Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Don Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and it's the stuff you
Speaker 1: should know. Jerry's over there fiddling and fuxing around Halloween
Speaker 1: and June. Right, remember when we had the horror fiction
Speaker 1: contest last year? Actually this maybe July? Um, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and we I think that the the deadline for submissions
Speaker 1: was in July. It was weird to be in that
Speaker 1: kind of hallowing mindset while it was hot out. But yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure it was weird to ask the authors
Speaker 1: are not to ask, but to have them get in
Speaker 1: that mindset to write something creepy. We definitely didn't command
Speaker 1: you talked me out of that. Yeah. That was a
Speaker 1: good contest. Yeah, also known as the Contest that Will
Speaker 1: Shall Never Happen again. Well, we also ended up with
Speaker 1: the one that we're going to read this year, right,
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, yeah, that's a good one. It is
Speaker 1: a good one. Uh, you guys will have to see
Speaker 1: in a few months what we're talking about's right, So, Chuck, Um,
Speaker 1: I myself have never officially seen a ghost, but I
Speaker 1: understand you have a ghost story. I do. I remarked
Speaker 1: about it and I said, I'm gonna wait till we
Speaker 1: do our ghost podcast. Well here we are. Pal is
Speaker 1: this it? Should I go? Now? Yeah? Okay, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying this is a ghost. What I'm saying is one
Speaker 1: night I saw something very very very strange that I
Speaker 1: cannot explain. Okay, okay, are you ready? I feel like
Speaker 1: should have music or something Jerry that could probably be done.
Speaker 1: Um So Athens Georgia College, I would say, I don't
Speaker 1: remember the exact year, but it was probably my best
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: just I'm talking to you here. Uh. And so there's
Speaker 1: this one area where you go around a road curves
Speaker 1: ninety degrees and then about i'd say two hundred feet
Speaker 1: after that there's a four way stop sign. It's very
Speaker 1: NEIGHBORHOODI area. I think that's like where Ray Golf used
Speaker 1: to live. He Vince Duley lives over there. That might
Speaker 1: be what you're thinking. So we go around this ninety
Speaker 1: degree curve and I'm looking, you know, I'm filling with
Speaker 1: the radio or something, and my buddy Brett starts, uh
Speaker 1: 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's so freaky.
Speaker 1: We pull right up on her to you know, take
Speaker 1: that left, and we're both kind of jokes screaming, but
Speaker 1: then as we get closer, we're like, you know, what's
Speaker 1: 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 one
Speaker 1: probably an hour in this curve. He starts like he
Speaker 1: can't drive a 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 Madame Tusso's wax dummy,
Speaker 1: I've ever seen someone ran and set out there and
Speaker 1: we didn't see it, and then ran and took it away.
Speaker 1: I'm not offering any explanation, not saying it was a ghost,
Speaker 1: but I have no recollect or explanation for what it
Speaker 1: could have been. And it was creepiest, weirdest thing I've
Speaker 1: ever seen. And we both described it to each other immediately,
Speaker 1: like what did you see? What did you see? Had
Speaker 1: gold leafing? I mean, I can't say it was a
Speaker 1: Bible because I didn't see the cover, but it, you know,
Speaker 1: that gold leafing around it look 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, that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: you're going to 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
Speaker 1: ghosts that would just out of nowhere of boom, there
Speaker 1: had happened, right exactly. Um. You can also go a
Speaker 1: little further if you're a skeptic and say, well, I
Speaker 1: mean Chuck and Brett Brett just kind of we're playing
Speaker 1: off on another description and they came to some unconsciously
Speaker 1: came to an agreement of this. You guys compiled the
Speaker 1: story and you saw the same thing. Who knows that
Speaker 1: however you approach that probably depends on whether you're part
Speaker 1: of the or percent of Americans who don't believe in
Speaker 1: ghosts or who do believe in ghosts. According to a
Speaker 1: two thousand nine CBS News poll, I had never given
Speaker 1: it much thought, but after that I was I was
Speaker 1: definitely like, well, that was a ghost and I just
Speaker 1: saw one. Yeah, And I researched a little bit, but
Speaker 1: this was long ago before the Internet was born, and
Speaker 1: so I couldn't find anything. And even look yesterday just
Speaker 1: to see if I could find out anything, if there
Speaker 1: was some sightings or some old lady that have been
Speaker 1: killed or anything and nothing. Now, I couldn't find anything.
