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 RE: Ghosts?
on: March 18, 2004 02:18
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interestingly there is some evidence that "ghosts" are actually to do with electromagnetic waves and atmospheric changes.
this article is from "New scientist" i cant link direct to it because you need to be a subscriber. ((PP mods please dont kill me for such a long post! :blush: )
Little house of horrors
New Scientist vol 179 issue 2405 - 26 July 2003, page 30
It's got spectres up the chimney and spooks behind the walls. Even a crate of Scooby snacks won't tempt Andy Coghlan through the front door
DO YOU FANCY owning a "haunted" house where you could scare your guests witless at the flick of a switch, just like the baddies in Scooby Doo? Press one button and there's a distinct chill in the bedroom. Press another and weird vibrations set hairs on end in the study. And over by the fireplace in the dimly lit living room, amid the flickering shadows, you catch fleeting images out of the corner of your eye. Was it a child, an old hag, or...just the light playing tricks?
We're not talking cheap, fairground japes here - naff plastic skeletons and headless ghouls popping out as you pass in the ghost train. We're talking raw fear, about making people feel uneasy to the point of terror. But all in the name of science, promises Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire, UK, the psychologist who wants to build the world's first "haunted" house.
Wiseman dreams of being able to terrify visitors with spooky goings-on that he's designed himself. By controlling where and when these effects appear, he hopes to find out much more about how and why we have creepy experiences. "We want to build our own haunted house, so we're totally in control," says Wiseman. "It would give really important scientific results, produce a huge amount of publicity, and go down in history."
For the record, Wiseman doesn't believe in ghosts. But he is sure that the sensations felt by people who have ghostly encounters - fear, oppression and even nausea - result from a heady blend of psychology, hard-wired fear of dangerous situations and weird environmental effects such as subtle air movements. Combine these with preconceptions about ghosts soaked up from all those Hollywood horrors, and beliefs about the supernatural, and you have a potent mix that can unleash the weirdest feelings.
Earlier this year, Wiseman and his team produced peer-reviewed scientific evidence to back their hunch, published in the British Journal of Psychology (vol 94, p 195). They recorded the experiences of hundreds of volunteers visiting two of the UK's most "haunted" spots. One was Hampton Court, the palace near London reputedly haunted by the screaming ghost of Catherine Howard, Henry VIII's fifth wife. The other was the South Bridge Vaults, a labyrinth of claustrophobic chambers and creepy corridors beneath a Victorian bridge in Edinburgh.
Beforehand, Wiseman's team surveyed the two sites, recording environmental phenomena such as air temperatures and currents, magnetic fields and lighting levels. Then they asked visitors to report exactly where they felt or saw anything strange. To their astonishment, they found that people's most spooky experiences were often in the precise spots reputed to be haunted. And these same spots were often those with subtle but unusual draughts, air currents, temperature variations or even small fluctuations in the background electromagnetic fields. This provided Wiseman with a more earthly explanation for what some folk feel. "We showed people had odd experiences in the same places, and now we know they're based on environmental factors," says Wiseman. He also found that it didn't matter whether volunteers knew beforehand where the most haunted spots were located, disproving the idea that the experiences relied solely on prior knowledge.
Wiseman now thinks he can find out more through experiments in which he dictates where and when people are exposed to subtle environmental effects, and in which he has the power to prime people psychologically before they visit a site. "The only way you know if something is causal is if you control the signal," he says. "Hence the idea of creating some sort of haunted house."
In the perfect haunted house he would have control over lighting effects, the shapes and sizes of rooms and the features within rooms. And as spookmaster general, he could play with more subtle effects at will, introducing slight changes in temperature, alterations in local electromagnetic fields, perhaps wisps of a draught here and there, plus the bizarre effects of "infrasound" - low-frequency rumblings just below the limit of human hearing (New Scientist, 21 December 2002, p 50). And he'd also be able to tell volunteers beforehand whatever he wants: which spots may be haunted, the nature of any ghosts, and so on. In other words, total control.
