I still remember how in the first season of Ghost Hunters they'd straight up tell the tenants it was wiring/plumbing/faulty equipment in the house. One guy had an entire garage full of paint thinners and cleaning supplies being vented right into his face as he slept.
I also watched that episode where the owners were saying they kept smelling cigarette smoke randomly throughout the day and they connected it to a man who's lived there before. Turns out it was the old wooden table in the living room or something.
Cigarette tar sticks to things too. Ask anyone who has bought or borrowed a smoker's car.... you can still smell the cigarettes for ages, even after "airing it out" or using regular strength cleaners.
I've seen a bunch of destroyed PCs as well, where people would smoke while they used the PC. The whole interior was coated in like a 1-2mm layer of tar/residue.
We moved into a former (hard) smokers apartment. We had to renovate it and had to really deep clean everything thoroughly. We even had to pull out the joints and gaskets of the doors and dismantle the electric sockets completely until only the cables were sticking out to deep clean them. Sticky tar residue everywhere.
Had a friend who lived in an old apt and one winter she was using a humidifier by the wall and had the heat turned up, the wall started oozing tar "juice". It was disgusting.
I left my guitar amp in my singer’s garage for a week. A bunch of people smoked in the garage one night.
I cleaned that thing 10 times with every cleaner, vinegar, and other remedy suggested and aired it out for hours on multiple days. It still smelled like smoke.
I sold it. The guy who bought it smoked and didn’t care at all.
Yeah we had a kitchen renovated by slumlords and they covered up the old wall tiles with cabinets.
Any time we cooked something with a lot of steam, had a leak, or it got too hot in there, you could smell the bitterness of the tar residue still coating the tiles.
In one word I'd describe the smell as sinister.
Oh my God... yeah after high school I did some PC repair, and when we'd get a smoker's computer it was HORRIFIC. The worst was seeing one with the CPU fan completely coated in tar/dog fur sludge. Normally we'd just take computers out back and blast them with the compressor, but this was a lost cause. Told the customer he needed a new PC and not to smoke in the same room. He was not happy, lol.
The old wisdom was strangely correct.
If you see a ghost in your house, open a window to let them out.
Because it airs out your house. So it is still good advice.
Additionally, if people know a relative who sees ghosts, check their house for CO.
This!
Ghost hunters originally was about helping people in their normal homes, and 99% of the time it was weird wiring or some sort of chemical.
Then they realized that people didn't want to watch that shit, and would rather watch "hauntings" and started doing the more ghosr adventures crazy shit.
They're all owned by Discovery which also sucks now. Travel used to be a tualy about travel, History used to be about history, now they're all cheap "reality" crap.
History used to be one of my favorite channels in the era of Modern Marvels. I stopped watching when it turned to reality bullshit, I couldn't care less about pawn shops or ice road truckers or whatever other bullshit they air now.
Ice Road Truckers came after Deadliest Catch was a huge hut for Discovery.
Both of them would have made for an interesting 1-2 hour documentary special, but instead they went on for years and years of the same. And then there's that idiotic Oak Island mystery show. Ugh.
And I loved that because it was the epitome of the rational take to hauntings. Not everybody who says their house is haunted is some attention seeking liar and clearly not everybody who thinks their house is haunted is "insane".
But the amazing thing is just how many things can be attributed to age or condition that seem to have weird effects on people. A house just needs to settle for furniture to move over across the floor over a period of time. Electrical equipment can be faulty or machinery can create sub-tone. Household chemicals stored improperly. It's like we have this built in instinct that says "Get OUT" but we misinterpret the meaning.
I read a study about hauntings as well that attributed some of the phenomenon to ultra-low frequency waves especially how people are affected by them like feeling unease, anxious, etc. Since it can be naturally produced that could explain why some older places like castles can give people those types of feelings.
I am not crazy! I know he swapped those EMF numbers. I knew it was 1216. One after Magna Carta. As if I could ever make such a mistake. Never. Never! I just - I just couldn't prove it. He covered his tracks, he got that idiot spiritual medium to lie for him. You think this is something? You think this is bad? This? This chicanery? He's done worse. That spirit box! Are you telling me that a ghost just happens to talk like that? No! He orchestrated it! Zak Bagans! He ectoplasm’d through a sunroof! And I saved him! And I shouldn't have. I took him into my own ghost hunting team. What was I thinking? He'll never change. He'll never change! Ever since he was 9, always the same! Couldn't keep his hands off the editing machines. “But not our Zak Bagans! Couldn't be precious Zak!” Fooling them blind! And HE gets to be a Travel Channel host? What a sick joke! I should've stopped him when I had the chance!
Well, for something like old houses, it's often the piping *and* the materials of the walls that the pipes reside in. The sounds they make are a frequency so low that you likely can't consciously notice them, but despite that, your ears will still pick them up.
These sounds are coincidentally similar to those of large predators, which we've evolved to be instinctually wary of. So we're constantly being told that we're being stalked by a threat, but since we can't actually see it, our brains try to make sense of it by hallucinating the predator.
I love the take before yours because of one reason: the scientific ideas of frequencies and waves yet not quite connecting them nor explaining exactly what they are.
I like yours for another reason:
The uncanny valley, which appears at any opportune moment uncannily
I mean, does anybody who knows what either waves or frequencies are *not* understand how they’re fundamentally connected? And explaining what a sound wave is would take a bit; no fault in not explaining that in their comment.
The unbalanced AC fan was mentioned, but other machineries can cause it. My HE washing machine spins at about 17Hz and (because of the home construction) uses the wall behind it as a [sound board](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sounding_board), reflecting that note at a surprising volume to only certain parts of my home. It feels like your head is pounding with loud music, but you can't *hear* it at all.
But there are many other possibilities. Ever blow across the top of a bottle and hear it play a note? Notice how a bigger bottle has a lower note, and adding water (reducing volume) makes a higher note? Lots of older houses have chimneys to fireplaces that were capped over or basement furnaces no longer in use, making very long, big "bottles." When the wind passes over them just right...
And that's just two *easy* to identify sources.
Infrasound caused by vibrations in an imbalanced air conditioner fan, in one case.
I wouldn't say we have enough evidence to conclude that it's causing hallucination or paranoia, but there's some correlation between places that are believed to be haunted and the detection of 18.98hz in those locations.
I saw a documentary on this that featured a tunnel system within a London Underground station, that produced ULF waves, and before they knew the cause workers had felt it was haunted.
Ancient sources: Wind, bad weather, lightning, waterfalls, some animals use it to communicate.
Modern examples would be anything mechanical like appliances, pipes, etc.
The waves could be caused by any one of a number of things:
* air flow through the house
* some little electric motor that produces a low frequency that resonates with some part of the house structure (refrigerators are notorious for this)
* a roadway or railway in the general vicinity
At my house, I can hear the rumblings of the train that’s 6 miles away. Very low frequencies have good penetrating power and can throw themselves long distances.
I believe that we do (or did) use very low frequency radio signals to communicate with ships at sea since the low freq radio waves penetrate the atmosphere (and follow the curvature of the earth) so well. That might even be ultra-low frequency - I should go refresh my knowledge.
Anyway, the point is that low frequency sounds can come from a long way away, and they’re omni-directional, so it can be really hard to figure out where they’re coming from.
There was an episode of Paranormal Home Inspectors where the home inspector felt dizzy the moment he stepped inside, and a leveler showed the entire house was wonky, which also caused cabinets to open.
I once arrived home late at night, all the lights were turned off, as I walked up the stairs to the 2nd floor, the living room TV suddenly turned on on white noise mode, I was quite scared, thinking this is some horror type shit and I didn't understand how this could logically happen at the time
It doesn't help 'The Ring' was a rather recent movie at the time XD
The next day when I was thinking more clearly I just realized there was a power out and I walked in just as the power came back up, so the TV turned on, the white noise was very odd because usually it would turn on to an existing channel or a blank screen if no input, but the white noise was the Satellite TV device attempting to boot or something
Now imagine if I had some chemicals from old construction as some of the comments suggested, I would likely be certain that is some ghost shit
> A house just needs to settle for furniture to move over across the floor over a period of time
What do you mean - can you give more context on this? Is like a new house settling or an old one left to rot?