Speaker 1: So that was just your own personal ghost maybe, or
Speaker 1: just some creepy old woman who was still in not
Speaker 1: blinking as a car barrel towards her. Either way, that
Speaker 1: is very unsettling either way. Um, And that's a pretty
Speaker 1: good ghost story. It was a good one. It was
Speaker 1: not a mask, you know, I can say that for sure.
Speaker 1: Like we pulled up within feet of her, Like I
Speaker 1: looked in her face and she and she didn't move
Speaker 1: a must didn't move a muscle man. That's it was
Speaker 1: the scariest thing that's ever happened to me. And we
Speaker 1: told that story many many times over the years, and
Speaker 1: everyone's always like really, and I always say, I swear,
Speaker 1: why would I make this up? So that's my ghost story.
Speaker 1: That's a good ghost story. You can reach us on Facebook. Right,
Speaker 1: it's time for message break. All right? Wait, wait, Jerry,
Speaker 1: it's not really kind for message break. What she left
Speaker 1: pretty quick. So we're talking ghosts. And like I said,
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, right,
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, apparations,
Speaker 1: all that stuff that um kind of over time have
Speaker 1: taken on a life of their own or I should say,
Speaker 1: have been around for thousands and thousands of years, um,
Speaker 1: and have not been dispelled by science. Um. So we're
Speaker 1: going to kind of approach this from like, you know,
Speaker 1: here's what people believe ghosts are, and here's some scientific
Speaker 1: explanations for it. But throughout this you will notice that
Speaker 1: at no point are we ever going to say conclusively
Speaker 1: science has proven that ghosts don't exist, because it kind
Speaker 1: of can't. That's not to say that people aren't using
Speaker 1: the scientific method to study ghosts, because some are, and
Speaker 1: my hat is off to these people most of all.
Speaker 1: So let's up ghosts man. All right, Well, I just
Speaker 1: described my encounter, which, like I said, wasn't hazy or weird. Um,
Speaker 1: well it's 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 since. 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: scuirrel in the wall. Can be a song, can be
Speaker 1: flickering lights, can be orbs in a picture. We'll talk
Speaker 1: about that, or a ghost in a picture. Like there's
Speaker 1: plenty of those. Hey, I got you got a Google.
Speaker 1: It's pretty fun to look at those. Yeah, and there's
Speaker 1: some that are like this one's not quite explained to
Speaker 1: my full satisfaction. Yeah, some of the If you look
Speaker 1: up famous ghost pictures, there's a handful that have made
Speaker 1: the rounds over the years that are pretty good, like
Speaker 1: the Lady of Brown on Hall. I believe is that
Speaker 1: the girl with the 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 for of course, it also
Speaker 1: could be a hoax. But it's a pretty good on.
Speaker 1: Freddie 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 did,
Speaker 1: like kind of peeking up maybe behind a tombstone. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: just in the brush. Yeah. And supposedly they say are
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: the fire behind her, that one was explained as the
Speaker 1: girl in the fire. Yeah, that one was explained as
Speaker 1: a just a sheer chance mixture of smoke and light.
Speaker 1: And then our um programming, like us being hardwired to
Speaker 1: pick faces out of anything. I don't know, man, this
Speaker 1: looked pretty much like it definitely does then it yeah, um.
