yeah. So that's my ghost story. That's a good ghost story. You can reach us on Facebook. Right. Is that it?

Yeah. It's time for message break. All right. Wait, Jerry. It's not really time for message break. Boy, she left pretty quick. So we're talking ghosts. And like I said, 48% of Americans believe in ghosts.

45% 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 say ounces. 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?

Right. 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. Yeah. But there's also a lot of factors in ghosts that accumulated, create this body of, you know, ghost belief.

Yeah. What are ghosts, ghostly sightings, hauntings, apparitions, all that stuff. Sure. That 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. Yeah. They have not been dispelled by science. Right.

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 is proving that ghosts don't exist because it kind of can't. Right. That's not to say that people aren't using the scientific method to study ghosts. Sure. Because some are.

What I had is up to these people, most of all. Yeah. So let's hug ghosts, man. All right. Well, I just described my encounter, which like I said, wasn't hazy or weird. Well, it was weird. It wasn't like a hazy apparition. Right.

But many times is an apparition. Sometimes it's lights. It seems to hit every cent. Sometimes it's a smell. Yeah. Like Tracy pointed out in this article, like the smell of deceased relatives favorite meal being cooked in the other room. Right.

Stuff like that. Like the smell of deceased relative. Just smelled something like rotting. But it was just a squirrel in the wall. Right, exactly. It can be a song. It can be flickering lights. It can be orbs in a picture.

We'll talk about that. Or a ghost in a picture. There's plenty of those. Hey, I got you. You've got to 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. 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 the fire? No, that's a good one. That's a real good one. There's a woman descending a staircase like a ghostly woman.

Very famous. Freddie Jackson, the World War II. Yeah. World War I pilot. Died. He was killed. Or mechanic. I'm sorry.

He was killed. And then he showed up in a group photo two days later. That one was explained as a double exposure. Which, I mean, just the coincidence behind it is in and of itself staggering. Yeah. If that is the explanation for it. Of course, it also could be a hoax, but it's a pretty good one. Freddie 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 1996, I think, and this guy dressed up like a cowboy. And, you know, had his picture made with his friend. And then in the background, you see this guy like kind of peeking up maybe behind a tombstone. Yeah. Just in the brush.

Yeah. And supposedly these things are verified by photo experts and stuff is having been untouched. Yeah. So, yeah, because Photoshop is making it way easier to screw with photography. Yeah. But it's also fairly easy to detect, too, if you really dig into the individual pixels. You can say, well, this is obviously to research. Yeah.

And especially these old photos, when they're examining negatives, it's not that those weren't photoshopped. Right. I mean, it could be light playing tricks. But when you see a girl standing by the rail, you know, with a fire behind her. That one was 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 programming, like us being hardwired to pick faces out of anything. I don't know, man. It looked pretty much like a girl did. It definitely does, doesn't it? Yeah. And then, of course, there's the funny things like the three men and a baby ghost. It was a cut out of Ted Danson. Yeah.

Or the Wizard of Oz, like hanging munchkin, which was like a bird. Although I have to say, since you bring it up, one of the greatest short, you know, I love short horror fiction. Of course. There was one of the greatest ones I've ever read was called The Hanging Man of Oz. Yeah. It's like, it's only just a few years old, but it's a good little short story. Really?

Yeah. I recommend that one. Yeah. This guy who like gets kind of caught up in like looking for it. It's good. Yeah. Good horror fiction. 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? No. It was shot obviously of a dock somewhere in Europe, I think, by the water. And it looks like a guy is 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.

Yeah. Stop asking questions. It was my dog. Someone posted it on our Facebook wall. But I mean, you bring up a, that's a really good. See what you want. Exactly. Yeah.

But again, we say you can't really prove that ghosts don't exist. So people are like, prove it. Right. It doesn't prove anything. Right. You know, 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. Right.

That doesn't muster. Yeah. So they, we've covered photos. Yeah. 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 the dead have suddenly appeared to a relative on the other side of the planet. Yeah. At the moment they died, like the relative wakes up the next day to find out that the person died at 1259 a.m. when they just saw them sitting in their room at that same time. Yeah. So sometimes they're, they're coming to say, hey, love you, see you in 15 years.

Right. Or they're coming to say, you're about to die. Right. That's another long standing legend. Yeah. Or they're about to say like, it's, it's a 1999, she saw your Yahoo stock now. Right. That'd be a good ghost.

