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Hey, everybody. It's your old pal Josh Ghoulish Clark. And for this week's special Halloween edition of Esquire, České Selex. I've chosen our classic episode, How Ghosts Work, which it turns out we recorded in July, weirdly enough. But it seems appropriate to release this Saturday. So I hope you enjoy it.

And Boo. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know. A production of radios HowStuffWorks. Hey, and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark. This chose to be Chuck Bryant, and this is stuff you should know Jerry's over there for doing and futzing around Halloween and June. Right. Remember when we had the horror fiction contest last year? Actually, this may be July. Um, yeah. Yeah, yeah. We I think that the deadline for submissions was in July and it was weird to be in that kind of Halloween mindset.

Well, it's hot out, but. Yeah, and I'm sure it was weird to ask the authors or not to ask, but to have them get in that mindset to like, write something creepy. We definitely didn't in.

And yeah. You talked me out of that. Yeah. That was a good contest. Yeah.

Also known as the contest shall never happen again. Well, we also ended up with the one that we're going to read this year, right?

Uh, I think. Yeah, yeah. It's a good one. It is a good one.

You guys will have to see in a few months what we're talking about. Right. So, Chuck, I myself have never officially seen a ghost. But I understand you have a ghost story. I do. I remarked about it and I've said it. I'm going to wait till we do our ghost podcast. Well, here we are, pal. Is this it? Should I go now? Yeah, OK.

I'm not saying this is a ghost. What I'm saying is one night I saw something very, very, very strange that I cannot explain. OK, ok. You ready. Yeah. I feel like should have music or something Jerry.

That could probably be done. OK, so Athens, Georgia College I would say I don't remember the exact year but it was probably 1994 ish.

OK, my best friend and I, Brett had gone out and were going back home and driving through five points.

You know the area. Yes. So we're coming from like, let's say, the direction of campus. And, you know, there's a cut through if you take a certain road and five points that cuts you over to Alps Road, OK? And people are going to be like, what is he talking about? I know. It's just I'm talking to you here.

And so there's this one area where you go around a the road curves ninety degrees and then about I'd say two hundred feet. After that, there's a four way stop sign. It's very neighborhood area.

I think that's like where Ray Goff used to live here. Vince Dooley lives over there. OK, that might be what you're thinking.

So we go around this 90 degree curve and I'm looking, you know, I'm fiddling with the radio or something.

And my buddy Brett starts like kind of joke, screaming like, oh, what is that? But kidding around. And I look up and in the middle of the intersection and I swear people, I'm not making this up. And I did not hallucinate it. This is God's honest truth. There was a what looked like a 100 year old woman wearing a black robe with a purple sash diagonal across her chest. And she was standing in the middle of the intersection holding a Bible.

Like this kind of on her, placed on her fingertips, as you would hold like like a waiter would hold a platter.

OK, about chest level and she was sort of looking in the other direction with kind of a vacant look on her face like you have now, or is it just she was completely vacant, completely, still didn't move an inch and wasn't like in a hazy apparition. I mean, was solid and looked real, real, real.

So freaky. We pull right up on her to, you know, take that left and we're both kind of joke screaming.

But then as we get closer, we're like, you know, what's going on here? But it all happened in like 15 seconds, so it wasn't a lot of time to register, you know, what is this? We were just sort of kidding around and we pull right by here and take a left like, you know, if this is her, we pull within feet of her. And she's on my side at this point because we're turning right by her.

She doesn't blink, doesn't move a muscle. And we were going probably 15, 20 miles an hour on this curve. Yeah. He starts like he can't drive a stick shift anymore because he's freaking out, the car is like jerking and sputtering. He pulls over probably 50 feet later. We both turn around out the back window and there's nothing there. Wow.

I'm getting a chill bumps. I know I can see you. And to this day, I have no idea what the heck it was. And it was either a crazy, crazy old woman who is really fast, which is really creepy and really fast or.

The most believable Madame Tussaud's wax dummy I've ever seen was also really fast. Someone ran and set out there and we didn't see it and then ran and took it away. I'm not offering any explanation. I'm not saying it was a ghost, but I have no recollection or explanation for what it could have been. And it was the creepiest, weirdest thing I've ever seen. And we both described it to each other immediately. Like, what did you see?