Speaker 1: And then of course there's the funny things like the
Speaker 1: three men and a baby ghost cut out of that
Speaker 1: dancing or the Wizard of Oz like Hanging Munchkin, which was,
Speaker 1: although I have to say, since you bring it up,
Speaker 1: one of the greatest short you know, I love short
Speaker 1: horror fiction. Of course they were one of the greatest
Speaker 1: um ones I've ever read. Was called The Hanging Man
Speaker 1: of Oz. It's like, um, it was. It's only just
Speaker 1: a few years old, but it's a good little short story. Really. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this guy who like gets kind of caught up in
Speaker 1: like looking for it. It's good, yeah, good horror fiction. Um,
Speaker 1: this doesn't have to do with ghosts. But supposedly there's
Speaker 1: a murder captured on Google Earth. Have you seen that
Speaker 1: making the rounds. It's an aerial shot obviously of a
Speaker 1: dock somewhere in Europe, I think, by the water, and
Speaker 1: it looks like a guys like dragging a dead body
Speaker 1: in a big pool of blood towards the water. But they,
Speaker 1: I think they've debunked that it was a dog who
Speaker 1: had shaken off and gotten the ground wet, and people
Speaker 1: verified later like yeah, that was me and my dog,
Speaker 1: and yeah, stop asking questions because my dog, someone posted
Speaker 1: on our Facebook call. But I mean you bring up
Speaker 1: a that's that's a really good like you see what
Speaker 1: you want exactly. Um. But again we say, you can't
Speaker 1: really prove that ghost don't exists. So people are like,
Speaker 1: prove it. It doesn't prove anything, you know. Um, if
Speaker 1: you can prove that a photograph has been faked, then
Speaker 1: you've proven it's been faked. But you can't just look
Speaker 1: in and be like, oh, I'm sure it's a fake
Speaker 1: that doesn't muster. Yeah, so they we we've covered photos
Speaker 1: they show up in photos. Well why are they here?
Speaker 1: I mean there's a lot of explanations, like they're delivering
Speaker 1: bad news or good news, right. Yeah. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of ghost stories where, um, the dead have suddenly appeared
Speaker 1: to a relative on the other side of the planet
Speaker 1: at the moment they died. Like the relative wakes up
Speaker 1: the next day to find out that the person died
Speaker 1: at twelve fifty nine am when they just saw them
Speaker 1: sitting in their room at the same time. So sometimes
Speaker 1: they're they're coming to say, hey, I love you, see
Speaker 1: you in fifteen years um. Or they're coming to say
Speaker 1: you're about to die, that's another long standing legend. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or they're about to say like, um, it's it's a
Speaker 1: should sell your Yahoo stock now, that'd be a good
Speaker 1: ghost right. Um. You know, there's a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: you can you can say that people have attributed to
Speaker 1: ghosts and why they're here. Um, there's also that horrible
Speaker 1: um experience as their last moments. Yeah, they they are
Speaker 1: at the point where they died too young or uh,
Speaker 1: maybe have just gone back to their favorite place in life. Um.
Speaker 1: Earthbound spirits, I think is what paranormal investigators call those situations.
Speaker 1: Like they're stuck here or it's like, you know, get
Speaker 1: off my train type of situation. They're guarding a place.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's not one, but to um ghost two women
Speaker 1: at the Hotel del del Coronado and San Diego, very
Speaker 1: famous late nineteenth century built hotels. UM, and both of
Speaker 1: them took their own lives at the hotel when they
Speaker 1: found out they were pregnant out of wedlock. Or one
Speaker 1: was married but her husband and left her, and so
Speaker 1: they're in two different rooms still. But that's an example
Speaker 1: of a ghost being tied to a place. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: UM we have an article on the site about haunted hotels.