Right. You know, there's a lot of stuff you can, you can say that people have attributed to ghosts and why they're here. There's also that horrible experience as their last moments. Yeah. They, they are at the point where they died too young or maybe have just gone back to their favorite place in life. Earthbound spirits I think is what paranormal investigators call those situations.

Yeah. Like they're stuck here or it's like, you know, get off my train type of situation. Right. They're guarding a place maybe. There's not one, but two ghost women at the hotel Del Coronado in San Diego, very famous late 19th century built hotel resort. And both of them took their own lives at the hotel when they found out they were pregnant on a wedlock or one was married, but her husband had 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 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 like old spooky Spanish, I guess the Coronado is probably one of those. There's one in, I believe Colorado. Overlook. They're the one they use for the overlooking.

No. It's, it's just like a plain old, like regular cool hotel, but it has like a stream running through the lobby. Oh, awesome. Yeah. Which is cool. In and of itself. I remember where I saw this, but it was like on some TV show where 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 remember the river. Yeah. He had his pants rolled up and yeah, flip-flops at the caviar.

He probably was awesome. Uh, that was the best I could 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, would be Goldberg, obviously there's many times hucksters trying to take advantage of people saying they can contact people, uh, put you in touch with your relatives that have passed. Yeah.

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 of 2006 is called is science afraid of ghosts certain by Deborah Bloom, right? And she basically points out that like we, we used to have psychical research societies

like William James, right, 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. When was this like the 19th century, the Victorian era? Right. Um, and so part of this investigation into the paranormal, um, was not just, it wasn't just approved 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, right? This ectoplasm is cheesecloth that they had like stuffed in their cheek, you know, um, and, and that was part of it. Over time, I think science has just kind of thrown out the whole thing, the baby with the bathwater. Yeah. 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? For food lovers, there's no place on earth like Mississippi where sweet, spicy and smoky flavors satisfy your spirits wherever you wander. Plan today and visit Mississippi.org slash dining, Mississippi wanderers, welcome. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take America's public enemy.

Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute, uh, 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course.

Yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of a tax. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty.

The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. What you call civil answer for. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the I heart radio app, apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

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. Right. Emily believes it is her grandfather. Yeah.

We, he had just passed away and, uh, the photograph, he was the biggest dog lover I've ever known. 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 was like, I got to take pictures of this and they start playing around like crazy. And then 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.

That's awesome. He's coming to visit. I didn't debunk that, but, uh, supposedly skeptics will say, uh, that it could be a camera flash, reflecting off the dust particles. Right. I use no flash. Oh, uh, water spots on the camera lens, bone dry, uh, defects in digital camera sensors. I guess it could be that although it was a new camera and it's never done that sense.

Right. Or, uh, printing errors, it was not printed or developed. Wow. So who knows? And I've got a great orb photo that I'll post of my dogs playing. Did you raise a really good question that like, I mean, what's the, what's the value of debunking that? I don't know.

Photo. It made Emily feel nice. Yeah. It still does. So why, I mean, what is the value? I mean, I guess we'll cover it later. Yeah. But there's just, uh, yeah, that question keeps coming up to me throughout the research in

this. Yeah. It's like it's not hurting anybody. Right. Um, so Chuck, uh, I guess a really good question, if we're going to talk about how ghosts 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 research is ghosts and

like that's part of their world, right? The prevailing idea is that they're made of energy of somehow. Okay. Uh, I can't remember which law of thermodynamics state that energy cannot be created nor destroyed. Right. Just transfer states. Yeah. 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. Sure. Um, midichlorians. What is that? This is the Star Wars. Oh, okay. That was how they explained the force.

Who are the midichlorians? 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's

like, Oh, why don't you go and do that? I got you. Yeah. I remember that now. Yeah. Um, other theories are that 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. Right. Which I find kind of an interesting explanation because think about it, ghosts can, they're frequently said to be able to travel through solid matter, right? Yeah. So if you're looking under the quantum level and you start looking at transistors, there's a big problem in early transistor development in that individual electrons can pass right through the wall of a transistor.

It's called quantum tunneling, right? And 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 we're able to perceive somehow. Right. 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. Because I mean, if people tend to perceive ghosts more than others, yeah. And that typically from studies has been shown to be people who believe in ghosts, right? Tend to see them more often or report hauntings. Why wouldn't they see them all the time?

