Poltergeists: Spirits of the Dead or Uncontrolled Psychokinesis?

Of all ghostly phenomena, poltergeists are the most startling.  Objects move, appear and disappear, and the poltergeist may even lash out at people violently.  The popular notion of the poltergeist is reflected in the meaning of its name:  "noisy spirit."  There are some that believe that poltergeist activity may actually come from a living human being.  How is that possible?  Spontaneous recurrent psychokinesis (RSPK).

The trend in parapsychology in recent years has been to lean toward the RSPK explanation for poltergeist activity.  This makes some sense as poltergeist activity is commonly focused on one person, the activity only present in their vicinity.  This explanation proposes that some individuals, when under emotional distress, will release that tension through psychokinesis.  These people are usually completely unaware that they are causing these strange events and many are terrified of what's happening.  This leads to the belief in a noisy spirit haunting the person or place.

This implies that people are capable of amazing feats of psychokinesis when under stress, but they are not in conscious control of what happens.  This explanation also requires no idea of an afterlife to explain poltergeist activity.  Poltergeist activity, however, is only one small part of the greater realm of ghosts and hauntings.

Then again, maybe both the spirits-of-the-dead and the RSPK theories are accurate.  If a deceased person is able to perform the seemingly impossible feats of a poltergeist then why wouldn't a living person be able to do the same?  I have no preference, myself.  I think that one is just as likely as the other and that they are not mutually exclusive.  I am convinced of the human capacity for psychokinesis and I also find it likely that we continue on in some form after death.  I hope that future research will shed light on both of these subjects.

If you would like to read more about ghosts, poltergeists, and the quest for answers then please see this article.

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.