In creating this website, one of my aims is to link the paranormal and UFO / UAP phenomenon with scientific investigation, in an attempt to find a common link between these experiences.
We begin with an article from 2020 located on the physicsworld website:
Is anybody there – science and the supernatural
Taken from the October 2020 issue of Physics World.
Chris Holt considers the science behind the supernatural
(Courtesy: iStock/Moussa81)
“Ghosts don’t haunt us. That’s not how it works. They are present among us because we won’t let go of them.” M is for Malice by Sue Grafton
Vic Tandy – an engineer at Coventry University in the UK – once described how he worked for a medical-equipment manufacturer whose laboratory included a room that was believed to be haunted. Sure enough, when Tandy was holed up in that room late one night, he felt uneasy and uncomfortable, and kept seeing and hearing odd things. As it turns out, there was a faulty extraction fan in the room that made the air vibrate at 19 Hz. This sort of infrasound has been shown to produce a number of physiological effects, including breathlessness, shivering and feelings of fear. Scientists studying the effects of wind turbines and traffic noise near residences have found that low-frequency noise can cause disorientation, feelings of panic and other effects that could be associated with being “visited” by a ghost.
Despite many such examples of natural phenomena mistakenly being interpreted as ghosts, belief in them is widespread. At the last count, almost half the UK population believe a house can be haunted and 9% claim to have made contact with the dead, with believers often thinking that science is on their side. According to Albert Einstein, and the first law of thermodynamics, energy in the universe can neither be created nor destroyed – it merely changes from one form to another. When someone dies, so the argument goes, their energy must live on in some way. And this energy, according to believers of the supernatural, is converted into a ghost. As the website for US-based Tri County Paranormal investigations asks: “When we’re alive, we have electrical energy in our bodies. What happens, when we die, to the energy that was in our bodies, causing our heart to beat and making breathing possible?” Well the answer, of course, is that electrical energy stops flowing when you die, like switching off a light bulb; and the source of the electrical energy, our bodies, loses energy as heat and organic matter is transferred into the worms and bacteria that eat us, until there is nothing left.
Faraday was highly sceptical about ghosts, spirits and so-called psychic phenomena, and devised experiments to discredit these hypotheses
In the 19th century most people believed in the supernatural. Michael Faraday, however, was highly sceptical about ghosts, spirits and so-called psychic phenomena, and devised experiments to discredit these hypotheses. A popular “supernatural phenomenon” was table moving or table rotation, in which a group of people stand around a small circular table and place their hands flat on the table surface. After a while the table starts to move due, it is believed, to the life force in the table. The sceptical Faraday constructed a table with two surfaces separated with ball bearings and held together with rubber bands. If spirits were indeed responsible for the movement, and people’s hands were simply following, then the top surface should lag behind the lower one. In fact, the opposite was observed. The upper surface moved first followed by the lower one, indicating, pretty conclusively, that the participants were unconsciously pushing the table. When the sitters were shown the result and the experiment was repeated, no movement was observed.
Read More – Is anybody there – science and the supernatural
Now we move onto an article from ScienceNewsExplores originally published in 2019.
The science of ghosts
Here’s what may explain why some people see, hear or feel a spooky presence
People love scary, spooky stories of spectral phantoms. While there’s no science to support the existence of ghosts, research does provide plenty of explanations for why we might genuinely sense a supernatural presence.
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A shadowy figure rushed through the door. “It had a skeletal body, surrounded by a white, blurry aura,” recalls Dom. The figure hovered and didn’t seem to have a face. Dom, who prefers to use only his first name, had been fast asleep. Just 15 at the time, he panicked and closed his eyes. “I only saw it for a second,” he recalls. Now, he’s a young adult who lives in the United Kingdom. But he still remembers the experience vividly.
Was the figure a ghost? In the mythology of the United States and many other Western cultures, a ghost or spirit is a dead person who interacts with the living world. In stories, a ghost may whisper or groan, cause things to move or fall, mess with electronics — even appear as a shadowy, blurry or see-through figure.
“I’d been hearing noises on the ceiling at the same time each night,” says Clare Llewellyn-Bailey, who is now a student at the University of South Wales. One night, a big thud prompted her to grab her camera. This was the first picture she took. Other photos she took on that and later nights showed nothing unusual. Does this story make it seem like ghosts exist? Or is the glowing figure a flash of light that the camera accidentally captured? Clare Llewellyn-Bailey.