Yeah. Like why wouldn't so 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 to a young thing. I can wrap my head around that. Like an energy force that was so strong that is now gone, still could be around. I'm trying to decide what part I'd lie in.

Do I believe in ghosts? I think so. 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 there were more, like you said, more apt to see a ghost. But he's had consistent results of specific places.

Yeah. I mean, like he applied the scientific method of researching ghosts and he documented what parts, what areas in a reportedly haunted place sightings were most frequently reported and basically found that like you could map out areas where sightings were. Right. Okay. So that's step one. And then step two, he had people who would encounter ghosts, describe their experiences

and he kind of compiled the data. Right. 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? How humid?

Let me measure the light. Let me measure the magnetic field. Right. What he found though, interestingly, was that 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 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 in Wiseman is a part of this kind of long, but very small, small, sparsely populated tradition of like paranormal researchers, like legitimate ones.

Yeah. Man, when I was a kid, I used to want to go to Duke and study paranormal or parapsychology there. Oh, really? Yeah. They had a parapsychology department. That's awesome. It was led by a guy named Joseph Rine who is another like legitimate parapsychological

researcher. You could have gotten a TV show on Science Jam. Yeah. Totally. UCLA used to have one from, I think, 69 to 78. Is Duke still around? No, they shut it down and I think the mid 80s, but it was around from like the 50s or 60s up to the 80s.

And it was well respected. William James was another researcher. As of the 90s, James Huron and Renny Lange are still doing research and writing books. Harry Price is a very famous one. Yeah. I think I've heard of him. Yeah. He was famous for investigating Borley Rectory, which was supposed to be like the most haunted

place in England. Oh, really? And now, if you want to get a degree in parapsychology, 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 parapsychology degree. I could see that. The Great Britain has a lot of ghostly activity and paranormal investigations and they're

into it over there. And Edinburgh is supposed to be the most haunted city in all of Europe. Oh, really? Yeah. A bunch of dissatisfied Scotsman roaming the bog. Right. So, we've kind of laid it out, right? Yeah.

I feel like we've laid it out. Like, we've got the... We all understand what ghosts are. I don't think we really said anything that people are like, oh, I didn't realize that it's what a ghost is. 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 that'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 labeled as crazy. But people hallucinate more than we generally understand they do. And specifically, grief is supposed to be able to trigger hallucinations pretty early, which would explain visitation like dead relative shortly after they die.

Totally. Yeah. 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're hallucinating spirits and things. Right. They think they're awake, but they're not. Right.

Yeah. And you're incapable of moving. Yeah. There's also the hypnagogic 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 am I awake, am I asleep, that I just hear something? Oh, yeah. Yeah, sure.

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 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 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, like that's a really good question, dude.

How can an area of a room be number one colder 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. If there's just a decrease in humidity, what causes the decrease in humidity that makes it feel colder? And they have found that areas that are supposedly haunted, well, I should say Richard Wiseman found in one place that was supposedly haunted, 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, 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.

Yeah. Yeah. That poor kid. 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. It's your central nervous system. Yeah. I just got chill bumps earlier. You know. You did. What about the electrical fields? That's a very common thing is for a paranormal investigator to measure magnetic field and

electrical fields in an area. They will say that this is kind of proof that there's some sort of presence there. Because the ghost busters emeter 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.

It's the one that Egon held up to. Yeah. I don't remember what it's called. We're going to get in trouble for that. Yeah. Sorry, guys. But sometimes these fields can cause wacky things happening with the brain, can cause hallucinations, can cause dizziness or other neurological symptoms.

And they're saying that might play into the fact that you think you have seen a ghost. Right. They're saying, investigators are saying, yeah, there actually is something different here with the area's electrical field. Right. Electromagnetic 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.

Yeah. It's hitting your angular gyrus. Right. That's a part of the brain that evidently if it's stimulated, you can get the sense that someone's behind you mimicking your movements. Yeah. Which is pretty creepy. We're all familiar with the transcranial magnetic stimulation, the thinking cap.

That's a cool episode. 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 the magnetic field messing with us, I guess, is that a lot of haunting activity is reported at night, supposedly. Right. That's scary. Right.

Exactly. That's number one. And number two, the magnetosphere, you know, the part of the Earth's atmosphere that protects us from the charged ions of solar wind. Right. The way that the Earth is arranged to the sun, the part that's in darkness has a larger part of the magnetosphere surrounding it. Okay.

More work toward that. See? So that might explain it then. Right. So. Looks like a spider. It does. Yeah, magnetic field activity going on in the darker side of Earth, so at night.