What did you see? It had gold leafing.

I mean, I can't say it was a Bible because I didn't see the cover. But, you know, that gold leafing around, it looked like a Bible.

So you both saw the same thing. Same thing. Yeah. Purple sash, black robe, silver hair.

That is one of the pernicious qualities of a ghost sighting is that frequently people will see the same thing. Two different people will see the same thing. Yeah. Which lends a tremendous amount of credence to something, because if one person just sees it, well, it's a hallucination. Exactly. You were clearly on something we were not. But that's what somebody could say. Sure. Both of you saw it.

Even if you both were on something, that doesn't mean you're going to see the exact same thing.

Yeah, and I wasn't like some big ghost guy. I'd never have had looked for them or say, oh, I believe in Ghost. It were just out of nowhere. Boom, there it happened.

Right, exactly. You can also go a little further if you're a skeptic and say, well, I mean, Chuck and Bret, Bret just kind of we're playing off one another's description. And they came to some unconsciously came to an agreement of this. You guys compiled the story and you saw the same thing, the impossible. Who knows that however you approach that probably depends on whether you're part of the 45 percent or the 48 percent of Americans who don't believe in ghosts or who do believe in ghosts, according to a 2009 CBS News poll.

I had never given it much thought, but after that, I was definitely like, well, that was a ghost. And I just saw one. Yeah. And I researched a little bit.

But this was long ago before the Internet was born. Yeah. And so I couldn't find anything and even looked yesterday just to see if I could find out anything, if there was some sightings or some old lady that been killed there. Anything and nothing. Now I couldn't find anything.

So that was just your own personal ghost maybe, or just some creepy old woman who was still and not blinking as a car barreled towards her, right?

Yeah. Either way, that is very unsettling either way. And that's a pretty good ghost story. It was good. It was not a mask. You know, I can say that for sure. Like we pulled within feet of her.

Like I looked in her face and she didn't move a muscle, didn't move a muscle. Man, that's scary. It was the scariest thing that's ever happened to me. And we told that story many, many times over the years.

And everyone's always like, really? And I always say, I swear, why would I make this up? Yeah. So that's my story. That's a good ghost story. You can reach us on Facebook. Had a is that it?

Yeah. It's time for message break. All right, Jerry, it's not really a message break, but she left pretty quick.

So we're talking ghosts.

Yeah. And like I said, 48 percent of Americans believe in ghosts, 45 percent don't. Yeah. And I think a lot of people, especially after reading this, there's the whole you know, I really miss my deceased relative and I go to séances. And I think those things, the mind can play tricks on you. But in my case, it was just like, those are the ones where I'm like, what's going on here? Right.

You know, well, it's pretty much impossible to disprove something or to prove something doesn't exist. Right. Which is one reason why belief in ghosts continues on.

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

What are ghost ghost sightings, hauntings apparitions, all that stuff. Sure. That kind of over time have taken on a life of their own or I should say have been around for thousands and thousands of years. Yeah. And have not been dispelled by science. Right. So we're going to kind of approach this from like, you know, here's what people believe ghosts are and here's some scientific explanations for it. But throughout this, you'll notice that at no point are we ever going to say conclusively science is proving that ghosts don't exist because it kind of can't.

Right. That's not to say that people aren't using the scientific method to study ghosts. Sure. Because some are. And my hat is off to these people most of all.

Yeah. So let's hug ghosts, man. All right.

Well, I just describe my encounter, which, like I said, wasn't hazy or weird. Um, well, weird. It wasn't like a hazy apparition. Right. But many times is an apparition. Sometimes it's lights. It seems to hit every cent. Sometimes it's a smell.

Yeah. Like Tracey pointed out in this article, like the smell of deceased relatives, favorite meal being cooked in the other room.

Right. Stuff like that.

Or the smell of the deceased relative to smelled something like rotting. But it was just a squirrel in the wall. Right, exactly. Uh, can be a song, can be flickering lights can be orbs and a picture will talk about that or a ghost in a picture like there's plenty of those.

Hey, I got you get a Google. It's pretty fun to look at those. Yeah.