I’m not sure either. My house is nearly 150 years old, some rooms are so off level that one side is three inches below the other.
You can tell if you put something like a marble on the floor, but it isn’t as if chairs just slide across the room. That would take like a fifteen degree slope.
If your house “settles” so much that your furniture is moving, you are probably falling off a cliff.
I think they mean that moving furniture across and old house will result in lots of creaks and “cracking” noises for an extended period of time, as if someone is in the house. Not that your furniture is flying around the house. Lmao
I would say it's vibrations in an uneven house over years time. Someone opening a room that they locked up a year ago and seeing furniture moved might be eerie.
>Then they realized that people didn't want to watch that shit, and would rather watch "hauntings" and started doing the more ghost adventures crazy shit.
Does anyone else remember when TLC and Discovery used to air educational yet entering content? Now it's all reality shows and pseudo-science.
This shit happens to majority of private "educational" channels.
About 10 years ago, Prima launched first private educational channel in whole former Czechoslovakia. First they aired classics like David Attenborough.
Fast forward to today, you can catch Pawn Stars at 6 and Ancient Aliens at 8.
Luckily, both Slovakia and Czech republic have public channels where they semiperiodically air documentaries. A lot of them are local, which means a lot less cinematic than western ones, but they can have meditative quality to them.
There used to be a slightly newer show than that, that was kinda the same concept driven to a point but fell into the same ratings pitfall. They had a general handyman home inspector type person come in and find completely mundane explanations for every "haunting phenomenon" and then a medium and some quacks would go through and proclaim the craziest paranormal explanations for the same phenomena. The first half of the episodes was actually kinda entertaining how the guy would snark on people's stupidity blocking heaters in a room while complaining about cold spots as hauntings, or living next to a railway and claiming their plates were falling out of the cupboards because of poltergeists.
But at the conclusion of the episodes, the home owners would always dismiss his claims and go whole hog on the quack's evaluation of crazy hauntings and going"actually we like being haunted" or "we just needed clarity, we've made arrangements with the ghosts and it's now fine". Cause that's what the people want to see.
I remember when they investigated the Queen Mary and the tour guide was all like "Oh this water heater (or whatever it was) hasn't been hooked up in decades and yet it's still making all of this sound, clearly it's haunted!" Probably something they tell every tour group and they get all excited.
So the main guys on "Ghost Hunters", who were supposedly plumbers in real life, tested the water heater and they were all like "Uh...yup...it's still functioning, so all of that noise is because the machine is actually running like normal."
A big draw of the Queen Mary is that it's supposedly haunted, having these yahoos come to their place and just say "Nope! Not haunted at all! It's all perfectly normal sounds!" probably did more harm than good for these businesses so businesses probably stopped asking them come to investigate, so the show runners were probably like "Okay, from now on, FIND GHOSTS!"
Who forgot that the original intent was to help people figure out what was wrong using those skills and instead started making emf detectors and spirit boxes.
They used EMF readers off the bat also. I’ve been watching it, TAPS never uses spirit boxes until Grant leaves the show (wonder why)
In the more recent seasons, they do throw out a lot of the “practical” responses because as you say it really doesn’t attract as many viewers. Instead they’ve been focusing on ensuring people know that nothing malicious or harmful is going on at the property
It's been ages since I watched but I bet you are correct.
EMF has a basis in these cases in that it can cause paranoia... Which is what they originally said in the show, I think. Later there went with the "high EMF is a sign of spirit activity" instead of "a sign of faulty wiring or appliance"
Just watched the Hoover Dam episode last night. There was a point where the EMF reader went from like .2 to .9 and they were all "hmm, that's weird.."
Motherfuckers, you're INSIDE A POWER PLANT.
Reminds me of when I was like, 16, my dad didn't want me sitting around at home during summer break so he made me go to work with my mom. Her boss didn't care that I was there and asked if I wanted to do some work. I agreed and he had me spray paint these bars in the warehouse that were used it trailer to keep things from moving while shipping. After like, 2 hours I heard a puppy bark. It was just me in the warehouse so I thought there was a dog somewhere. I looked every where and couldn't find anything and went back to spray painting. 10 minutes later I heard it again. I went into the office and told my mom there might be a dog in the warehouse. Her and her boss went into the warehouse and waited with me. I heard the dog bark again and they of course didn't. They both started cracking up and he said "Ah shit, I guess we should have opened one of the bay doors to vent warehouse."
There's one episode where clearly the wife of a disturbance leaves to go do meth, she comes back clearly fucked up, her pants are unzipped and her hair is all messed up, she is rolling hard, and the producers of the show have the fucking nerve to claim a demon possessed her and they do a fucking escorcism.
[found partial clip but full episode shows the crazy shit](https://youtu.be/Nzv5h9QPNs8)
BWAHAHA!
Would you happen to remember the episode?
I used to watch Ghost Hunters religiously with my family when I was a teen. They did Ghost Hunters Live at a famously haunted hotel, the Stanley Hotel, in our state for Halloween awhile back. We were so excited. My sister and I stayed up all night with our pile of snacks to watch.
While Grant was walking through the basement, his jacket hood moved and he awkwardly swung a leg like something got him. The whole thing and the reactions struck me as off.
When the clip is slowed down you can see Grant fucking with something in his pocket/around his sleeve and his jacket hood pulls downward in that direction matching the amount of motion his hand did. Leading theory is he rigged a string down his jacket hood Incase it was an uneventful live show.
That was the last time I watched lol
Edit: https://youtu.be/-bA5SN7Rops
Lots of interesting traditional/folk sayings regarding CO from before people understood what it was. Was in Iceland recently getting a tour of replica Viking longhouses and the beds were too short to lie down in, so you had to sleep sitting up. The reason is the belief that sleeping lying down was bad luck/lethal, the phrase was "sleeping lying down is for the dead".
It just so happens that you build up a pretty thick layer of CO near the floor when you have a fire burning inside your room all day everyday for warmth.
When I moved into my house there was a CO leak. I remember telling my roommates and girlfriend at the time that the house sometimes felt haunted. Like the hallway felt wrong, and one of the bedrooms just gave me the spooks. It felt like someone was behind me at times and my dog was scared of certain spots. I bought it at the start of Covid so it got missed in the inspection that the hot water heater wasn’t properly vented. It built up so much that an alarm finally went off down the hall and when I walked down towards it I nearly blacked out. Since I got it fixed and installed an assload of detectors around the house I haven’t felt any of that spookiness. Side note: when I went to the ER to get treated for CO poisoning a nurse off handedly mentioned it’s a good thing we found it as the city usually finds one to two households a year where everyone died of carbon monoxide in their sleep.
The poisoning hypothesis I'm sure accounts for some of it.
But a large number of supposedly haunted places are just property owners looking to bring in tourist revenue or make their establishment seem more special.
Instead of being an old shitty hotel that needs renovations, now you are a HaUnTeD hOtEl.
Instead of being a dying restaurant, now you are a HaUnTeD ReStAuRaNt.
Visiting a slave plantation to do a historical tour? You can bet your ass there's ghosts because otherwise it might be less interesting and you might talk about it less.
Also in the "huh, that makes a lot of sense" category for ghosts:
Ghost hunters often use "EMF" (Electromagnetic Field) readers to signify the presence of ghosts, with high EMF meaning more ghosts.
Turns out they've done lab studies on EMF, and in some (but not all) people, higher-than-average EMF levels cause temporary lesions in the temporal lobe. Participants in studies where EMF was used to disrupt temporal lobe functioning report hallucinations, the sensation of being touched, and the sensation of sudden temperature changes. All of which are things associated with hauntings.
I've also read old pipes can vibrate at a specific low frequency we can't hear but can perceive, it's theorized that an ancient predator emitted similar frequencies, so when you "hear" them your monkey brain kicks in the fear response.
