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“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
— Shirley Jackson, “The Haunting of Hill House,” 1959
Of all the paranormal phenomena that surround Halloween, the haunted house may be the last to inspire real fear. Witches? Haven’t been scary since the days of Salem. Zombies? Fun makeup, sure, but a bit campy. Vampires? Blame sparkly Robert Pattinson for taking the bite out of those bloodsuckers.
But the haunted house can send chills up the spine of the staunchest nonbeliever. Ghost stories tend to happen to the unsuspecting; who’s to say they might not happen to you? They’re also passed around by word of mouth, often by seemingly trustworthy sources. Nowadays, the Internet expands this oral tradition to almost anyone: Witness the website Jezebel’s annual spooky stories contest (and then try to sleep soundly tonight).
Science, of course, counsels skepticism toward the idea of spirits and spooks. So if real ghosts aren’t to blame for things that go bump, what might be? Though researchers have investigated culprits like electromagnetic fields and infrasound below the range of human hearing, the ultimate source of hauntings may just be that 3-lb. organ between the ears. [10 Ghost Stories That Will Haunt You for Life]
Seeking ghosts in sound
One plausible explanation for haunted houses is that people are responding to something in the environment — but that the “something” is far more mundane than restless spirits.
A possible culprit is infrasound, or sounds just below the typical human hearing threshold of 20 hertz. In 1998, Vic Tandy, a researcher at Coventry University in England, joined with fellow Coventry professor Tony Lawrence to write a paper based on Tandy’s own spooky experiences at a medical equipment manufacturing shop. On occasion, employees reported spooky sensations and the feeling of a presence in the room; Tandy dismissed all of this until one night when he began to feel cold and gloomy. After checking that none of the medical gas bottles were leaking, he sat back at his desk, only to see a gray figure emerge in the corner of his vision. When he summoned the courage to look at the apparition directly, it faded away. [Infographic: Belief in the Paranormal]
A subsequent experience while cutting metal led Tandy to wonder if sound energy was causing his and his colleagues’ inexplicable experiences. After a particular fan in the building was switched off, the “ghosts” disappeared, the researchers wrote in 1998 in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research.
Proving this notion has been more difficult. Lots of things create infrasound, from the wind gusts of air conditioners to earthquakes. In one experiment, researchers used hidden infrasound generators during ghost tours given at Mary King’s Close in Edinburgh, United Kingdom. The close is now underground, but in the 1600s, it was a series of narrow alleyways and passages through tall buildings; local legend tells of plague victims bricked into the walls. During a city ghost festival in 2007, some unsuspecting tour groups were blasted with infrasound as they roamed these creepy passageways. [10 of the Spookiest Haunted Houses in America]
Read More – Science of the Paranormal: Can You Trust Your Own Mind?
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