And there's some that are like this one's not quite explain to my full satisfaction. Yeah. Some of the if you look at famous ghost pictures, there's a handful that have made the rounds over the years that are pretty good, like the Lady of Brown Hall. I believe that the girl with the fire. No, that's a good one, too. Real good one. There's a woman descending a staircase like a ghostly voice. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Woman Very famous. Freddie Jackson, the World War Two. Yeah. World War One pilot dies, killed or mechanic.

I'm sorry. He was killed. And then he showed up in a group photo two days later. Yeah, that one was explained as a double exposure, which I mean, just the coincidence behind it is in and of itself staggering. Yeah. If that is the explanation for it, of course it also could be a hoax, but it's a pretty good. Freddie Jackson is my favorite one.

I think my favorite is the old West. Did you see that one. It's like Boot Hill or something. It was in 1996, I think in this guy dressed up like a cowboy and, you know, had his picture made with his friend. And then in the background, you see this guy? Oh, yeah. He did like kind of peeking up maybe behind a tombstone. Yeah. Um, just in the brush. Yeah.

And supposedly these things are verified by photo experts and and stuff as having been untouched. Yeah. So, yeah.

Because Photoshop is making it way easier to screw with photography. Yeah. But it's also fairly easy to detect too. If you really dig into the individual pixels, you can say, well this is obviously. Yeah. And especially these old photos when they're examining negatives, it's not those weren't Photoshopped, right.

I mean it could be light playing tricks, but when you see a girl standing by the rail, you know what?

The fire behind her, that one was explained as the girl in the fire. Yeah. Those explained as a just a sheer chance mixture of smoke and light. And then are programming like us being hard wired to pick faces out of anything. I don't know, man.

They look pretty much like a girl to me. It definitely does then. Yeah.

And then, of course, there's the funny things like the three men and a baby ghost, which a cutout of Ted Danson. Yeah. Or The Wizard of Oz. Like Hanging Munchkin, which was.

Yeah. Good bird I think. Although I have to say since you bring it up, one of the greatest short, you know, I love short horror fiction. Of course one of the greatest ones I've ever read was called The Hanging Man of Oz. It's like um if it's only just a few years old. But it's a good little short story really. Yeah. I remember that thing. Yeah. This guy who gets kind of caught up in like looking for it.

It's good. Yeah. Good horror fiction. Um, this doesn't have to do with ghosts, but supposedly there's a murder captured on Google Earth. Have you seen that making the rounds.

No, it's an aerial shot obviously of a dock somewhere in Europe, I think by the water. And it looks like a guy is like dragging a dead body in a big pool of blood toward the water. But they I think they've debunked that it was a dog who had shaken off and gotten the ground wet and people verified later, like, yeah, that was me and my dog.

And yeah, stop asking questions. Yeah, it was my dog. Someone posted it on our Facebook wall.

But I mean, you bring up a that's that's a really good look.

You see what you want. Exactly. Yeah. Um, but again, we say you can't really prove that ghosts don't exist. So people are like prove it. Right. It doesn't prove anything. Right. You know, if you can prove that a photograph has been faked, then you've proven it's been faked. But you can't just look and be like, oh, I'm sure it's a fake. Right. That doesn't muster. Yeah.

So they we covered photos. Yeah, they show up in photos. Well, why are they here? I mean, there's a lot of explanations like they're delivering bad news or good news, right?

Yeah, there's a lot of ghost stories where the dead have suddenly appeared to a relative on the other side of the planet. Yeah, at the moment they died. Like the relative wakes up the next day to find out that the person died at twelve fifty nine a.m. when they just saw them sitting in their room at that same time. Yeah.

So sometimes they're coming to say, hey love you see in 15 years. Right. Or they're coming to say you're about to die. Right. That's another long standing legend. Yeah. Or they're about to say like, um, it's it's 1999. She sell your Yahoo stock. Now, might that be a good guess? Right. Um, you know, there's a lot of stuff you can you can say that people have attributed to go. Right.

And why they're here. Um, there's also that horrible experience as their last moments.

Yeah. They are at the point where they died too young or maybe have just gone back to their favorite place in life. Earthbound spirits, I think is what paranormal investigators call those situations. Yeah. Like they're stuck here or it's like, you know, get off my train.

All right. Type of situation. Right. They're guarding a place.