Speaker 1: That a lot of hotels and all around the world,
Speaker 1: but especially in places like New Orleans and um like
Speaker 1: old spooky Spanish. I guess the Coronado is probably one
Speaker 1: of those. There's one, and I believe Colorado or the
Speaker 1: one they used for the overlooking No. Um. It's it's
Speaker 1: just like a plain o like regular cool hotel, but
Speaker 1: it has like a stream running through the lobby. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is cool in and of itself. And I don't
Speaker 1: remember where I saw this, but um, it was like
Speaker 1: on some TV show or this it's like a super
Speaker 1: Haunted Hotel supposedly the ghost waiter is it. I don't
Speaker 1: I don't remember, I don't wait for the river. Yeah
Speaker 1: he had his pants rolled up and yeah the caviary
Speaker 1: pop is awesome. Uh, that was the best th of
Speaker 1: muster right then, I'm sorry. Um. And you know, there
Speaker 1: are mediums out there who uh you know, if you
Speaker 1: saw the movie Ghost Whoopy Goldberg. Obviously there's many times
Speaker 1: hucksters trying to take advantage of people saying they can
Speaker 1: contact people, put you in touch with your relatives that
Speaker 1: have passed. Um, but I'm sure they're very There are
Speaker 1: a lot of mediums who really believe what they're doing
Speaker 1: is for real, you know. Yeah, And what's what's kind
Speaker 1: of ironic is um, there's this really great article, it's
Speaker 1: just a little quick editorial actually from the Los Angeles
Speaker 1: Times in two thousand and six, is called is Science
Speaker 1: Afraid of Ghosts? Is written by Deborah bloom right, and
Speaker 1: she basically points out that like we we used to
Speaker 1: have psychical research societies like William James, effectively the founder
Speaker 1: of psychology, like investigated the paranormal as well and conducted
Speaker 1: like extensive real scientific experiments and along the way debunked
Speaker 1: a lot of mediums, like the nineteenth century, the Victorian era. UM.
Speaker 1: And so part of this investigation into the paranormal um
Speaker 1: was not just it wasn't just to prove that ghosts existed.
Speaker 1: It was just to understand the paranormal in its own terms.
Speaker 1: And along the way, say this person is a fraud,
Speaker 1: this person is a huckster. This ectoplasm is cheesecloth that
Speaker 1: they had like stuffed in their cheek, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: And and that was part of it. And over time,
Speaker 1: I think science has just kind of thrown out the
Speaker 1: whole thing, the baby with the bathwater, and now it's
Speaker 1: just up to uh, kind of the more mean spirited
Speaker 1: section of the skeptical world to just go after and debunk.
Speaker 1: There's nobody looking for their very you people looking to
Speaker 1: prove or disprove the existence of ghosts. It's more just
Speaker 1: like this 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 her 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, 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 in Emily, it's 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 thus particles I use, no flash, water
Speaker 1: spots on the camera lens, bone dry uh defects, and
Speaker 1: digital camera sensors. I guess it could be that although
Speaker 1: it was a new camera and it's never done that
Speaker 1: 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, and 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 why,
Speaker 1: I mean, what is the value? I mean? I guess
Speaker 1: we'll cover it later. Yeah, but there's this uh yeah,
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 I
Speaker 1: can't remember which. A lot of thermodynamics state that energy
Speaker 1: cannot be created or destroyed, just transfers states. That would
Speaker 1: be a pretty good understanding of what ghosts are if
Speaker 1: they are real. So a life force that had passed
Speaker 1: from a live person is now a different kind of
Speaker 1: energy exactly, um medichlorians, what is that? This is the
Speaker 1: Star Wars. That is how they explained the force. Who
Speaker 1: are the medic Chlorians? I don't remember. It was very disappointing,
Speaker 1: though it sounds really familiar, was it from the newer three? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was how they explained. Basically, they explained what the
Speaker 1: force was, and everyone's like, oh, why don't you go
Speaker 1: and do that? I got you, I remember that now. Um.
Speaker 1: Other theories are that um, if they are some sort
Speaker 1: of energy, they could also be some form of matter.
