December 5, 2015 • 58 mins
While humanity has yet to generate any universally-accepted proof of ghosts or hauntings, millions of people around the world report seeing apparitions or experiencing ghostly encounters every year (and sometimes these events cluster around specific areas). Why? Is there any possible explanation for the purported appearance of ghosts?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups, histories with
unexplained events. You can turn back then or learn the
stuff they don't want you to now. Hello, and welcome
back to the show. My name is Matt and I'm Ben,
(00:21):
but I am null and most importantly you are here,
which makes this, ladies and gentlemen, anohing episode of stuff
they don't want you to know. And this is our
first time being together in the studio and in a
little while, isn't it. Since the Turkey Times, it's been
a lovely holiday break for all except for Matt. No,
(00:42):
it was great, good. Yeah, we all right, guess what
we're getting into this Now you're gonna have to wait
on your ghost content, y'alls, because we're gonna talk about
driving in a car for twelve and a half hours
with U by eBay. That's right. It was incredible. Yeah,
you feel like you know yourself better. Yeah, I know
the whole family. The whole family knows itself and h
(01:04):
we are all one. It's good to know. Yeah, it
looks good. I feel like I know you better. Excellent.
At one point we're driving down the road and uh
sons in the back and he is just inconsolable, and
we just finished changing him and he got the feed
for a while, and we're making a horrible time, supposed
to like take eight and a half hours to get
(01:25):
down where we're going, and it was already up words
of ten. So Diana said, you know what we're doing this.
She just leaned over him and fed him mid drive.
I thought you were gonna say she chucked him up
to one down. No, no, not this time, not yet.
It's a little early for that. But yeah, doing some
dangerous things on the highway, guys. And am I gonna
(01:49):
get in trouble for that? No? We do. Yeah, I
don't know the law. Maybe I'm going to go out
on a limb and say that I hope law enforcement
has something better to do. Yeah, I guess you're right.
But it was terrifying at the same time. So, speaking
of families and terror, I'm the only one who's gonna
share about my turkeys. Turkey times. I went to dinner
(02:11):
with my mom. We we ate, but we had a buffet.
It was you know, that's my favorite kind. It was good.
And then we went and saw the new Bond film, which,
as it turns out, was called Specter speaking of fantastic. Yeah. So,
as you have probably noticed from several of the incredibly
(02:33):
um clever hints that we have dropped in the beginning
of the episode, today we're going to return to a
topic that is interested a lot of our listeners, a
lot of our audience, and we have done a couple
of podcasts and videos on in the past, and that
is Oh my good, spooky ghosts. Spooky go So, first
(02:55):
things first, what is a ghost? What what do we
mean when we say that's a ghost. That's when you
leave the party and don't say goodbye to anybody. Okay,
I'm sorry, guys, That's just how I am, and that's
how I'm going to be. Oh oh god, I wish
I knew more context about why or which party it happened.
(03:19):
Any social occasion, you can't just walk around and say
goodbye to forty something people. You will never be able
to leave. Uh So, a ghost is the spirit of
a dead person, right then it's either not moved on
or it's returned from the grave. And then you have
terms like spirit and the definitions can vary wildly. Some
(03:43):
people describe the spirit as a person's soul well you know.
Others believe it's more of an energetic imprint that a
person leaves behind, sort of a psychic thumb print that
they leave when they pass on. I like that idea,
the idea that perhaps if there is a ghost, then
it is the energy of someone who was here before.
And it's not necessarily a thing that you can point to,
(04:04):
like a ghost or a spirit. It's just this imprint
that they've made. I love that idea, and I mean,
as we'll talk about later. And I've got a particular
story in mine. That can be something physical that is
left behind and that you then associate meaning connect meaning
to after the fact and that you know, I mean,
or it could be something a little bit more ephemeral.
(04:24):
Let's we'll get into as well, exactly. And one of
the great things about this kind of belief, if if
you do believe personally in these kind of things, the
spirits and goes, it's not in the fringes at all.
This is something that's been around for a long time
that a lot of you know, uh, really intelligent people
have believed in. And we talked about it before, and
it's also one of those things that it's extremely helpful,
(04:48):
helpful for the human experience to have a belief like this. Yeah.
I mean even Winston Churchill reported seeing ghosts, the ghost
of Abraham Lincoln while walking into a White House bedroom
in the Nude. Apparently, Churchill regarded Lincoln with a very pithy,
good evening, Mr President, do you seem to have me
at a disadvantage? That's not bad, That's not bad at all.
(05:12):
Working on the Churchill, I wonder what Lincoln said back.
Probably just gave him the dead eyes. According to this story,
the apparition of Abraham Lincoln kind of smirked and thats
appeared smiled. I was close. That's how Churchill said it. Um.
