Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Infrasound as an explanation for hauntings?

I've been seeing some opinions lately that infrasound (sound below 20Hz, the "normal" limit of human hearing) is the explanation for cases of hauntings.  This whole thing apparently goes back to a paper written by Vic Tandy and Tony R. Lawrence who found that infrasound is capable of causing sensory phenomena suggestive of ghostly activity under certain circumstances.  Infrasound is apparently capable of producing feelings of unease or fear in humans and can cause visual anomalies at the right frequency.  The concept of infrasound affecting people has been expanded since with less specific emphasis on ghostly phenomena.

It's obvious to me that under certain circumstances just about anything can emulate a genuine haunting.  The issue here is that just demonstrating that it's possible has seemed to morph into a kind of "all hauntings are infrasound" attitude among some people.  This isn't really accurate and there has been some work that shows no difference between groups that were exposed to infrasound and those that were not, as regards "ghostly" feelings or experiences.  That work can be found here.  (If you'd rather not read all five parts you can skip to Part 5 which gives an explanation of the results.)

With this in mind, I think it's premature to declare all hauntings and ghostly phenomena as the result of infrasound, especially given the specific conditions required to produce the effect in the first place.  If you would like to read more about infrasound, including Vic Tandy's experience, then please see the Wikipedia article on infrasound.

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