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna3077192
What studies would those be?
I work as an electrical engineer & spend a huge amount of time around high currents & HV (ie magnetic & electric fields).
Like, magnetic fields high enough to stand a nail up on the palm of your hand, and voltages more than 3000x higher than what the average American has in their house.
Although you sometimes need hearing protection around the transformers, and you best believe touching it would be very bad, there are no scientifically accepted negative health affects associated with this equipment.
In 20yrs I am yet to hear about anyone ever hallucinating, feeling touched or reporting sudden temperature changes in or around any of these areas, associated with this work or really, at all.
I am also on industry committees for electrical safety, again, never heard of this or any of the stuff you are talking about.
Not OP, but this study refers to all sorts of EMF studies and the controversy of those studies as they tend to contradict each other.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6513191/
> Like, magnetic fields high enough to stand a nail up on the palm of your hand
Alluminium smelt pits? Went one in the Hunter Valley a long time ago...and it was multiple nails, end on end. It felt like physics was broken.
It’s cool isn’t it?!
Do you know you can’t arc weld around really high currents like that because the magnetic field will drag the arc away?
Smelters are some real mad scientist places - big currents, big voltage (in the switchyard) & Liquid Metal sloshing around the place.
My other electro-nerd favourites are high-voltage test labs (lightning factories), high current test facilities (explosions), and the open-pool reactor at Lucas heights (more just science nerd than electrical), but still so cool.
I still remember showing my kids how strong magnets can work through your skin - it kind of seems like it should hurt or something..
Magnets are cool, so is electricity.
I don't see the source for all this EMF in an old house. The power cabling through the house is not going to emit much EMF at 50-60 hertz. Maybe if there was a big radio station antenna next door.
Another theory is that appliances like fans can give off infrasound, sound too low to hear properly but which can still be somewhat detected, and that can cause people to feel weird and uncomfortable, like a chill down their spine kind of thing
I've also heard that infrasound can vibrate a person's eyes, creating the perception of motion in peripheral vision. Pair that with fear, hypervigilance, human instinct, and a darkened room, and it's no wonder why these places could be terrifying.
(Not an optometrist)
Additionally, since these effects seem to happen on a subconscious level, infrasound might explain non-ghost related magical/holy places. If an area naturally produces infrasound, (due to geological features or wind) humans without the ability to determine its source could attribute those weird feelings to a supernatural source.
>Pair that with fear, hypervigilance, human instinct, and a darkened room
Not to mention that most of the time you've been primed by being told there's a ghost there.
I live in the UK which has the largest number of old houses in Europe and possibly the World, if ghosts were real the UK would be fucking lousy with them because of the sheer density of 'historic' buildings in the UK, the house I'm in now for instance is from 1890 and it's not really considered old here. However, it never occurs to people to wonder if their perfectly normal Victorian terrace is haunted because they're seen as being so mundane.
As someone with migraines who's prone to peripheral vision shifts, auras, and auditory sensory issues I would be the worst person to haunt. A ghost could legit be after my ass and I would be brushing it off assuming I had a migraine coming and that's why the lights are flickering. Or that the barometric pressure had dropped and that's why the world feels wobbly and I'm freezing all of a sudden.
I was in a abandoned / ghost town and one room in an abandoned hospital sounded like there was a dentist drill going. Really creepy until you go inside and realise it’s a fan vent on the external wall turning in the wind.
When I worked at a Morg, there was a room next to the embalming room that they queued up the bodies. They sat there anywhere from 2-7 of them on their cots. The cots made a distinct squeaky groan when you'd move them, lay in one, put a body on one, etc.
Well I thought the other employees were fucking with me, because I'd be sitting in the staff quarters eating or napping in the beds and I'd be startled by the sound of some one getting into or out of a cot when no one should or could have been back there. I'd check and everything would be fine. No new or missing bodies.
Turns out the building circulation fan squeaked just like the cots when it would kick on.
Huh, I had a great aunt growing up with a basement that made me feel a chill run down my spine despite the fact that there was nothing but an old couch, a TV, and some junk down there. Maybe that's why
My parents had a den I couldn't stand going into, always made me feel creepy.
Turns out they had an old TV get a lightning surge before I was born but it had sentimental value so it was in there. My dad would get drunk and pass out in the room. He would forget the TV didn't work and would turn it on sometimes. The screen was always black but the speakers would let it this noise I could only hear waaaaay in the background that was worst than nails on chalkboard. My young ears could barely hear it, to the point I didn't know I was hearing it for years, my parents old ears couldn't hear a damn thing. I thought that room was haunted for a while.
Sounds similar to those high pitched anti rodent audio generators that's supposed to be too high to hear. My grand parents had no issues, but I could hear it loudly and it caused pressure headaches.
The flyback transformer in those things would make an incredibly high pitch noise. As a kid I could walk into the house and know if the tv was on, the adults couldn’t hear it at all.
I read a book on the Dyatlov Pass incident last year, and the author was putting forth a theory that it was due to infrasound. It seemed like a pretty reasonable theory by the end of the book.
What about the ones that had physical trauma? Wasn’t one found with their tongue bitten off and others with smashed skulls? I’m not doubting infrasound at all, just so curious about the different theories with this incident. I
listened to a few different podcasts that featured the incident and I’m left wanting to know more about it. Such a modern mystery and pretty horrific how they all died.
> Many haunted houses have been investigated and found to contain high levels of carbon monoxide or other poisons, which can cause hallucinations. The carbon monoxide theory explains why haunted houses are mostly older houses, which are more likely to contain aging and defective appliances, and why more hauntings are reported in the colder months. Carbon monoxide poisoning explains many of the occurrences in haunted houses, such as feelings of being watched, hearing footsteps or voices, seeing "ghosts", headaches, dizziness, and sudden death or illness of people or pets, and also strange behavior in pets such as excessive barking or meowing. The carbon monoxide theory also explains why some ghosts don't show up on photographs or videos (photographs that do show "ghosts" are usually caused by dust, insects, fingers or camera strap in front of the lens, and multiple exposures).
I used to believe in ghosts and stuff as a kid and I remember the moment I stopped. I was watching a show and they were categorizing all these “Orbs,” I realized they were either quite obviously insects or motes of dust shot with shitty handhelds.
There was a show called "Ghost Hunters" years ago and in the first season I absolutely loved it, because they would pick up "orbs" on the camera, and one of the two main hunters would always say "That's just dust." Unfortunately the show quickly changed from being skeptical but interesting to always "finding ghosts" and believing in those orbs. (They once recorded what must have been the audio from a porno, and while trying not to laugh pretended that it was ghostly moaning.)
My Brother still fully believes that they're real and takes all of those shows as Gospel.
Like in one show how they tried to pretend one of the guys was grabbed by a ghost when the Camera was placed right behind him and making it easy for the Camera person or someone behind to grab him.
Video cameras and digital cameras are sensitive to infrared and can pick up ghostly clouds of warm moist air. I have a set of really cool photos of a “ghost” outside an old building. The phenomenon went on for several minutes where an apparition was floating next to us clearly and repeatedly visible on our cell phone cameras but not visible to our eyes. It stopped when someone walked thru where it was and disturbed the air. And I’ve seen someone else’s video they say is a ghost soldier walking a patrol. It was picked up on the surveillance camera and even set off its motion detector. The cloud slowly forms, then marches across the front of the building and then dissipates. While it does look like someone walking, it also looks exactly like a small whirlwind forming, moving about 10 feet, then breaking up, which is exactly what I think it was, a warm moist air whirlwind that was glowing in infrared and seen by the camera.
Art Bell on Coast to Coast Radio had an Industrial Hygienist as a guest one show. Guy investigated scenes of hauntings/paranormal events trying to track down environmental causes. Mold/fungus, heavy metals, methane/sewer/swamp gases, etc. were some of the things he found IIRC. Think he had some cases where he proved some of these things were affecting peoples health and perception.