Maybe there's not one, but two, um, ghost women at the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego, very famous late 19th century built hotel resort. And both of them took their own lives at the hotel when they found out they were pregnant out of wedlock or one was married, but her husband had left her. And so they're in two different rooms still. But that's an example of a ghost being tied to a place. Yeah.

And we have an article on the site about haunted hotels that a lot of hotels and all around the world, but especially in places like New Orleans and like old spooky Spanish, I guess the Coronado's probably one of those.

There's one in, I believe, Colorado overlook or the one they use for the overlooking, though. No, um, it's it's just like a plenel like regular cool hotel, but it has like a stream running through the lobby. Oh yeah.

Which is cool in and of itself. Yeah. And I don't remember where I saw this but it was like on some TV show or this. It's like a Super Hornet hotel supposedly like the ghost waiter does that.

And I don't, I don't remember, I don't read through the the river.

Yeah. He had his pants rolled up and Yeah. Flip flops. The caviar was awesome.

Uh, this is the best I could muster. Right then. I'm sorry.

Um, and you know, there are mediums out there who, uh, you know, if you saw the movie Ghost, Whoopi Goldberg, obviously there's many times hucksters trying to take advantage of people saying they can contact people, put you in touch with your relatives that have passed. Yeah. Um, but I'm sure they're very there are a lot of mediums who really believe what they're doing is for real, you know. Yeah. And what's what's kind of ironic is there's this really great article.

It's just a little quick editorial actually, from the Los Angeles Times in twenty six. It's called Is Science Afraid of Ghosts? Uh, it's written by Deborah Blum. Right. And she basically points out that, like, we we used to have psychical research societies like William James Wright, effectively the founder of psychology, like investigated the paranormal as well.

Yeah. And conducted like extensive real scientific experiments and along the way debunked a lot of mediums. When was this like the nineteenth century, the Victorian era? OK, um, and so part of this investigation into the paranormal, um, was not just. It wasn't just to prove that ghosts existed, it was just to understand the paranormal on its own terms and along the way say this person is a fraud.

This person is a huckster. Right. This ectoplasm is cheesecloth that they had stuffed in their cheek, you know?

Right. And and that was part of it. And over time, I think science is just kind of thrown out the whole thing, the baby with the bathwater. Yeah. And now it's just up to kind of the more mean spirited section of the skeptical world to just go after and debunk. There's nobody looking for there are very few people looking to prove or disprove the existence of ghosts. It's more just like this photograph was faked. Right. You know, I mean.

Yeah. And on photographs, I guess we should talk about Orb's very famously or show up in pictures. And some people, you know, say that that is a very specific part of the journey of the ghost is when they are an orb. I have. Or a picture which I'll post on Facebook. Right. Emily believes it is her grandfather. Yeah. We he had just passed away. And the photograph, he was the biggest dog lover I've ever known.

And we had just finished our fencing in our backyard and our house that we bought. So it had been like six or eight months that our dogs couldn't go back there. So we finally let them back there. And I had a camera. I was like, I got to take pictures of this. And they start playing around like crazy.

And then one of the pictures, there's an orb boom right there about the dogs playing. And Emily was like, that's Charlie, that's my grandfather. And it's awesome he's coming to visit.

So I didn't debunk that. But, uh, supposedly skeptics will say, uh, that could be a camera flash, right. Reflecting off dust particles. Right. I use no flash. Oh, uh, water spots on the camera lens boundry. OK, uh, defects in digital camera sensors. I guess it could be that although it was a new camera and it's never done, that sets or printing errors, it was not printed or developed. Wow.

So who knows? I'm just saying I've got a great orb photo that I'll post of my dogs playing.

You raise a really good question. Like, I mean, what's the what's the value of debunking that, I don't know, photo.

It made Emily feel nice.

Yeah. And still does. So why I mean, what is the value. I mean I guess we'll cover it later. Yeah. But there's just yeah. That question keeps coming up to me throughout the research in this. Yeah.

It's like it's not hurting anybody. Right. Um, so Chuck, I guess a really good question if we're going to talk about how ghosts work is what we're ghosts be made of. Like we said, the Victorians believe that they were made of ectoplasm. Hmm. Today, if you talk to a someone who believes in ghosts and researches ghosts and like that's part of their world. Right. The prevailing idea is that they're made of energy is somehow OK.

