Is It A Haunting Or Infrasound?
If you’re like me, you once spent a summer working in a haunted kitchen at Boy Scout camp. With the hospital surplus we would repurpose, the secluded spot in the woods, and the persistent rumors about how that stain got on the cook’s chair, the place was begging to be the subject of ghost stories.
I never saw anything myself, but I did hear more than a few raccoons scurrying in and around every avenue they could find, trying to get one more taste of tapioca pudding. That’s what I figured most of the ghost stories were about, the raccoons and other critters that occupy every summer camp. Nothing supernatural, (except for the immortal turtle that has been around since the camp opened).
Our senses like routine and when you encounter an odd sound in an odd location, the imagination can run wild. That’s why so many ghost stories take place in the woods, or a new house, or a variety of other new environments.
Your senses are constantly trying to fill in the blanks of what’s going on around you and can even detect things without your knowledge. When there is a gap, your brain starts improvising with all the skill of a 7-year-old. That is, unless you are a trained scientist, which brings me to the actual ghost story I wanted to share.
Vic Tandy, experimental officer and part-time lecturer in the School of International Studies and Law at Coventry University, was working late in a laboratory that was rumored to be haunted (because of course it was). Tandy began to feel anxious when he noticed a grey blob out of the corner of his eye. When he turned, it was gone (because of course it was).
When working on a fencing foil (narrow sword), the next day, Tandy observed it vibrating wildly even though it was in a vice and there was nothing else touching it. Tandy was able to track the vibration to the industrial fan for the lab. In addition to sending vibrations powerful enough to move a sword blade, the fan vibrated at near the resonate frequency of the human eye which Tandy concluded was the cause of his grey blob. What Tandy was uncovering was infrasound.
Infrasound is sound that occurs just below the human perception, roughly 20 hertz, and has been the subject of documentation since before World War I. Whales, hippopotamuses, and rhinoceroses, among others, can produce infrasound as well as wind turbines and most of the heavy industrial equipment that makes up our modern world.
When consistently studied, infrasound has been linked to feelings of dread, nausea, and suspense in humans. This is likely, in part, due to the fact that we can’t actually hear the sound; it simply changes the pressure on our eardrums. According to one Japanese study, this effect is enough from wind turbines that a higher level of general irritability is reported by those in the area, (still nothing on cancer because that’s ridiculous).
This is what Tandy found in his experiments as well. He went around to a variety of local “haunted” locations and found that there was always some level of infrasound. It wasn’t ghosts or cursed locations, it was big industry. Those feelings of dread, suspense, and chills were the ventilation fan.
I’m not saying all ghost stories are infrasound, (mine were raccoons). But I’d be willing to bet many of them are. So, as we get deeper into October and everyone you know starts telling their ghost stories, listen for the industrial fan infrasound. Listen for the sound just beyond your perception.