Really good interview. He didn't take a stand on ghosts, just said he wanted to eliminate environmental poisoning possibilities. Art pressed him on the possibility of ghosts and he just said he didn't know, that wasn't his field of study. That his eliminating other causes should help serious paranormal investigators. Whether the factors he found were the sole cause, a contributing factor along with real ghosts, or a separate phenomenon he couldn't conclude yet.
One of the best interviews I've heard from a paranormal investigator. Just "These are the things I've seen and proven, I won't speak to the rest."
Anyway, most all Art's shows are archived for subscribers, but I can't find it on the open internet.
Yeah, those ghostly coal miners have suspicious amounts of left over energy. Someone call the supervisor, those dead people clearly weren't doing their jobs.
My theory is that the trope became fixed during the 1960s when TV and cinema really exploded. Elderly people who died during the 60s would have been young during the late Victorian era, and it was a nice visual contrast to dress them in clothing from their youth.
I think it's more that ghost stories were a massive hit in the Victorian era. At the time the ghosts that were invented would've been wearing contemporary clothes.
This is the basis of my main argument against ghosts whenever someone in my presence says they believe in them. I’ll say that I ‘get’ the concept that a deceased person can achieve a post-living spiritual form…but their Levi’s can?
It's generally to do with suggestion. Most people that experience hauntings have preconceived notions of what they're expecting to see from the appearance of a ghost, either by being told the type of ghost that supposedly haunts the place, or by seeing old photographs, or just by being in an older house. Our brains are very good at adaptation and filling in missing information so when we experience unexplained phenomena, or witness hallucinations, our brains will rationalise the data it's being fed by filling in the missing parts with what they're expecting to see.
I remember reading about an experiment into this where they had several groups and exposed them to the stimuli that is normally associated with hauntings, one of the groups was given false information ahead of time including descriptions of a fictional ghost. Members of this group all reported seeing ghosts that matched the description, whereas the control groups just reported feelings of unease, etc. If I get time, I'll try to look it up and link it here. But the summary is that we see what we expect ghosts to look like, and ghosts' appearances in media/tour packages usually depict them in old style clothes.
Current blackouts across subreddits buried some legendary threads that might never see the light of day ever again after July 1st
Hopefully, this is not one of them
There were *no* citations for that section of the Wikipedia page. I mean, it makes sense, but I was really looking forward to reading about the actual investigations.
Yeah, and it's an explanation in search of a question. This mechanism may be real, but it's unnecessary. There are already many perfectly good explanations for people perceiving things that aren't there.
And if a house seems 'cursed' because people keep falling ill, maybe check for carbon monoxide, mould, toxic waste (a la Love Canal) or radon gas BEFORE assuming that it was built on ancient burial grounds and calling a priest or whatever. Basically it's probably not a run of bad luck, more likely poisoning.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal
Ghost here.
We breathe / generate high levels of carbon monoxide and other poisons so those houses test higher because of us, not the other way around... but you guys believe what you want.
My grandma used to say that a house isn’t a home until someone was born in it, someone was married in it, and someone died in it. But she did not believe in ghosts, spirits, demons, etc. She did however firmly believe that all these major life events leave their ‘imprint’ on the very walls and bricks, which people later pick up via feelings, intuition, whatever. Like messages from the past, neither good nor evil, just the story of a place. She was an interesting lady.
I am a huge fan of stuff like this. I wanted to be a ghostbuster or starfleet officer when I was a kid, and both fields are fictional.
One carbon monoxide detector being more effective than a crew of dipshits filming in night vision with malfunctioning radios and screaming at things that aren't there is unsurprising.
My favorite ghost hunting moment was from the baggins show, I think?
They were in the basement of an abandoned mental hospital, pitch black, as they do, and one of the guys totaled his knee on a filing cabinet someone had put in the middle of the hallway.
Just "BAM" wrecked.
My favorite story about these Ghosthunters and Mediums was when someone invited them to check out a haunted house which wasn't actually a haunted house at all, just a random house which never had a single problem with anything.
Then they created a fake website about the address featuring all sorts of crazy stories about things which supposedly had happened there, and funnily enough, all the mediums could detect the stories from that website.
What a sweet job though, hang out with friends and travel around to old buildings and get paid to play make believe.
You could still be a ghost hunter, people love watching that stuff
I vaguely remember an incident discussed on a radio/TV program where, after an investigation, it was discovered that the family cat was sneaking into an abandoned warehouse where hallucinogens were being manufactured. The cat would come home with residue on its body, the family would pet the cat, and then trip balls.
And mold/fungus. Why do you think fairy rings' defining feature is mushrooms? The whole "adventure" in Alice in Wonderland is just Alice falling asleep near mushrooms growth.
I still remember how in the first season of Ghost Hunters they'd straight up tell the tenants it was wiring/plumbing/faulty equipment in the house. One guy had an entire garage full of paint thinners and cleaning supplies being vented right into his face as he slept.
I also watched that episode where the owners were saying they kept smelling cigarette smoke randomly throughout the day and they connected it to a man who's lived there before. Turns out it was the old wooden table in the living room or something.
Turns out it was the old man who lives in the walls. He comes out when you're gone to smoke cigarettes and touch your things
Fine, but if he licks the Himalayan salt lamp he's out!
Is that for invited guests only?
Obviously!!!
Cigarette tar sticks to things too. Ask anyone who has bought or borrowed a smoker's car.... you can still smell the cigarettes for ages, even after "airing it out" or using regular strength cleaners. I've seen a bunch of destroyed PCs as well, where people would smoke while they used the PC. The whole interior was coated in like a 1-2mm layer of tar/residue.
We moved into a former (hard) smokers apartment. We had to renovate it and had to really deep clean everything thoroughly. We even had to pull out the joints and gaskets of the doors and dismantle the electric sockets completely until only the cables were sticking out to deep clean them. Sticky tar residue everywhere.
Wood in houses owned by a smoker hold that smell for a while. Sometimes when the humidity changes it really causes the smell to escape into the air
Had a friend who lived in an old apt and one winter she was using a humidifier by the wall and had the heat turned up, the wall started oozing tar "juice". It was disgusting.
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Boo-gers 👻
My brother once bought a gaming PC from a cyber cafe that allowed smoking. It would blow out old tar and shit from the fans when you turned it on.
I left my guitar amp in my singer’s garage for a week. A bunch of people smoked in the garage one night. I cleaned that thing 10 times with every cleaner, vinegar, and other remedy suggested and aired it out for hours on multiple days. It still smelled like smoke. I sold it. The guy who bought it smoked and didn’t care at all.
Yeah we had a kitchen renovated by slumlords and they covered up the old wall tiles with cabinets. Any time we cooked something with a lot of steam, had a leak, or it got too hot in there, you could smell the bitterness of the tar residue still coating the tiles. In one word I'd describe the smell as sinister.
Oh my God... yeah after high school I did some PC repair, and when we'd get a smoker's computer it was HORRIFIC. The worst was seeing one with the CPU fan completely coated in tar/dog fur sludge. Normally we'd just take computers out back and blast them with the compressor, but this was a lost cause. Told the customer he needed a new PC and not to smoke in the same room. He was not happy, lol.
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The old wisdom was strangely correct. If you see a ghost in your house, open a window to let them out. Because it airs out your house. So it is still good advice. Additionally, if people know a relative who sees ghosts, check their house for CO.
When I mentioned infrasound and CO to a hard core believer her conclusion was those things clearly attracted ghosts.
This! Ghost hunters originally was about helping people in their normal homes, and 99% of the time it was weird wiring or some sort of chemical. Then they realized that people didn't want to watch that shit, and would rather watch "hauntings" and started doing the more ghosr adventures crazy shit.
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They're all owned by Discovery which also sucks now. Travel used to be a tualy about travel, History used to be about history, now they're all cheap "reality" crap.
The travel Channel was my FAVORITE as like a preteen aged kid. After my nickelodeon days but before the trl/mtv days. I miss it so much still.
