How come ghosts are associated with high EMFs (electromagnetic frequencies)? Do the EMFs provide the “ghosts” or do the ghosts cause higher EMFs? Let’s investigate…
Researchers in England and other countries were looking into what occurs in the human brain during a haunting (or the illusion of haunting).
In 2004, the psychologist Christopher French conducted an experiment by building a “haunted” room in a flat in London. The room was tricked out with electromagnetic sources and infrasound generators. It was cool and dimly lit.
French and his colleagues then invited 79 volunteers (via the internet) to spend time in this room. Before they entered, the researchers let the participants know they might experience strange things (like a presence, or tingling). The volunteers had psychological evaluation to determine their suggestibility to the idea of the paranormal, being asked questions such as whether they believed in an afterlife or whether they had ever had a precognitive event.
Twin coils hidden in the room’s walls were sending out EMF pulses up to 50 microTeslas. The researchers sent low-frequency infrasound signals into the room using a computer too, just below the range of human hearing. The volunteers were either exposed to EMFs, or the infrasound, a mixture of both, or none at all.
As for the results, French said that “Most people reported at least some slightly odd sensation, such as a presence or feeling dizzy, and some reported terror, which we hadn’t expected. Terror is obviously quite an extreme reaction, and we only anticipated getting reports of mildly anomalous sensations in the context of this particular experiment.”
However, French and his colleagues couldn’t definitively conclude that these feelings were caused by the EMFs.
(In my opinion, the researchers were priming their volunteers to experience odd things by telling them that they might feel odd things before the experiment started.)
But where did this idea of EMFs and infrasound causing people to see or experience ghosts come from?
The neuroscientist Michael Persinger conducted research studies into EMFs and their effects on the brain. One such study from 1996 concentrated on a 17 year old girl who claimed she was being visited by the Holy Spirit at night and had an invisible baby perched on her left shoulder.
After some investigation, Persinger found there was an electrical alarm clock next to her bed, 10 inches from her head while she was asleep. Testing revealed the clock was giving out electromagnetic pulses that had waveforms similar to those that can trigger epileptic seizures in humans. This, combined with a congenital brain injury that the girl had, was the cause of her hallucinations. Once the clock was removed, her nightly ghost visits stopped.
In a 1998 Journal of the Society for Psychical Research article (The Ghost in the Machine), Vic Tandy and Tony Lawrence did an experiment where they detected an infrasound wave (with a frequency of 18.9 hertz) in a factory where the workers had been reporting supernatural experiences.
EMFs can affect the human body in different ways, not just the brain. They can affect cells and enzymes, and even DNA if they are the right strength. EMFs are emitted by things like electrical appliances, power lines and towers, clock radios, mobile phones, computers, and x-rays. They can also be naturally produced by geological formations or part of the Earth’s magnetic field.
EMFs are usually categorised into two types depending on their wavelength:
- Non-ionising (low-level radiation which is generally not dangerous to humans in small amounts but can still cause oxidative stress over time)
- Ionising (high-level radiation which is more likely to alter cells and cause DNA damage).
The further away you are from an EMF source, the less it can affect you.
EMFs can cause panic, disorientation, terror, and hallucinations, which are things that often happen with hauntings. However, scientific research has not been able to 100% prove that hauntings are caused by EMFs.
“Ghostly” stuff is probably more likely to happen at night because that is the time when solar winds affect the Earth’s magnetosphere the most – causing the planet’s magnetic field to stretch out on the hemisphere that is in darkness. The expanded field is therefore more likely to affect people’s brains.
Medical research has examined what electrical fields can do to parts of the brain. For example, if the angular gyrus part of the brain is electrically stimulated, it causes the sensation of someone standing behind you copying your movements! Other parts of the brain, when electrically stimulated, can cause hallucinations or near-death experiences (NDEs).
Infrasound, or low-frequency sound waves below 20 Hertz, can cause nervous and uneasy feelings and the sense of a presence nearby, even though the human ear cannot hear those frequencies. Infrasound can also vibrate the human eyes, making it more likely for one to see things that aren’t there.
Some paranormal investigators have claimed that ghosts cause high EMF levels, e.g. the TAPS team in the TV series Ghost Hunters. Another theory that gradually developed among paranormal investigators following Michael Persinger’s study is that high EMFs create a more supportive environment for paranormal activity, providing ghosts with energy to use to manifest. Some paranormal investigators will even induce higher EMF levels to encourage more strange activity during a supernatural investigation.
In A Dark Heritage – The Nighthunter, the different species of Ghosts absorb a different sort of energy when they feed off living humans. A close approximation of what that energy would be on Earth is neurological energy. They detect powerful emotions, particularly adrenaline-fuelled ones such as terror or anger, and latch onto the person feeling them. The more energy they absorb, the more the Ghosts can cause destruction and more frightening manifestations, which causes more emotion for them to feed on. If a Ghost feeds on a human for long enough, they are drained into a lifeless husk.
Sources:
- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ghost-lusters-if-you-want/
- https://notebookofghosts.com/2017/11/29/in-my-commonplace-book-electromagnetic-fields-ghosts/
- https://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/afterlife/ghost3.htm
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6025786/#:~:text=EMFs%20influence%20metabolic%20processes%20in,through%20a%20range%20of%20mechanisms.
Nightwalks 