Ghost stories are lots of fun, especially on Halloween. But some people believe that ghosts are real. Chapman University in Orange, Calif., runs a yearly survey that asks people in the United States about their beliefs in the paranormal. In 2018, 58 percent of those polled agreed with the statement, “Places can be haunted by spirits.” And almost one in five people from the United States said in another survey, conducted by the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C., that they’ve seen or been in the presence of a ghost.
On ghost-hunting TV shows, people use scientific equipment to attempt to record or measure spirit activity. And numerous creepy photos and videos make it seem like ghosts exist. However, none of these offer good evidence of ghosts. Some are hoaxes, created to fool people. The rest only prove that equipment sometimes can capture noise, images or other signals that people don’t expect. Ghosts are the least likely of many possible explanations.
Read More – The science of ghosts
Now an article from quickanddirtytips.com from 2018
6 Possible Scientific Reasons for Ghosts
Many people believe in ghosts, but could there be scientific explanations for some of our paranormal experiences?
If you believe in ghosts, you are far from alone. Around 45% of Americans opens in a new windowbelieve in ghosts and as many as 18% of people will go so far as to say they have had opens in a new windowcontact with a ghost. I will also admit to spooking myself out on occasion when my dog has refused to stop barking at what appears to be an empty corner of the house.
But what makes us feel like we are in the presence of a supernatural spirit? Are there possible scientific explanations for that tingling sensation you get on the back of your neck, or the sudden feeling of uneasiness with an origin you can’t quite place? Let’s investigate six possible explanations for that paranormal feeling that are rooted in science rather than the supernatural.
6 Possible Scientific Reasons for Ghosts
- Low frequency sound
- Mold
- Carbon monoxide
- The power of suggestion
- Drafts
- We enjoy being afraid
Here they are in more detail.
- 1. Low frequency sound
Just as the human eye can only see light at a range of frequencies—for example, we can’t see radio waves—the human ear can only hear sounds in a range of frequencies. Above ~20,000 Hertz, sounds are too high pitched for our ears to parse them, like the echolocation calls of most bats that fall in this ultrasonic range.
Similarly, human ears have trouble hearing low-frequency sounds below ~20 Hertz—known as infrasound—but such sounds do not go totally unnoticed. In a 2003 study, 22% of opens in a new windowconcert goers who were exposed to sounds at 17 Hertz reported feeling uneasy or sorrowful, getting chills, or “nervous feelings of revulsion and fear.”
So what are some of the more ordinary origins of such low frequency sounds? Weather events like earthquakes and volcanic activity or lightning, and communication between animals including elephants, whales, and hippos can all produce infrasound. And if you don’t live by any volcanoes or hippos but still think your house may be haunted? Humans also create low frequency sound via diesel engines, wind turbines, and some loud speakers or chemical explosions.
2. Mold
Breathing in toxic mold can be bad for your respiratory system, but it can also be bad for your brain. Exposure to mold is known to cause neurologic symptoms like opens in a new windowdelirium, dementia, or irrational fears. So is it a coincidence that the houses we suspect are haunted also tend to be in disrepair and so quite possibly full of toxic mold? Scientists have worked to draw a firm link between the presence of mold and reported ghost sightings, but so far the evidence is mostly anecdotal.
3. Carbon monoxide
Just as breathing in mold could lead us to see, hear, and feel things that aren’t really there, so too can breathing in too much carbon monoxide. We have carbon monoxide detectors in our homes to make sure we are not breathing in this odorless, colorless gas that slowly poisons us while going undetected by our senses.
But before a carbon monoxide gas leak poisons us, it can cause auditory hallucinations, a feeling of pressure on your chest, and an “opens in a new windowunexplained feeling of dread.” An often-told opens in a new windowghost story from the 1920s about the H family who moved into a new house only to hear footsteps, see apparitions, and feel malicious paranormal presences, turned out to be the result of carbon monoxide poisoning from a broken furnace.
Read More – 6 Possible Scientific Reasons for Ghosts
On a personal level, i continue to keep an open mind on all things related to the paranormal.