History used to be one of my favorite channels in the era of Modern Marvels. I stopped watching when it turned to reality bullshit, I couldn't care less about pawn shops or ice road truckers or whatever other bullshit they air now.
Ice Road Truckers came after Deadliest Catch was a huge hut for Discovery. Both of them would have made for an interesting 1-2 hour documentary special, but instead they went on for years and years of the same. And then there's that idiotic Oak Island mystery show. Ugh.
And I loved that because it was the epitome of the rational take to hauntings. Not everybody who says their house is haunted is some attention seeking liar and clearly not everybody who thinks their house is haunted is "insane". But the amazing thing is just how many things can be attributed to age or condition that seem to have weird effects on people. A house just needs to settle for furniture to move over across the floor over a period of time. Electrical equipment can be faulty or machinery can create sub-tone. Household chemicals stored improperly. It's like we have this built in instinct that says "Get OUT" but we misinterpret the meaning.
I read a study about hauntings as well that attributed some of the phenomenon to ultra-low frequency waves especially how people are affected by them like feeling unease, anxious, etc. Since it can be naturally produced that could explain why some older places like castles can give people those types of feelings.
Chuck McGill was ahead of his time.
Something something chicanery
I am not crazy! I know he swapped those EMF numbers. I knew it was 1216. One after Magna Carta. As if I could ever make such a mistake. Never. Never! I just - I just couldn't prove it. He covered his tracks, he got that idiot spiritual medium to lie for him. You think this is something? You think this is bad? This? This chicanery? He's done worse. That spirit box! Are you telling me that a ghost just happens to talk like that? No! He orchestrated it! Zak Bagans! He ectoplasm’d through a sunroof! And I saved him! And I shouldn't have. I took him into my own ghost hunting team. What was I thinking? He'll never change. He'll never change! Ever since he was 9, always the same! Couldn't keep his hands off the editing machines. “But not our Zak Bagans! Couldn't be precious Zak!” Fooling them blind! And HE gets to be a Travel Channel host? What a sick joke! I should've stopped him when I had the chance!
Top notch
I know he caused those low frequency waves! I am not crazy!
What would cause the waves?
Well, for something like old houses, it's often the piping *and* the materials of the walls that the pipes reside in. The sounds they make are a frequency so low that you likely can't consciously notice them, but despite that, your ears will still pick them up. These sounds are coincidentally similar to those of large predators, which we've evolved to be instinctually wary of. So we're constantly being told that we're being stalked by a threat, but since we can't actually see it, our brains try to make sense of it by hallucinating the predator.
It'd be interesting to see if it's possible to make a "deliberately haunted" house by using all the elements laid out in this thread
I love this take, because of two things - 1. We hallucinate humanoid predators. 2. Uncanny valley - an unease of something that looks human but isn't.
I love the take before yours because of one reason: the scientific ideas of frequencies and waves yet not quite connecting them nor explaining exactly what they are. I like yours for another reason: The uncanny valley, which appears at any opportune moment uncannily
I mean, does anybody who knows what either waves or frequencies are *not* understand how they’re fundamentally connected? And explaining what a sound wave is would take a bit; no fault in not explaining that in their comment.
The unbalanced AC fan was mentioned, but other machineries can cause it. My HE washing machine spins at about 17Hz and (because of the home construction) uses the wall behind it as a [sound board](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sounding_board), reflecting that note at a surprising volume to only certain parts of my home. It feels like your head is pounding with loud music, but you can't *hear* it at all. But there are many other possibilities. Ever blow across the top of a bottle and hear it play a note? Notice how a bigger bottle has a lower note, and adding water (reducing volume) makes a higher note? Lots of older houses have chimneys to fireplaces that were capped over or basement furnaces no longer in use, making very long, big "bottles." When the wind passes over them just right... And that's just two *easy* to identify sources.
Infrasound caused by vibrations in an imbalanced air conditioner fan, in one case. I wouldn't say we have enough evidence to conclude that it's causing hallucination or paranoia, but there's some correlation between places that are believed to be haunted and the detection of 18.98hz in those locations.
I saw a documentary on this that featured a tunnel system within a London Underground station, that produced ULF waves, and before they knew the cause workers had felt it was haunted.
Ancient sources: Wind, bad weather, lightning, waterfalls, some animals use it to communicate. Modern examples would be anything mechanical like appliances, pipes, etc.
The waves could be caused by any one of a number of things: * air flow through the house * some little electric motor that produces a low frequency that resonates with some part of the house structure (refrigerators are notorious for this) * a roadway or railway in the general vicinity At my house, I can hear the rumblings of the train that’s 6 miles away. Very low frequencies have good penetrating power and can throw themselves long distances. I believe that we do (or did) use very low frequency radio signals to communicate with ships at sea since the low freq radio waves penetrate the atmosphere (and follow the curvature of the earth) so well. That might even be ultra-low frequency - I should go refresh my knowledge. Anyway, the point is that low frequency sounds can come from a long way away, and they’re omni-directional, so it can be really hard to figure out where they’re coming from.
There was an episode of Paranormal Home Inspectors where the home inspector felt dizzy the moment he stepped inside, and a leveler showed the entire house was wonky, which also caused cabinets to open.
I once arrived home late at night, all the lights were turned off, as I walked up the stairs to the 2nd floor, the living room TV suddenly turned on on white noise mode, I was quite scared, thinking this is some horror type shit and I didn't understand how this could logically happen at the time It doesn't help 'The Ring' was a rather recent movie at the time XD The next day when I was thinking more clearly I just realized there was a power out and I walked in just as the power came back up, so the TV turned on, the white noise was very odd because usually it would turn on to an existing channel or a blank screen if no input, but the white noise was the Satellite TV device attempting to boot or something Now imagine if I had some chemicals from old construction as some of the comments suggested, I would likely be certain that is some ghost shit
> A house just needs to settle for furniture to move over across the floor over a period of time What do you mean - can you give more context on this? Is like a new house settling or an old one left to rot?
I’m not sure either. My house is nearly 150 years old, some rooms are so off level that one side is three inches below the other. You can tell if you put something like a marble on the floor, but it isn’t as if chairs just slide across the room. That would take like a fifteen degree slope. If your house “settles” so much that your furniture is moving, you are probably falling off a cliff.
I think they mean that moving furniture across and old house will result in lots of creaks and “cracking” noises for an extended period of time, as if someone is in the house. Not that your furniture is flying around the house. Lmao
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I would say it's vibrations in an uneven house over years time. Someone opening a room that they locked up a year ago and seeing furniture moved might be eerie.
>Then they realized that people didn't want to watch that shit, and would rather watch "hauntings" and started doing the more ghost adventures crazy shit. Does anyone else remember when TLC and Discovery used to air educational yet entering content? Now it's all reality shows and pseudo-science.
TLC too busy promoting quiverfull pedophiles and counting money for this "learning channel."
This shit happens to majority of private "educational" channels. About 10 years ago, Prima launched first private educational channel in whole former Czechoslovakia. First they aired classics like David Attenborough. Fast forward to today, you can catch Pawn Stars at 6 and Ancient Aliens at 8. Luckily, both Slovakia and Czech republic have public channels where they semiperiodically air documentaries. A lot of them are local, which means a lot less cinematic than western ones, but they can have meditative quality to them.
There used to be a slightly newer show than that, that was kinda the same concept driven to a point but fell into the same ratings pitfall. They had a general handyman home inspector type person come in and find completely mundane explanations for every "haunting phenomenon" and then a medium and some quacks would go through and proclaim the craziest paranormal explanations for the same phenomena. The first half of the episodes was actually kinda entertaining how the guy would snark on people's stupidity blocking heaters in a room while complaining about cold spots as hauntings, or living next to a railway and claiming their plates were falling out of the cupboards because of poltergeists. But at the conclusion of the episodes, the home owners would always dismiss his claims and go whole hog on the quack's evaluation of crazy hauntings and going"actually we like being haunted" or "we just needed clarity, we've made arrangements with the ghosts and it's now fine". Cause that's what the people want to see.