So Interestingly enough, Winston Churchill spent his entire life convinced
(05:35):
that he heard certain voices that changed the course of
his fate, and so he blamed a lot of or
not blamed. He attributed a lot of the close calls
in his childhood and adult life with these voices saying
things like, not that side of the carriage moved to
the other side. WHA, So who's the who's to say? Um?
(05:59):
For those believe in psychic powers, there's the idea that
maybe Churchill had some sort of sensitivity his antenna were
tuned to a different frequency, or maybe he was being
controlled by extraterrestrials, or maybe he was slightly schizophrenic. Yeah,
we could take our pick and we'll get to some
of those ideas or causes have seen ghosts that Another
example would be like Arthur Conan Doyle, famous creator of
(06:22):
Sherlock Holmes. He was very much a man of his time,
and if you were a man of your time at
that time, it meant that you thought mediums were the
real deal. That's a shame, because I mean to have
created a character like Sherlock Holmes, who was supposed to
be able to just see through the b as that
anyone was putting out there. I find it a little
bit troubling that that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was taken
(06:45):
in by these mediums who have pretty pretty much been
debunked across the board. But I can imagine that being
an exciting, a very thrilling, just thing to do after work,
after you've been writing for a long time. I'll go
down and even if just pretend it's almost like you're
in a little mini play. Well, now, we also have
to remember too that a lot of people were applying
(07:08):
critical thought. They were they were trying to figure it out.
They just didn't know all the tricks yet, because all
the tricks hadn't been invented yet, you know. Uh so
there they were clearly gonna be Um. I don't know
what Doyle's ending, um yeah, of of psychic powers was,
(07:31):
but I know for a time that he did believe
it was possible as to other people of the day,
and uh as do people now, which might be a
good idea for an episode because a lot of people
believe in the afterlife. Belief in the afterlife predates language.
Have we talked about mentalists and cold reading? I think
not yet. I think you wanted to talk about a
(07:54):
cold reader? Was it a gew Shoes? And then John?
It's John, I'm getting I know, I know a guy
named John. I do I know several John's. In fact,
got man. We should honestly get some people in the
(08:15):
studio to do like a reading of us. That would
be fun for an episode, that would be interesting. Not
to get too bog down, I want to say one
more thing just about so I know, I was kind
of ragging on Starthur Kunnan Doyle about being gullible and
being taken in by these mediums, and you brought up
the fact that this is something that still happens today today.
It happens usually in the form of reality television shows.
(08:36):
And I did a little side gig taking behind the
curtain of knol here Um as a sound op for
a pilot for a reality show that starred a celebrity psychic.
And one of her bits was she had these uh
people would bring family heirlooms out and she would wave
her hands around it and say things about the history
(08:58):
of the item, and it's related to the history the
person in their family. And she, you know, she made
some people freak out. And I know that they weren't
plants because one of them was actually the wife of
the guy that was running the production company, and she's
definitely a skeptic and it freaked her out to no end. So,
you know, but I'm on the fence about some some
of these things too. I gotta say, do you think
(09:20):
it was it was possible to explain that or because
when you're talking about psychometry, so I definitely think it
was possible to explain. I think there are ways that
she could have researched this person, and you know, especially nowadays,
with as much information as we put out there on
the Internet, it's probably pretty easy for someone that's in
a position where they know who's going to be coming
to do a little research. Gonna say, I don't want
(09:41):
to speak badly about the person who was running the production,
whose spouse it was, but I mean, if you want
some good TV or good video, then maybe speak a
little insider information. But even even the most skeptical people
that I that I've met at least have um how
have at one point or another had some serious event
(10:04):
occur or a dream which seems to predict something. I
know you guys have had something like that, and I
certainly have UM in my family. Maybe it's a maybe
it's some sort of mental illness carried down through the line.
But um, the big mystery that ghost or inches uh
(10:26):
inextricably related to is, of course the afterlife, the big
thing that no one can explain. Right, we know so
little about what happen. We know what happens to our bodies, right,
we totally get that part. Everybody knows that part, and uh,
our fellow podcasters have done some great and gruesome episodes
(10:48):
on what happens to you physically when you die. But
the real question that everybody asked the embody fights over. Um,
far be it for me to blame war on religion.
I'm just saying the big thing is is there an afterlife?