Right. That one could be a stretch. Yeah. I think my favorite explanation that I had not heard about is infrasound. I think that's pretty cool. This to me is it. Yeah. It's 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, it can cause a sense of dread and cracked, actually, one of our favorite websites that tested a concert, didn't they? Well, they reported on it. Oh, okay. There was a... Yeah, they don't do tests.

That's right. They report on tests. But yeah, there's a great cracked article on it and they're talking about in the fifties a guy named Vladimir Gavro, a robotics engineer, noticed that one of his lab assistants was bleeding from an ear. And traced it to this infrasound, I think it's like 7 to 19 hertz. And 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. 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 by Vic Tandy and Tony Lawrence that the same thing was going on there and they traced it back to a fan and then they modified the fan's 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 run out of because you just knew that there was 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. Yeah. Like I'm highly suggestible.

I got you. But isn't it strange to think that a sound that you can't hear, it was responsible for producing that, that like 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 room. Then potentially twitching your eye and causing hallucinations. Right. So this sound has been shown, NASA showed that 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 right appeared, your brain confuses and thinks 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. Psychological. Yeah. Psychological effects and visual hallucinations.

So, and the creation of a sense of dread. Yeah. That's, that's spooky. Yeah. I want to get an infrasound machine and just like play it around the office. Yeah. 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? No. He, he played, did he play it under the concert? Yeah. 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.

Yeah. Maybe because it was a Dr. John show. That's the first awful thing I could think of. Dr. John's great. I know. I knew you were going to say that. It really is. I mean like, you see that guy play two pianos at once.

Yeah. He's a legend. What am I talking about? We're thinking of maybe Dr. Hook in 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?

I know. Nickelback is out there? Yeah. It was a Nickelback show. There you go. Perfect. We can fix this in editing. Okay.

So what else? I think the last thing Tracy has here is that the National Science Board has 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. Right. That's kind of mean. That irked me because on the other end of the spectrum, you can definitely make the case that just poo-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 Skeptoid Brian Dunning, is that his name? His article. And I kind of appreciated his approach with this. Well, yeah. You know, maybe that means there's other cool ways to explain these things.

Right. Like, don't poo-poo 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 it wasn't. Or it wasn't. Right. Then you're pursuing, you're just, you're not pursuing any longer one way or another.

Yeah, yeah. And yeah, you're kind of shutting down these avenues that could be really interesting in eye-opening. I appreciated that. I appreciated his approach too because he's a huge skeptic, but he's not, he didn't take like a James Randi-esque glee or delight in destroying the illusions of idiots, you know? Yeah.

And I think that's his deal period as people, I think he gets accused of that often times 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 to things. I think he likes killing fun a little bit. Yeah, maybe a little bit. So that's ghosts. Yeah. Done.

Yeah. For now. Ooh. If you, if you want to learn more about ghosts and read a ghost story, first hand account of a ghost story from Tracy Wilson, you can type ghosts in the search bar at howstuffworks.com. It will bring up this article and nice that howstuffworks, so it's time for a message break. I'll bet.

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This is from a teacher. We always like reading these. 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. Awesome. Remember Space Camp? Yeah.

Great movie. Not really. I never saw the movie. I just remember. You didn't see Space Camp? No. Oh man, that was right in the wheelhouse. Yeah, it's still.

No? No. I think I'm a middle school teacher in Morgantown, North Carolina, recently relocated from Decatur, Georgia, where I worked at the brick store in Squash Boston. Jerry's old house. Okay. Every two years, our sixth and seventh grade students go on a trip to the Science Academy and we're a tiny school.

There's 24 kids in the entire middle school. Wow. Teachers frequently end up driving on field trips themselves. It's about a seven hour drive. And on the journey, we were plagued with traffic, rain, and carsickness. At about hour four, when tensions were high, I was white-knuckled and began questioning my career choice. And I said, screw it.

I'm going to 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 poignantly creating a podcast that appeals to all ages. It's a show of my thanks. I'd like to teach you a tried and true car game. Like your podcast only requires that a person be young at heart.

It's called pass around the ether rag. 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 too as well. Toilet, puke, and poop work marvelously. 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 our success. That is Sierra Benton.

Thanks a lot, Sierra Benton. That's a great email. I'm glad we could help you out. Keep you sane. The poop fusion. That's a pretty solid band name. Yeah. Yeah.

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