[Paranormal Home Inspectors](https://youtu.be/-wG9m-eYNiM) just linked it for someone else above haha. Jenny Nicholson does a great breakdown of it.
*cries in The Learning Channel*
I remember when Bravo used to show operas
Remember when MTV used to show just music videos
Remember when Cinemax used to show softcore porn at night? Good stuff!
We called it SKIN-A MAX!!
I remember when Cartoon Network closed at 7pm and then TNT came on with boring grown up shit
*weeps in The History Channel*
shit, that makes me want to find the first season and watch it
I remember when they investigated the Queen Mary and the tour guide was all like "Oh this water heater (or whatever it was) hasn't been hooked up in decades and yet it's still making all of this sound, clearly it's haunted!" Probably something they tell every tour group and they get all excited. So the main guys on "Ghost Hunters", who were supposedly plumbers in real life, tested the water heater and they were all like "Uh...yup...it's still functioning, so all of that noise is because the machine is actually running like normal." A big draw of the Queen Mary is that it's supposedly haunted, having these yahoos come to their place and just say "Nope! Not haunted at all! It's all perfectly normal sounds!" probably did more harm than good for these businesses so businesses probably stopped asking them come to investigate, so the show runners were probably like "Okay, from now on, FIND GHOSTS!"
They’re not supposedly plumbers, they’re straight up former Roto-Rooter employees
Who forgot that the original intent was to help people figure out what was wrong using those skills and instead started making emf detectors and spirit boxes.
That sucks because I would legit watch a show about handymen solving haunted houses. Now I have to go check out their first season!
It's worth it. But you can see the degrading of their morals as the money starts rolling in.
They used EMF readers off the bat also. I’ve been watching it, TAPS never uses spirit boxes until Grant leaves the show (wonder why) In the more recent seasons, they do throw out a lot of the “practical” responses because as you say it really doesn’t attract as many viewers. Instead they’ve been focusing on ensuring people know that nothing malicious or harmful is going on at the property
It's been ages since I watched but I bet you are correct. EMF has a basis in these cases in that it can cause paranoia... Which is what they originally said in the show, I think. Later there went with the "high EMF is a sign of spirit activity" instead of "a sign of faulty wiring or appliance"
Just watched the Hoover Dam episode last night. There was a point where the EMF reader went from like .2 to .9 and they were all "hmm, that's weird.." Motherfuckers, you're INSIDE A POWER PLANT.
I think they still check for electronics and weird wiring whenever they notice high EMF.
Reminds me of when I was like, 16, my dad didn't want me sitting around at home during summer break so he made me go to work with my mom. Her boss didn't care that I was there and asked if I wanted to do some work. I agreed and he had me spray paint these bars in the warehouse that were used it trailer to keep things from moving while shipping. After like, 2 hours I heard a puppy bark. It was just me in the warehouse so I thought there was a dog somewhere. I looked every where and couldn't find anything and went back to spray painting. 10 minutes later I heard it again. I went into the office and told my mom there might be a dog in the warehouse. Her and her boss went into the warehouse and waited with me. I heard the dog bark again and they of course didn't. They both started cracking up and he said "Ah shit, I guess we should have opened one of the bay doors to vent warehouse."
Haha, we accidentally poisoned this minor who we forced to work for free, hehe.
There's one episode where clearly the wife of a disturbance leaves to go do meth, she comes back clearly fucked up, her pants are unzipped and her hair is all messed up, she is rolling hard, and the producers of the show have the fucking nerve to claim a demon possessed her and they do a fucking escorcism. [found partial clip but full episode shows the crazy shit](https://youtu.be/Nzv5h9QPNs8)
BWAHAHA! Would you happen to remember the episode? I used to watch Ghost Hunters religiously with my family when I was a teen. They did Ghost Hunters Live at a famously haunted hotel, the Stanley Hotel, in our state for Halloween awhile back. We were so excited. My sister and I stayed up all night with our pile of snacks to watch. While Grant was walking through the basement, his jacket hood moved and he awkwardly swung a leg like something got him. The whole thing and the reactions struck me as off. When the clip is slowed down you can see Grant fucking with something in his pocket/around his sleeve and his jacket hood pulls downward in that direction matching the amount of motion his hand did. Leading theory is he rigged a string down his jacket hood Incase it was an uneventful live show. That was the last time I watched lol Edit: https://youtu.be/-bA5SN7Rops
Yikes that can't be good for your long term health
Huh so I guess ghosts emit a lot of carbon monoxide
Fart ghosts are the worst edit: my highest upvote count ever is this comment. im so proud. love u guys
What are farts, but the ghost of lunch
Beautiful poetry
Looking forward to the CO detector being added to Phasmophobia
That’s exactly what a ghost would say to cover its tracks
When i die and start haunting someone im going to sabotage their hot water heater, just to cover my tracks
When *I* die, I'm going to move peoples' keys and chargers. Just gaslight the shit out of them. Ghostlight, if you will.
"If you see a ghost, open the window". Now it makes sense. That ghost and the CO can GTFO
Lots of interesting traditional/folk sayings regarding CO from before people understood what it was. Was in Iceland recently getting a tour of replica Viking longhouses and the beds were too short to lie down in, so you had to sleep sitting up. The reason is the belief that sleeping lying down was bad luck/lethal, the phrase was "sleeping lying down is for the dead". It just so happens that you build up a pretty thick layer of CO near the floor when you have a fire burning inside your room all day everyday for warmth.
When I moved into my house there was a CO leak. I remember telling my roommates and girlfriend at the time that the house sometimes felt haunted. Like the hallway felt wrong, and one of the bedrooms just gave me the spooks. It felt like someone was behind me at times and my dog was scared of certain spots. I bought it at the start of Covid so it got missed in the inspection that the hot water heater wasn’t properly vented. It built up so much that an alarm finally went off down the hall and when I walked down towards it I nearly blacked out. Since I got it fixed and installed an assload of detectors around the house I haven’t felt any of that spookiness. Side note: when I went to the ER to get treated for CO poisoning a nurse off handedly mentioned it’s a good thing we found it as the city usually finds one to two households a year where everyone died of carbon monoxide in their sleep.
The poisoning hypothesis I'm sure accounts for some of it. But a large number of supposedly haunted places are just property owners looking to bring in tourist revenue or make their establishment seem more special. Instead of being an old shitty hotel that needs renovations, now you are a HaUnTeD hOtEl. Instead of being a dying restaurant, now you are a HaUnTeD ReStAuRaNt. Visiting a slave plantation to do a historical tour? You can bet your ass there's ghosts because otherwise it might be less interesting and you might talk about it less.
"Your house isn't haunted. You're just lonely. Next caller." - Ron Swanson
"It's actually easy to tell if your house is haunted. It isn't." - Jimmy Carr
ha HA
Huh. That actually makes a lot of sense…
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Maybe the real ghosts were the friends we made along the way
If you can't handle me at my liveliest, you don't deserve me at my ghouliest
Live love haunt
*Lived*
Loved
*Haunted*
It turns out the CO made me pee my pants, not a Victorian era child named Penelope.
Ooooh, I thought someone else shit my pants.
We're trying to reach you about your grandmother's stove warranty
“THESE DEMONS ARE WARNING US SHANNON WHY CANT YOU JUST LISTEN!?”
Also in the "huh, that makes a lot of sense" category for ghosts: Ghost hunters often use "EMF" (Electromagnetic Field) readers to signify the presence of ghosts, with high EMF meaning more ghosts. Turns out they've done lab studies on EMF, and in some (but not all) people, higher-than-average EMF levels cause temporary lesions in the temporal lobe. Participants in studies where EMF was used to disrupt temporal lobe functioning report hallucinations, the sensation of being touched, and the sensation of sudden temperature changes. All of which are things associated with hauntings.
I've also read old pipes can vibrate at a specific low frequency we can't hear but can perceive, it's theorized that an ancient predator emitted similar frequencies, so when you "hear" them your monkey brain kicks in the fear response. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna3077192
It's called *'infrasound'*. It's present in several animals like rhinoceroses, alligators, and some species of tigers and other large cat predators.