You know? And and who's in charge of it? And
who's gonna be there? Right? Well? What are the rules
(11:09):
to get in? That's have did you guys watched the
new with Bob and David stuff Heaven's Toad's for real,
Heaven's todes for real. It's a good one. Spoilers should
watch it pertains to It's sort of kind of turns
on its head, these preconceived ideas of who gets to
(11:30):
go to heaven? What's leave it at that? Yeah? Yeah,
I think it would be difficult to explain over an
audio pie thinks so. A two thousand and five Gallops
survey finds that, at least in the US, and we
may have mentioned this in earlier shows, uh, more than
one and three Americans believed straight up believe in haunted houses.
Like do not go in there, Janet, I've seen the
movie That place is haunted. It will wear your flesh
(11:53):
and a different you will emerge from the gate. Well,
and that gives the preconceived notion that it's possible for
a location al sical space to be haunted by something.
Whether it's like the thumb print model that we described
the show, where something bad happened there and it left
behind some bad energy. Maybe it doesn't have to be bad.
It could be a good haunting. But usually you know,
(12:15):
I guess what makes it into popular culture is more
the the evil spirits than the you know, scary hauntings
and people are being tormented and things like that, and
it's more interesting stuff from this poll too. So people
believe that maybe there's a non haunted place, but given
certain circumstances, the ghost of someone can return. Your your
(12:36):
grandmother or your grandfather that visited you once when you
were three, may come back and say, the buildings on fire,
you know what I mean, Yeah, look out for you,
almost like it would Guardian Angel of Swords, but it's
someone directly from your past. Of the people in the
poll believe, like Arthur Conan Doyle did, that it is
(12:56):
possible to communicate with the spirits of the dead well
and specifically that they could do it right, that's what yes, Yeah,
that they have had some sort of contacts more than
I thought it would be. It's more than I thought
it would the two. But these numbers pale in comparison
to uh to the next statistic. Yes, Ben, forty two
(13:17):
of the Americans that were pulled believe that quote people
on this earth are sometimes possessed by the devil, And
we've talked about exorcisms before. That is it's interesting because
it leads you down a specific belief system, right, a
system of belief to believe that the devil exists first
(13:37):
of all, or Satan, and then that that entity, when
it is real, can enter or at least a demon,
can enter a human body. So our demons ghosts, is
the devil a ghost man. There's a lot of minutia
there that's being rhetorical, But I guess what I'm saying
is I wonder, is there anything in the Bible about ghosts? Uh? Yeah,
(14:00):
there are mentions of ghosts. One of the first, because
it's such an old belief, one of the first mentions
of ghosts, which we had talked about before, is in
the Epic of Gilgamesh, which, um, that's just a strange
name for me, uh to say. So anyway, it always
makes me think of Gargamel Gargamel. Yeah, and why isn't
(14:21):
anybody naming their kid gilgameshter gargamell uh and Matt. That
was that was your shot? Missed opportunity missed it this time. Yeah,
But seriously, I mean, like, as far as you know,
you you're talking about the idea of ghosts dating back
to this really really early text. Obviously, the Bible is
a very important old text that we you know, many
(14:43):
people rely on daily. Um, and I just wonder what
the stats being what they are with so many people
believing in ghosts and believing the ability to communicate with ghosts.
I wonder what the religious connection is there, And I
would just be interested in finding out more about that. Yeah,
it's interesting because, um, I'd like to hear from some
people who are perhaps a little more familiar with that,
(15:05):
because you know, most of the use of the phrase
ghosts in the Christian Bible is probably going to be
related to the Holy Ghost Act, right. I guess what
I'm kind of fumbling around to say is that I
I kind of feel like, uh, folks that are devout
in their religion in terms of especially Christianity, would be
(15:26):
less likely to believe in ghosts, simply because the idea
of spirits lingering after death sort of goes against the
basic principles of of Christianity in terms of like, if
you did good, you go to heaven. If you did bad,
you go to hell. There's really no niddle ground, there's
no sticking around as far as what I've read got well,
it could also that's interesting bringing up because then there
(15:49):
could still be a belief in non human spirits such
as possessive demons or angels, right exactly, and in um.
In Islamic addition, you know, we've talked about this before.
