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