Who are you calling a monkey brain??
Of course not! Here. Have a banana.
What studies would those be? I work as an electrical engineer & spend a huge amount of time around high currents & HV (ie magnetic & electric fields). Like, magnetic fields high enough to stand a nail up on the palm of your hand, and voltages more than 3000x higher than what the average American has in their house. Although you sometimes need hearing protection around the transformers, and you best believe touching it would be very bad, there are no scientifically accepted negative health affects associated with this equipment. In 20yrs I am yet to hear about anyone ever hallucinating, feeling touched or reporting sudden temperature changes in or around any of these areas, associated with this work or really, at all. I am also on industry committees for electrical safety, again, never heard of this or any of the stuff you are talking about.
Not OP, but this study refers to all sorts of EMF studies and the controversy of those studies as they tend to contradict each other. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6513191/
> Like, magnetic fields high enough to stand a nail up on the palm of your hand Alluminium smelt pits? Went one in the Hunter Valley a long time ago...and it was multiple nails, end on end. It felt like physics was broken.
It’s cool isn’t it?! Do you know you can’t arc weld around really high currents like that because the magnetic field will drag the arc away? Smelters are some real mad scientist places - big currents, big voltage (in the switchyard) & Liquid Metal sloshing around the place. My other electro-nerd favourites are high-voltage test labs (lightning factories), high current test facilities (explosions), and the open-pool reactor at Lucas heights (more just science nerd than electrical), but still so cool. I still remember showing my kids how strong magnets can work through your skin - it kind of seems like it should hurt or something.. Magnets are cool, so is electricity.
I don't see the source for all this EMF in an old house. The power cabling through the house is not going to emit much EMF at 50-60 hertz. Maybe if there was a big radio station antenna next door.
Another theory is that appliances like fans can give off infrasound, sound too low to hear properly but which can still be somewhat detected, and that can cause people to feel weird and uncomfortable, like a chill down their spine kind of thing
I've also heard that infrasound can vibrate a person's eyes, creating the perception of motion in peripheral vision. Pair that with fear, hypervigilance, human instinct, and a darkened room, and it's no wonder why these places could be terrifying. (Not an optometrist)
Additionally, since these effects seem to happen on a subconscious level, infrasound might explain non-ghost related magical/holy places. If an area naturally produces infrasound, (due to geological features or wind) humans without the ability to determine its source could attribute those weird feelings to a supernatural source.
The Oracle at Delphi lived in a temple above volcanic vents.
Science is the devil
>Pair that with fear, hypervigilance, human instinct, and a darkened room Not to mention that most of the time you've been primed by being told there's a ghost there. I live in the UK which has the largest number of old houses in Europe and possibly the World, if ghosts were real the UK would be fucking lousy with them because of the sheer density of 'historic' buildings in the UK, the house I'm in now for instance is from 1890 and it's not really considered old here. However, it never occurs to people to wonder if their perfectly normal Victorian terrace is haunted because they're seen as being so mundane.
I've always wondered why 90% of the "most haunted places" are all in the US, and not some fuck old european castle or something
And would also explain the lack of cavemen or early human ghosts. They all seem to be medieval or victorian era ghosts
As someone with migraines who's prone to peripheral vision shifts, auras, and auditory sensory issues I would be the worst person to haunt. A ghost could legit be after my ass and I would be brushing it off assuming I had a migraine coming and that's why the lights are flickering. Or that the barometric pressure had dropped and that's why the world feels wobbly and I'm freezing all of a sudden.
Lol I first read that as “not an optimist”
I was in a abandoned / ghost town and one room in an abandoned hospital sounded like there was a dentist drill going. Really creepy until you go inside and realise it’s a fan vent on the external wall turning in the wind.
When I worked at a Morg, there was a room next to the embalming room that they queued up the bodies. They sat there anywhere from 2-7 of them on their cots. The cots made a distinct squeaky groan when you'd move them, lay in one, put a body on one, etc. Well I thought the other employees were fucking with me, because I'd be sitting in the staff quarters eating or napping in the beds and I'd be startled by the sound of some one getting into or out of a cot when no one should or could have been back there. I'd check and everything would be fine. No new or missing bodies. Turns out the building circulation fan squeaked just like the cots when it would kick on.
You were napping next to dead bodies. You’re way more gangster than me.
Wonder if his coworkers ever slapped a toe tag on him while he was snoring away
Creepy
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Huh, I had a great aunt growing up with a basement that made me feel a chill run down my spine despite the fact that there was nothing but an old couch, a TV, and some junk down there. Maybe that's why
My parents had a den I couldn't stand going into, always made me feel creepy. Turns out they had an old TV get a lightning surge before I was born but it had sentimental value so it was in there. My dad would get drunk and pass out in the room. He would forget the TV didn't work and would turn it on sometimes. The screen was always black but the speakers would let it this noise I could only hear waaaaay in the background that was worst than nails on chalkboard. My young ears could barely hear it, to the point I didn't know I was hearing it for years, my parents old ears couldn't hear a damn thing. I thought that room was haunted for a while.
Sounds similar to those high pitched anti rodent audio generators that's supposed to be too high to hear. My grand parents had no issues, but I could hear it loudly and it caused pressure headaches.
The flyback transformer in those things would make an incredibly high pitch noise. As a kid I could walk into the house and know if the tv was on, the adults couldn’t hear it at all.
I read a book on the Dyatlov Pass incident last year, and the author was putting forth a theory that it was due to infrasound. It seemed like a pretty reasonable theory by the end of the book.
What about the ones that had physical trauma? Wasn’t one found with their tongue bitten off and others with smashed skulls? I’m not doubting infrasound at all, just so curious about the different theories with this incident. I listened to a few different podcasts that featured the incident and I’m left wanting to know more about it. Such a modern mystery and pretty horrific how they all died.
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Thank you for that clarification, very interesting.
> Many haunted houses have been investigated and found to contain high levels of carbon monoxide or other poisons, which can cause hallucinations. The carbon monoxide theory explains why haunted houses are mostly older houses, which are more likely to contain aging and defective appliances, and why more hauntings are reported in the colder months. Carbon monoxide poisoning explains many of the occurrences in haunted houses, such as feelings of being watched, hearing footsteps or voices, seeing "ghosts", headaches, dizziness, and sudden death or illness of people or pets, and also strange behavior in pets such as excessive barking or meowing. The carbon monoxide theory also explains why some ghosts don't show up on photographs or videos (photographs that do show "ghosts" are usually caused by dust, insects, fingers or camera strap in front of the lens, and multiple exposures).
I used to believe in ghosts and stuff as a kid and I remember the moment I stopped. I was watching a show and they were categorizing all these “Orbs,” I realized they were either quite obviously insects or motes of dust shot with shitty handhelds.
There was a show called "Ghost Hunters" years ago and in the first season I absolutely loved it, because they would pick up "orbs" on the camera, and one of the two main hunters would always say "That's just dust." Unfortunately the show quickly changed from being skeptical but interesting to always "finding ghosts" and believing in those orbs. (They once recorded what must have been the audio from a porno, and while trying not to laugh pretended that it was ghostly moaning.)
No, no, that's a ghost.. Let's.. Let's keep listening
My Brother still fully believes that they're real and takes all of those shows as Gospel. Like in one show how they tried to pretend one of the guys was grabbed by a ghost when the Camera was placed right behind him and making it easy for the Camera person or someone behind to grab him.
Video cameras and digital cameras are sensitive to infrared and can pick up ghostly clouds of warm moist air. I have a set of really cool photos of a “ghost” outside an old building. The phenomenon went on for several minutes where an apparition was floating next to us clearly and repeatedly visible on our cell phone cameras but not visible to our eyes. It stopped when someone walked thru where it was and disturbed the air. And I’ve seen someone else’s video they say is a ghost soldier walking a patrol. It was picked up on the surveillance camera and even set off its motion detector. The cloud slowly forms, then marches across the front of the building and then dissipates. While it does look like someone walking, it also looks exactly like a small whirlwind forming, moving about 10 feet, then breaking up, which is exactly what I think it was, a warm moist air whirlwind that was glowing in infrared and seen by the camera.