I can't remember which law of thermodynamics state that energy cannot be created nor destroyed. Right. Just transferred states. Yeah. Yeah. That would be a pretty good understanding of what ghosts are if they are real.

So a life force that had passed from a live person is now a different kind of energy. Exactly. Sure. Medical science. What is that?

The Star Wars. Oh, that was how they explained the force. Who are the medic? Florian's. I don't remember. It was very disappointing, though.

It sounds really familiar. It was it from the newer three. Yeah.

Yeah, it was. How they explain explained basically they explain what the force was and everyone's like, oh, why don't you go and do that?

I got gotcha. I remember that no other theories are that if they are some sort of energy, they could also be some form of matter. Right. So maybe they're made of some sort of quantum particles or an arrangement of quantum particles. Right. Which I find kind of an interesting explanation because think about it. Ghosts can are there frequently said to be able to travel through solid matter, right? Yeah. Well, if you go down to the quantum level and you start looking at transistors, there's a big problem in early transistor development and that individual electrons can pass right through the wall of the transistor.

It's called quantum tunneling. Right.

And they had to figure out how to use crystals to kind of block electrons in to make them flow the way you wanted rather than just be like, oh, I'm over here now. So some people say, well, maybe these are some sort of quantum particles or an arrangement of quantum particles that we're able to perceive somehow. Right.

And then the question I would have is. Is there a consistent explanation on why some people might become a ghost and some others not, the answer is no. Or are they everywhere?

And some you just have a stronger energy force or something? Who knows?

Yeah, because, I mean, if people tend to perceive ghosts more than others. Yeah. And that typically from studies has been shown to be people who believe in ghosts. Right. Tend to see them here. Often report hauntings. Why wouldn't they see them all the time. Yeah. Like why wouldn't. So yeah that would indicate that there is something about an individual person that would make them become a ghost. So many questions.

Well, the whole unfinished business like died too young thing. I can wrap my head around that. Like an energy force that was so strong that is now gone. Sure. Still could be around. I'm trying to decide what part I'd lie in. Do I believe in ghosts? I think so.

OK, so there's a dude named Richard Wiseman of a University of Hertfordshire. Yeah. And he's done a lot of research in Great Britain.

And he has found some pretty consistent results that people have generally reported the same things in the same places, even if they didn't know there was any ghost activity there, even if they did or didn't believe actually if they did believe there were more, like you said, more apt to see a ghost. Right. But he had consistent results of specific places. Yeah.

I mean, like he applied the scientific method of researching ghosts and he he documented what what parts, what areas. In a reportedly haunted place, sightings were most frequently reported and basically found that, like you could you could map out areas where sightings were right. OK, so let's step one and then step two. We had people who who encountered ghosts describe their experiences and he kind of compiled the data. Right? Then he went back to see what other commonalities there were for an area.

Yeah. Like physical conditions there. Yes. Like how cold is it? Is it humid?

Let me measure the light. Let me measure the magnetic field. Right.

What he found, though, interestingly, was that, um, there were specific areas where people who had no understanding of the history of the place they were seeing or had heard that the area was haunted, had reported seeing something.

So there was something to a specific area being, quote, haunted. Right. And people who didn't necessarily believe in ghosts or didn't know that the place was supposed to be haunted had reported not only that they'd seen a sighting or something in this building, but in the specific area of this building.

So, yeah, what does that mean? It's a consistent study, right? So in Wisemen is a part of this kind of long but very small, small, sparsely populated, um, tradition of like paranormal researchers, like legitimate ones. Yeah, I could get into that man when I was a kid. I used to want to go to Duke and study paranormal or parapsychology there. Oh, really? Yeah. They had a parapsychology department. That's awesome.

It was led by a guy named Joseph Rine who is another, like, legitimate psychological researcher. Um, you could have gotten a TV show on science.

Yeah, totally. Uh, UCLA used to have them from 69 to 78. Is Duke still around or now they shut it down and I think the mid 80s, but it was around from like the 50s or 60s, up to the 80s, and it was well respected. Um, William James was another researcher as of the 90s. James Houran and Rennie Linge are still doing research and writing books. Um, Harry Price is a very famous one. Yeah, I heard him.