Don't expect blood-curdling Hollywood effects. "It's the subtle things that count," says Wiseman. "Less is more." When he staged fake seances, for example, he discovered that people found things less believable as the effects became more obvious. What counts most, he says, is context. We experience all kinds of subtle changes to our environment in everyday life. But our sensitivity to them increases in surroundings where we feel on edge, and where our preconceptions about ghostly goings-on can heighten our sense of unease. "Context and priming accentuate these effects," he says.
Such feelings could even be hard-wired, primordial responses to natural hazards. Predators and venomous insects can lurk in cramped, shadowy corners, for example. And that's why Wiseman considers control over lighting and room size to be crucial. "I think many experiences are visually driven," he says. In the Edinburgh vaults, for example, people often reported the strangest feelings when entering the darkest, tiniest chambers. Objects such as old furniture are also important for reinforcing preconceptions of where ghosts lurk, and he expects his house to have an "Olde Worlde" feel.
What about more subtle effects? It's easy to control temperature with air-conditioning units hidden behind walls. "We're very sensitive, so the temperature wouldn't have to drop much," says Wiseman. "You can detect a quarter-of-a-degree change." Equally practical would be concealed metal coils attached to a power supply that can create blips in the ambient electric and magnetic fields, much like those reported by ghost hunters in the US during hauntings. Wiseman has already demonstrated the technology by fitting an electrical coil onto the back of a painting.
In fact, subtle electromagnetic fields are considered capable of inducing hallucinations, as demonstrated by experiments in the early 1990s by Michael Persinger of the Laurentian University of Sudbury in Ontario, Canada. By subjecting volunteers to electromagnetic fields, Persinger induced all sorts of hallucinations, from hauntings to out-of-body experiences. (New Scientist, 19 November 1994, p29)
Unearthly vibrations created by infrasound are also reckoned to be capable of inducing hallucinations or feelings of unease. Wiseman is keen to have it in his arsenal of tricks. "It's a subtle form of vibration, and can make candles flicker, for example," he says. "And believe me, it does feel odd."
So much for the theory. Is it likely to happen? Wiseman is optimistic because his house could be economically self-sustaining, a crowd-puller in its own right, especially if associated with historic venues already drenched in ghostly folklore. Might there be disused houses in the grounds of stately homes which could be converted for the purpose, perhaps a derelict cottage, or an old hunting lodge? That way, the "history" would come ready-packaged. Wiseman is contacting organisations such as English Heritage that manage historic properties to see if they're interested, reminding them that his experiments at Hampton Court attracted record numbers of curious visitors.
His experimental haunted house could prove a bargain. In all, he reckons Spook Central would cost around £50,000. And even if the team has to buy the house, the cost could be recouped by selling it after the experiments are complete. "We could even leave the equipment there, so the owners could have the scariest house in the world," he says.
However, surely there's a fatal flaw in his plan: if you know it's all fake at the outset, won't you simply scoff at any strange effects you experience? There are ways round that, Wiseman believes. One trick might be to invite clairvoyants to the venue's opening night to summon up spirits. That way, "ghosts" could still be to blame when visitors get spooked. For ethical reasons, Wiseman would tell people they are part of an experiment, but he says it might be possible to prime people with stories of unusual effects experienced by previous visitors, without telling them where they occurred. "We'd keep the whole thing ambiguous," he says. "And if we get genuine weird effects, it would add to the mystery."
Hang on, though. Suppose the medium succeeds and real ghosts take up residence... Wiseman's plan could end up seriously compromised. Then, perhaps, it would be time to borrow a trick or two from the Scooby gang - after all, no self-respecting spook would be seen dead anywhere near those pesky kids.
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| Lady~Eowyn |
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| Vanya |
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| Legolisa_ |
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| Dream~Giver |
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| ~aear_fëa~ |
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Author
), and that was in another neighborhood (we lived next to each other). So I'm not really sure what that was, unless there was a cat the previous owner of our has had one that died. I KNOW it was a cat's meow, though. Trust me. >.<