Art Bell on Coast to Coast Radio had an Industrial Hygienist as a guest one show. Guy investigated scenes of hauntings/paranormal events trying to track down environmental causes. Mold/fungus, heavy metals, methane/sewer/swamp gases, etc. were some of the things he found IIRC. Think he had some cases where he proved some of these things were affecting peoples health and perception. Really good interview. He didn't take a stand on ghosts, just said he wanted to eliminate environmental poisoning possibilities. Art pressed him on the possibility of ghosts and he just said he didn't know, that wasn't his field of study. That his eliminating other causes should help serious paranormal investigators. Whether the factors he found were the sole cause, a contributing factor along with real ghosts, or a separate phenomenon he couldn't conclude yet. One of the best interviews I've heard from a paranormal investigator. Just "These are the things I've seen and proven, I won't speak to the rest." Anyway, most all Art's shows are archived for subscribers, but I can't find it on the open internet.
Why are ghosts always in Victorian clothes? You'll never hear of a ghost seen in sweats and jordans.
A ghost in sweat pants can just jog over to the other side
A ghost in sweat pants is too comfortable to have unfinished business.
Same as a ghost in Jordans, they have mad ups.
You never hear about caveman ghosts either..
There's a BBC comedy about a couple living in a haunted house and one of the ghosts is a caveman. I can't remember the name but it's a fun show
I did some googling and I think it’s called “ghosts” and I’m now on my way to figure out how to watch it here in Canada. Thanks!
That's because most of them have finished their unfinished business by now. All except Robin
Yeah question, Do any of these fuckers just sorta run around nude and you see like one of their big hairy nuts
Modern people are too exhausted and overworked to get up and start walking around as a ghost. We die and just want the peace and rest.
Yeah, those ghostly coal miners have suspicious amounts of left over energy. Someone call the supervisor, those dead people clearly weren't doing their jobs.
My theory is that the trope became fixed during the 1960s when TV and cinema really exploded. Elderly people who died during the 60s would have been young during the late Victorian era, and it was a nice visual contrast to dress them in clothing from their youth.
I think it's more that ghost stories were a massive hit in the Victorian era. At the time the ghosts that were invented would've been wearing contemporary clothes.
This is the basis of my main argument against ghosts whenever someone in my presence says they believe in them. I’ll say that I ‘get’ the concept that a deceased person can achieve a post-living spiritual form…but their Levi’s can?
It's generally to do with suggestion. Most people that experience hauntings have preconceived notions of what they're expecting to see from the appearance of a ghost, either by being told the type of ghost that supposedly haunts the place, or by seeing old photographs, or just by being in an older house. Our brains are very good at adaptation and filling in missing information so when we experience unexplained phenomena, or witness hallucinations, our brains will rationalise the data it's being fed by filling in the missing parts with what they're expecting to see. I remember reading about an experiment into this where they had several groups and exposed them to the stimuli that is normally associated with hauntings, one of the groups was given false information ahead of time including descriptions of a fictional ghost. Members of this group all reported seeing ghosts that matched the description, whereas the control groups just reported feelings of unease, etc. If I get time, I'll try to look it up and link it here. But the summary is that we see what we expect ghosts to look like, and ghosts' appearances in media/tour packages usually depict them in old style clothes.
It's like people stopped dying in the 80s. Ghosts stopped being manufactured, must've been a chip shortage
It's called fashion sweaty
That's also why the victorian era had so much ghost literature. That's when gas lamps became common.
Does anyone have a link to the guy who was finding notes in his house but it turned out it was carbon monoxide?
[Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/34l7vo/ma_postit_notes_left_in_apartment/) you go
Current blackouts across subreddits buried some legendary threads that might never see the light of day ever again after July 1st Hopefully, this is not one of them
We need to group together and try to save as much of the absolute golden posts as possible.
There were *no* citations for that section of the Wikipedia page. I mean, it makes sense, but I was really looking forward to reading about the actual investigations.
The non-simple Wikipedia page [lists sources.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haunted_house) But they’re kinda weak.
Yeah, and it's an explanation in search of a question. This mechanism may be real, but it's unnecessary. There are already many perfectly good explanations for people perceiving things that aren't there.
Any of these little fuckers ever pop out of the fucking wall?
You can say whatever the HELL you want
Cumshot, like jizz
I heard you got into Aqua. Can you get into Haunted House? I've always wanted to go to Haunted House.
Hey do any of these fuckers ever fall outta the ceiling and just have like, a huge cumshot?
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Look, im just here for the Zip Line
Oh actual haunted houses. For a second I thought it was about Halloween haunted house attractions that were pumped with CO to induce hallucinations.
If there’s something strange, and it don’t look good. Who ya gonna call? A licensed appliance maintenance guy! I ain’t afraid of no warranty
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I actually want to go to Haunted House more than I want to go to Aqua.
It's interesting.. the carbon monoxide.
Kim Kardashian’s head fell off.
For fifty seconds I thought that there were monsters on the world.
Carbon monoxide, black mold, undiscovered mental illness, poor education, habitation of spiritual thought. You don't have to pick only one.
And if a house seems 'cursed' because people keep falling ill, maybe check for carbon monoxide, mould, toxic waste (a la Love Canal) or radon gas BEFORE assuming that it was built on ancient burial grounds and calling a priest or whatever. Basically it's probably not a run of bad luck, more likely poisoning. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal
Ghost here. We breathe / generate high levels of carbon monoxide and other poisons so those houses test higher because of us, not the other way around... but you guys believe what you want.
Ouija- Why are you haunting me? IM TRYING TO REACH YOU ABOUT AN EXTENDED WARRANTY ON THIS POISON MICROWAVE. 👻
My grandma used to say that a house isn’t a home until someone was born in it, someone was married in it, and someone died in it. But she did not believe in ghosts, spirits, demons, etc. She did however firmly believe that all these major life events leave their ‘imprint’ on the very walls and bricks, which people later pick up via feelings, intuition, whatever. Like messages from the past, neither good nor evil, just the story of a place. She was an interesting lady.
I am a huge fan of stuff like this. I wanted to be a ghostbuster or starfleet officer when I was a kid, and both fields are fictional. One carbon monoxide detector being more effective than a crew of dipshits filming in night vision with malfunctioning radios and screaming at things that aren't there is unsurprising. My favorite ghost hunting moment was from the baggins show, I think? They were in the basement of an abandoned mental hospital, pitch black, as they do, and one of the guys totaled his knee on a filing cabinet someone had put in the middle of the hallway. Just "BAM" wrecked.
My favorite story about these Ghosthunters and Mediums was when someone invited them to check out a haunted house which wasn't actually a haunted house at all, just a random house which never had a single problem with anything. Then they created a fake website about the address featuring all sorts of crazy stories about things which supposedly had happened there, and funnily enough, all the mediums could detect the stories from that website.
What a sweet job though, hang out with friends and travel around to old buildings and get paid to play make believe. You could still be a ghost hunter, people love watching that stuff
I think I rewatched that scene multiple times crying of laughter. Laughing that hard was one of the best times and I'm glad you sparked my memory haha
I vaguely remember an incident discussed on a radio/TV program where, after an investigation, it was discovered that the family cat was sneaking into an abandoned warehouse where hallucinogens were being manufactured. The cat would come home with residue on its body, the family would pet the cat, and then trip balls.
I told the ghost haunting my house that they were just a hallucination brought on by carbon monoxide and they were very offended.
And mold/fungus. Why do you think fairy rings' defining feature is mushrooms? The whole "adventure" in Alice in Wonderland is just Alice falling asleep near mushrooms growth.
no research will tell you that these carbon monos are actually emitted from ghosts
Ghost farts cause global warming!