Yeah. He was famous for investigating Boorishly Rectory, which was supposed to be like the most haunted place in England, really. And then now if you want to get a degree in parapsychology, you can go to the American University or you can go to University of Edinburgh. Those are the two places, as far as I know, in the western world where you can get a psychology degree.

I could see that the Great Britain has a lot of ghostly activity and paranormal investigation. They're into it over there.

And Edinburgh is supposed to be the most haunted city in all of Europe. Oh, really? Yeah. A bunch of dissatisfied Scotsman roaming the bog, right?

Yeah, right. Um, so we've kind of laid it out, right? Yeah. I feel like we've laid it out. Like we've got the um.

We all understand what goes there. I don't think we really said anything that people are like, oh yeah, sure. I didn't realise what a ghost is. Right. Um, what I found interesting is that there's some really good explanations for ghostly activity.

Yeah. Sometimes Tracey points out, I mean, there are so many explanations. There's such a wide range from this person just hallucinated something. Right. And I want to say with that specifically, we're starting to understand that hallucinations are way more common. Yeah. Than anybody has admitted for a very long time because we are afraid of being put away. Sure. Or label is crazy, but people hallucinate more than we generally understand they do.

Specifically, grief is supposed to be able to trigger hallucinations primarily, which would explain visitation and dead relatives shortly after they die. Totally. Yeah, we've talked about sleep paralysis before. That's an explanation that you hear a lot about someone laying in bed. They can't move and they are hallucinating spirits and things.

Right? They think they're awake, but they're not. Right. Yeah, and you're incapable of moving. Yeah. There's also the hypnagogic trance, which comes at the onset of sleep and is a sort of trance that supposedly you can hallucinate.

And yeah, I've had that happen before. Like, am I awake in my sleep that it is here something. Oh yeah. Yeah sure. You know, and then sometimes it's just, you know, the, the window shut itself because it was loose in the wind blew it or the door shut because there was a draft or it's cold in here because, you know, there's a draft, you know, a lot of times there's just literally an explanation.

Right. A physical explanation for what happened.

So you hit upon one of the hallmarks of haunting activity is a change in temperature and unexplained change in temperature in a haunted room. Yeah. When a ghost is present and like you said, it's often like a chimney or drafty window or something like that. Yeah, but people who investigate this kind of thing also often explain that phenomenon by, um, a lack of humidity.

Right. Lower humidity can make a room feel colder. Right.

And what about an area of a room, though? I don't know. I mean, I like that's that's a really good question, dude. How can an area of a room be, number one, colder if there isn't a draft?

If it's not a draft, it's just like a static area in a room. It's cold. Yeah.

Um. If there's just a decrease in humidity, what causes the decrease in humidity that makes it feel colder? Right. And they have found that areas that are supposedly haunted. Well, I should say Richard Wiseman found right in one place that was supposedly haunted, it tended to be less humid than other areas. So that would explain the cold chill. But how is one area just a part of a room less humid than another? Yeah, and I'm curious about what kind of temperature drop people have seen, like how drastic it's been.

I couldn't find any, like, repeatable information on that. Like in the movies, you walk into the corner and you can see your breath all of a sudden. Right. And you're freezing. Yeah. Like the Sixth Sense. Yeah. Yeah. That poor kid. Um, but also I wonder then if it's not even necessarily a real change in temperature, although supposedly ghost hunters can measure changes in temperature in a room and that means the ghost is present or if it's just the sensation of a chill running through your body and it's not actually thermal.

It's, uh, psychological. Yeah. Yeah. Your your central nervous system. Yeah. Just got chill bumps earlier, you know, you did, uh, what about the electrical field?

That's a very common thing. It's for a paranormal investigator to measure, uh, magnetic field and electrical fields in an area.

Um, they will say that this is kind of proof that there's some sort of presence there because the you know, the Ghostbusters emitter is going crazy.

Right? Exactly. What do they call that? I can't believe we can't remember that. I can't remember it either. The one that the iGun held up to. Uh, yeah. Yeah. I don't remember what it's called. We're going to get in trouble for that. Yeah.

Sorry, guys, but sometimes these fields can cause wacky things happening with the brain, can cause hallucinations, can cause dizziness or other neurological symptoms. And they're saying that might play into it.