Speaker 1: So maybe they're made of some sort of quantum particles
Speaker 1: or an arrangement of quantum particles, which I find kind
Speaker 1: of an interesting explanation because think about it, ghosts can
Speaker 1: are They're frequently said to be able to travel through
Speaker 1: solid matter. Right. Well, if you go down to the
Speaker 1: quantum level and you start looking at transistors, there's a
Speaker 1: big problem in early transistor development and that individual electrons
Speaker 1: can pass right through the wall of a transistor. It's
Speaker 1: called quantum tunneling, and um, they had to figure out
Speaker 1: how to use crystals to kind of block electrons in
Speaker 1: to make them flow the way you wanted, rather than
Speaker 1: just be like, oh, I'm over here now. So some
Speaker 1: people say, well, maybe these are some sort of quantum
Speaker 1: particles or an arrangement of quantum particles that were able
Speaker 1: to perceive somehow. And then the question I would have
Speaker 1: is is there a consistent explanation on why some people
Speaker 1: might become a ghost and some others not? And the
Speaker 1: answer is no, or are they everywhere and some you
Speaker 1: just have a stronger energy force or something? Who knows? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Because I mean if if people tend to perceive ghosts
Speaker 1: more than others, and that typically from studies, has been
Speaker 1: shown to be people who believe in ghosts tend to
Speaker 1: see them more often report hauntings, Um, why wouldn't they
Speaker 1: see them all the time? Yeah, Like why wouldn't so? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would indicate that there is something about an individual
Speaker 1: person that would make them become a ghost. So many questions. Well,
Speaker 1: the whole unfinished business like it died to a young thing.
Speaker 1: I can wrap my head around that, Like an energy
Speaker 1: force that was so strong that has now gone still
Speaker 1: could be around. Um, I'm trying to decide what part
Speaker 1: I'd lie in. Do I believe in ghosts? I think so.
Speaker 1: So There's a dude named Richard Wiseman of a University
Speaker 1: of Hertfordshire and He's done a lot of research in
Speaker 1: gb Great Britain, and he has found some pretty consistent
Speaker 1: results that people have generally reported the same things in
Speaker 1: the same places, even if they didn't know there was
Speaker 1: any ghost activity there, even if they did or didn't believe. Actually,
Speaker 1: if they did believe, they were more, like you said,
Speaker 1: more apt to see a ghost. But he had consistent
Speaker 1: results of specific places. Yeah, I mean like he applied
Speaker 1: the scientific method to researching ghosts, and he he documented what,
Speaker 1: what parts, what areas in a reportedly haunted place sightings
Speaker 1: were most frequently reported. Basically found that like you could,
Speaker 1: you could map out areas where sightings were Okay, so
Speaker 1: that's step one, and then step two. We had people
Speaker 1: who who encountered ghosts described their experiences, and he kind
Speaker 1: of compiled the data. Then he went back to see
Speaker 1: what other commonalities there were for an area, like physical
Speaker 1: conditions there, like how cold is it, is it humid?
Speaker 1: Um Let me measure the light, let me measure the
Speaker 1: magnetic field. Right. What he found, though, interestingly, was that
Speaker 1: um there were specific areas where people who had no
Speaker 1: understanding of the history of the place they were seeing
Speaker 1: or had heard that the area was haunted had reported
Speaker 1: seeing something. So there was something to a specific area
Speaker 1: being quote haunted, and people who didn't necessarily believe in
Speaker 1: ghosts or didn't know that the place was supposed to
Speaker 1: be haunted had reported not only that they had seen
Speaker 1: a sighting or something in this building, but in the
Speaker 1: specific area of this building. Yeah, what does that mean?
Speaker 1: It's a consistent study, right, So, and Wiseman is a
Speaker 1: part of this kind of long but very um small,
Speaker 1: smally sparsely populated um tradition of like paranormal researchers, like
Speaker 1: legitimate ones. I could get into that. Man. When I
Speaker 1: was a kid, I used to want to go to
Speaker 1: Duke and study paranormal or para psychology there. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: had a para psychology department. It was led by a
Speaker 1: guy named Joseph Ryan, who was another like legitimate para
Speaker 1: psychological researcher. Um. You could have gotten a TV show
Speaker 1: on the Science Change, Yeah, totally. U c l A
Speaker 1: used to have one from I think now they shut
Speaker 1: it down and I think the mid eighties, but it
Speaker 1: was around from like the fifties or sixties up to
Speaker 1: the eighties and it was well respected. Um. William James
Speaker 1: was another researcher. Uh as of the nineties, James Huron
Speaker 1: 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 really 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
Speaker 1: out like we've got them. We all understand what ghosts.