The fact that you think you have seen a ghost right there saying investigators are saying, yeah, there actually is something different here with the um the areas. The electrical field. Right. Electromagnetic field. There's something going on here. But it's possible that that's what's making you think there's a ghost here rather than there's a ghost here and it's affecting the field. Yeah, it's hitting your angular gyrus.

Right. That's a part of the brain that evidently, if it's stimulated, you can get the sense that someone's behind you mimicking your movements. Yeah.

Which is pretty creepy. I mean, we're all familiar with the transcranial magnetic stimulation. Yeah. Yeah. The thinking cap. Those are cool episode. And when you apply a magnetic pulse to different parts of the brain, different things happen. And one of them is definitely hallucinations. And then another example of, um, the magnetic field messing with us, I guess, is that a lot of hunting activity is reported at night supposedly. Right. Um, and then it's scary.

Right, exactly. That's that's number one. Yeah. But number two, the magnetosphere, you know, the the part of the Earth's atmosphere that protects us from the charged ions of solar. Wind, right. The way that the earth is arranged to the sun, the part that's in darkness, um, has a larger part of the magnetosphere surrounding it. More work toward that, you see. So that might explain it then, right. So it looks like a spider.

It does. But there's a lot more magnetic field activity going on in the darker side of Earth.

So bright night that one could be a stretch.

Yeah, I think my favorite explanation that I had not heard about is infrasound.

I think that's pretty cool. This to me. Is it. Yeah, it's, um, low frequency sound waves that you cannot hear, you know, with your naked ear.

You won't notice it, but it can cause your eyes to vibrate. It can cause you to see things. Yeah. Can cause a sense of dread. Yeah.

Um and cracked actually one of our favorite websites did a test at a concert didn't they. Well they reported on it.

OK, there was a yeah. They don't do tests. That's right.

They report on tests but yeah there's a great correct article on it. Um and they're talking about in the fifties a guy named Vladimir Vladimir Gavroche, robotics engineer, noticed that like one of his lab assistants was bleeding from an ear that's not good and traced it to, um, to this infrasound. Uh, I think it's like seven to nineteen hertz and you can't hear it. Like, you don't realize you're hearing sound, but you're reacting to it. And like you said, it causes all sorts of like weird psychological effects, like a sense of dread, a sense that there's somebody else near you all the classic telltale signs of warning.

Yeah. So much so that they've traced Litoral like hauntings back to infrasound. Yeah. The Ghost in the Machine is an article by Vic Tandi and Tony Lawrence did the same thing was going on there and they traced it back to a fan and then they. Modified defense housing, the sound went away and the supposed haunting went away. Right, exactly. I mean, isn't that weird? The like surely you've been in a room before that you've just had to turn around and run out of because you just knew that there is somebody else in there with you?

Yeah, you have I have plenty of times, sort of.

But I think it's like I've been in like Savannah near, you know, on the ghost tour. Yeah. Like I'm highly suggestible, I got to say.

But isn't it strange to think that the sound that you can't hear. Yeah. It was responsible for producing that felt like our brains are that malleable, that like just a sound we can't even hear. But the vibrations we can still sense somehow are having an effect on our brain and scaring us and making us turn around and run out of room.

Yeah. And potentially twitching your eye and causing hallucinations. Right.

So this sound has been shown. NASA showed that that in infrasound at that frequency can make your eye vibrate imperceptibly. Yeah. But then something close to your vision like, say, the rim of your glasses or something. Right. Appeared your brain confuses and thinks that that's moving. So it looks like there's a little dark figure moving out of the corner of your eye. Right. Infrasound can actually cause visual and are well, not auditory hallucinations. Psychological.

Yeah. Psychological effects and visual hallucinations. So and the creation of a sense of dread. Yeah. That's, that's spooky.

Yeah. I want to get it. Infrasound machine just like played around the office. Yeah. You know there may already be one here. Well I don't even think we said what the guy did though at the concert did we know he he played that he played under the concert. Yeah. And people were freaking out. Yeah. I think like a quarter of the people at the concert were reported feeling like horrible dread and like some nausea. Yeah. Maybe it was a Dr.

John show.

That's the first awful thing I could think of Dr. John's career. I know. I know you're going to say that it really hit us. I mean, like, you see, like I played two pianos at once. Yeah. Yeah.