Speaker 1: I don't think we really said anything that people are like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, 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 Stracy points out, I
Speaker 1: mean there are so many explanations. There's such a wide
Speaker 1: range from this person just hallucinated something, right, and I
Speaker 1: want to stay with that. Specifically, we're starting to understand
Speaker 1: that hallucinations are way more common than anybody has admitted
Speaker 1: for a very long time because we are afraid of
Speaker 1: being put away or label is crazy. But people hallucinate
Speaker 1: more than we generally understand they do. And specifically, grief
Speaker 1: is supposed to be able to trigger hallucinations pretty really,
Speaker 1: which would explain visitation dead relatives shortly after they die. 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 it's a sort of
Speaker 1: trance that supposedly you can hallucinate. Yeah, I've had that
Speaker 1: happened before, like a my wake, am I sleep that
Speaker 1: it is here? 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 in the wind blew it,
Speaker 1: or the door shut because there was a draft where
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 and
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. And what about an area of a room?
Speaker 1: Though I don't know, I mean, I I like, that's
Speaker 1: that's a really good question, dude. How can an area
Speaker 1: of a room be number one colder if if there
Speaker 1: isn't a draft, if it's not a draft, it's just
Speaker 1: 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, although
Speaker 1: supposedly ghost hunters can measure changes in temperature in a
Speaker 1: room and that means the ghost is present, Or if
Speaker 1: it's just the sensation of a chill running through your
Speaker 1: body and it's not actually thermal, it's psychological. Yeah, your
Speaker 1: your 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 paranormal investigator to
Speaker 1: 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. I 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,
Speaker 1: sorry guys. Um, But sometimes, um, these fields can cause
Speaker 1: wacky things happening with the brain, can cause hallucinations, can
Speaker 1: cause dizziness or other neurological symptoms. And they're saying that
Speaker 1: might play into it, the fact that you think you
Speaker 1: have seen a ghost right there, they're saying. Investigators are saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: there actually is something different here with the the area's
Speaker 1: 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 is
Speaker 1: behind you mimicking your movements, 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 magnetic field messing with us,
Speaker 1: I guess is that a lot of haunting activity is
Speaker 1: reported at night, supposedly UM, right exactly. That's that's number one.
Speaker 1: But number two. The magnetosphere, you know, the the the
Speaker 1: part of the Earth's atmosphere that protects us from the
Speaker 1: charged ions of solar wind, the way that the Earth
Speaker 1: is arranged to the Sun, the part that's in darkness.
Speaker 1: UM has a larger part of the magnetosphere surrounding it,
Speaker 1: more warped towards that. So that might explain it then, right,
Speaker 1: so it looks like a spider, it does. But there's
Speaker 1: a lot more UM magnetic field activity going on in
Speaker 1: the darker side of Earth. So at night that one
Speaker 1: could be a stretch. Yeah. I think my favorite UM
Speaker 1: explanation that I had not heard about is infrasound. I
Speaker 1: think that's pretty cool. This to me, is it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's um low frequency sound waves that you cannot hear.
Speaker 1: You know, with your naked ear, you won't notice it,
Speaker 1: but it can cause your eyes to vibrate, It can
Speaker 1: cause you to see things, You can cause a sense
Speaker 1: of dread. UM and cracked. Actually, one of our favorite
Speaker 1: websites that a test at a concert. Didn't they Well,
Speaker 1: they reported on it. There's a they don't do test,
Speaker 1: that's right, they report on tests. But yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: great correct article on it. UM and they're talking about
Speaker 1: In the fifties, a guy named Vladismir Vladimir Gavreaux, robotics engineer,
Speaker 1: noticed that like one of his lab assistants was bleeding
Speaker 1: from an ear and traced it to UM. To this infrasound,
Speaker 1: I think it's like seven to nineteen hurts and UM.
Speaker 1: You can't hear it, like you don't realize you're hearing sound,
Speaker 1: but you're reacting to it. And like you said, it
Speaker 1: causes all sorts of like weird psychological effects like a
Speaker 1: sense 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 that, like, surely you've been in a
Speaker 1: room before that you just had to turn around and
Speaker 1: run out of it because you just knew that there's
Speaker 1: somebody else in there with you. You have, I have
Speaker 1: plenty of times, But I think it's like I've been
Speaker 1: 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 the 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
Speaker 1: room and potentially twitching your eye 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 hallucinations yea, psychological effects and visual hallucinations. So
Speaker 1: and the creation of a sense of dread. That's yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to get an infrasound machine. It's just like
Speaker 1: played around the office. You know, there may already be
Speaker 1: one here. Well, I don't even think we said what
Speaker 1: the guy did though at the concert? Did we know
Speaker 1: he played did he play it? Under the concert and
Speaker 1: people were freaking out? Yeah? I think like a quarter
Speaker 1: of the people at the concert reported feeling like horrible
Speaker 1: dread and like some nausea. Um, maybe because it was
Speaker 1: a doctor John show. That's the first awful thing I
Speaker 1: could think of Dr John's Crest. I know, I knew
Speaker 1: you were gonna say that. It really I mean, like
Speaker 1: you sued to see that guy played two pianos at once. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he's he's a legend. What am I talking about?
Speaker 1: You're thinking of? Um, maybe Dr hook and the Medicine Show.
Speaker 1: No Dr Demento. I was trying to think of the
Speaker 1: worst band I could think of, and that's the first
Speaker 1: thing that came to my mind. That's who you thought of.
Speaker 1: Nickelback is out there, Yeah, it was a Nickelback show.
Speaker 1: We can fix this in editing, okay. Um, so what else?
Speaker 1: I think? The last thing Tracy has here is that, um,
Speaker 1: the National Science Board is actually come out and said
Speaker 1: that if you believe in paranormal it can be dangerous
Speaker 1: because that means you have reduced critical thinking skills and
Speaker 1: can't 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 poo poo
Speaker 1: ing out of hand as non existent anything that science
Speaker 1: can explain. It shows a distinct lack of critical thinking
Speaker 1: and even more dangerously, a lack of imagination and that
Speaker 1: irks me to no end. Yeah, I enjoyed that you
Speaker 1: sent me the skep dyd Brian Dunning his article, and
Speaker 1: I kind of appreciated his approach with this, was like,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, maybe that means there's other cool ways
Speaker 1: to explain these things, like don't poopo it. Maybe open
Speaker 1: your mind to other interesting phenomenon 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. And yeah, you're you're kind of
Speaker 1: shutting down these avenues that could be really interesting and
Speaker 1: eye opening. Appreciated that. I appreciated his approach too, because
Speaker 1: he's a huge skeptic and he's not He didn't take
Speaker 1: like a James Randy esque glee or delight and destroying
Speaker 1: the illusions of idiots, you know. Yeah, And I think
Speaker 1: that's his deal period as people. Uh, I think he
Speaker 1: gets accused of that oftentimes, as you know, a fun killer,
Speaker 1: and he's like, that's not what I'm trying to do here.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to apply research and real science too. Things.
Speaker 1: I think he likes killing fun a little bit. Maybe
Speaker 1: a little bit. So that's ghosts. Yeah done, yeah, uh
Speaker 1: for now. If you if you want to learn more
Speaker 1: about ghosts and read a ghost story first firsthand account
Speaker 1: of a ghost story from Tracy Wilson, you can type
Speaker 1: ghosts in the search part how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: It will bring up this article. And I said, how
Speaker 1: stuff work. So it's time for a message break. I'll
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