He's a he's he's a legend. What am I talking about? You're thinking of maybe Dr. Hook in the medicine show. Yeah.

Oh, Dr. Demento, I'm trying to think of the worst band I could think of, and that's the first thing that came to my mind. That's who you thought of. And Nickelback is out there. Yeah, it was a Nickelback show.

They care. We can fix this and editing.

OK, so what else? I think the last thing Tracy has here is that the National Science Board has actually come out and said that if you believe in paranormal, it can be dangerous because that means you have reduced critical thinking skills and can't make great day to day decisions.

Right.

That's going to mean that irked me, because on the other end of the spectrum, you can definitely make the case that just pooh poohing out of hand as nonexistent. Anything that science can explain. Yeah, it shows a distinct lack of critical thinking. And, yeah, even more dangerously, a lack of imagination. And that irks me to no end. Yeah, I enjoyed that.

You sent me, the stepdad, Brian Dunning, that his name, his article and I kind of appreciated his approach with this was like, you know, maybe that means there's other cool ways to explain these things, right?

Like don't pooh pooh it, maybe open your mind to other interesting phenomena that can be explained.

Well, he was saying, don't just assume that if you just stop at it was a ghost.

Yeah, there wasn't. Right. Then you're pursuing you're just you're not pursuing any longer one way or another. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah. You're kind of shutting down these avenues that could be really interesting and eye opening. I appreciated that. I appreciated his approach too, because he's a huge skeptic. But he's not he didn't take a look at James Randi. Glia delight in. Yeah. Destroying the illusions of idiots, you know.

Yeah. And I think that's his deal, period as people. I think he gets accused of that oftentimes is, you know, a fun killer. And he's like, hmm, that's not what I'm trying to do here. Yeah. I'm trying to apply research and real science to things. I think he likes killing fun a little then.

Yeah, maybe a little bit.

So that ghosts. Done. Yeah, uh, for now, if you if you want to learn more about ghosts and read a ghost story first firsthand account of a ghost story from Tracy Wilson, you can type ghosts in the search bar at HowStuffWorks dot com. It will bring up this article. And I said HowStuffWorks. So it's time for a message break open.

Now, listen, your me, now it's in your mouth, all right? Yeah, this is from a teacher. We always like reading these. Um, Chuck, Josh and Jerry have been listening for over a year now and was never more grateful for them than about a month ago.

I wound up driving three pre-teen boys to Space Academy in Huntsville, Alabama.

I remember space camp. Yeah, great movie. Uh, not really. I never saw the movie.

I just remember I didn't see space camp. No, I mean, that was right in the wheelhouse. Yeah. You know. All right. You see, I'm a middle school teacher in Morgantown, North Carolina, recently relocated from Decatur, Georgia, where I worked at the brick store and squash blossom Gerry's plant. OK, every two years, our sixth and seventh grade students go on a trip to the Science Academy. And we're a tiny school, just 24 kids and the entire middle school.

Wow. Uh, teachers frequently end up driving on field trips themselves, about a seven hour drive. And on the journey, we were plagued with traffic, rain and car sickness at about our four when tensions were high, was white knuckled and began questioning my career choice. And I said, screw it. I'm going to put on your podcast about ninjas. They were mesmerized by ninja. During the rest of our trip, we learned about sword swallowing, Bigfoot and surfing, just to name a few.

So thank you for saving us in our time of need. More pointedly, creating a podcast that appeals to all ages as a show of my thanks to both. To teach you a tried and true car game like your podcast only requires that a person be young at heart.

It's called Pass around the Ether Sijia As you drive down the road, as you drive down the road take note of all the car models you pass in front of the model name.

Insert any Potti word of your choice. The middle school boys and most likely you too as well. Toilet puke and poop work marvelously. Uh so we ended up with a few gems like the Toilet Avalanched, The Puke Avenger and the Poop Fusion. So many thanks and congratulations on your success. That is Sierra Benton. Thanks a lot. Sierra Benton, that's a great email. I'm glad we could help you out. You've seen the poop, Fusun. That's pretty solid band name.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, yeah. We get a lot of email about how, like, we keep people sane during their everyday lives. Yeah. Glad we're helping.

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