It's a fascinating thing to me. There is a third
sort of sentient race, right that the Jinn, and they're
(16:11):
brought from a smokeless screen fire and very different. Throw
the Aladdin stuff out. The Disney film Aladdin is great,
so the stories in a thousand one Nights great, but
the actual jin are much, um much closer to something
like an angel or a demon. Um. So that that
(16:34):
that's a belief in something that is otherworldly yet not
quite in the afterlife. Um. But that's also an interesting
point raised too, like if we go back to Christianity, Yeah,
wouldn't people be much less likely to believe in that
I would. I'm gonna go ahead and just really quickly disagree,
(16:56):
just because I think if you are, if you have
that belief system that there is something that is so
outside of the normal everyday experience, right, so the belief
that that just through faith, I believe that there's this
whole other plane called Heaven that exists. I believe there's
this other plane called Hell that exists, perhaps and all
(17:17):
these other things like h especially if you believe in
some of the parables, if you believe that they are
absolutely true to the word, then perhaps you could believe
that there's this thing that you've never seen before called
a ghost. But I absolutely believe that it's there. And
maybe you know, something gets caught up in the in
the process and gets left behind, you know, like the
(17:40):
spirit didn't make it to Heaven, hasn't passed on. It's
just interesting. There's just like you said, there's just so
many sex there's so many different belief systems that there
are just as many ideas for this stuff as there
are you know, stars in this But the poll shows
that there's no statistically significant differences that if you look
(18:00):
at age, gender, race, region of the country education. Uh,
Christians are if anything, a little more likely to hold
generally paranormal beliefs rather than non Christians. But also guys,
when we say paranormal beliefs, this pole didn't just ask
about ghosts necessarily, and it didn't just ask about um
(18:25):
identifying as by religion. This Uh, this asked about you know,
the belief in the idea of extrasensory perception esp. Do
you believe that you can read binds? Alan Turing did?
By the way? Um? But whether regardless of religion, the
point is that there seems to be a pretty even
(18:46):
slice across demographics. Um. The believing in an afterlife in
and of itself is a paranormal belief on its face,
in that it can it hasn't been proven right in
a way that everybody accepts. So what we're going to
talk about, We're gonna talk about a little bit of
of hauntings right here are the facts, and then uh,
we're gonna talk about Oh, let's see, you know, we
(19:09):
can talk a little bit about famous ghost investigations and
ghost winters. Uh, And we can tell a little bit
of maybe a little bit of behind the curtain stuff too.
So types of hauntings described hauntings. You can find all
sorts of lists for these things. But then again, with
no hard proof of what creates the phenomenon that we
(19:31):
call ghosts. Uh, it's tough to say that this is
our anything other than someone's opinion. But we have we
have stuff like knowls, um nols, psychic thumb prints, residual
thing right, yeah, I mean, and the way I was
talking about the top of the show, Um, how some
of these things that get left behind. You can think
of it in a couple of ways. You could think
(19:52):
of it as this energy or this spirit of this
thing that was left behind, in terms of a life
force or some sort of like imprint the a person
has made that's left behind, you know, outlives them. Um.
I have a little short story. I actually think I've
told this before and this on the podcast. But it
was just a moment where I experienced what I thought
was that thing, and at that moment I didn't I
(20:13):
thought it could be nothing, but what I thought it was,
which was proof positive that there is an afterlife. That
I was witnessing the presence of some sort of spirit,
and it was a girl I was dating at the time,
a dear friend of hers had passed away in a
car accident. And I met this girl, my my girlfriend
at the time, in her car and it was kind
(20:34):
of a cold day, cold evening rather, and so her
windows were fogged up, and I got in the car
with her to go get dinner, and she was and
was kind of sobbing, and she pointed to the inside
of the windshield and then she blew on it. And
this girl who had passed away recently, her signature was
inside of this windshield, just clear as day. And at
(20:54):
that exact moment, I was just like, I freaked out.
I just started, you know, crying, and it is just
this very cathartic moment. And then separated from it, I
very quickly realized, well, you know, these girls were good friends.
They were, you know, in their late teens, early twenties
kind of stuff girls do they you know, write their
name on the inside of a windshield and you have
like oils on your fingers that will cause that residual
(21:18):
fingerprint to stick around. So I just think it's kind
of an interesting parallel because it is both of those things.
You know. It is not only a sort of a memory,
sort of a left behind a bit of someone's essence
or energy. But it was very literally a fingerprint. Yeah,
that's your that's that's Ereie man. Yeah, I remembered when, Um,
(21:41):
you've mentioned that before and it stayed, it stayed with you.
And I think a lot of people in their audience
have had some sort of inexplicable experience, right, and can
you can find um, you can find anecdotes, especially surrounding
loved ones or family members. Um, you know, the people
who say they have a that a feeling of sudden
(22:04):
dark epiphany that someone had passed and they just knew, right,
And it's something that people have, people have attempted to
study and in many but there's no you know, there's
no accepted psychic alarm system. Right, So there's that residual
type of haunting, the kind that's kind of a JEF
(22:24):
in a place that just repeats and repeats and repeats
and repeats. So when you ever, whenever you go to
the hotel, you're gonna see this essentially this same thing occur.
This ghostly apperation appears to fall out the window, this
guy in a bear costume and the shining I remember that.
Oh that's right. Yeah, we're a family show though, But
that's a perfect example, exactly the right example. Someone continually
(22:47):
reenacting the moment leading up to their death, for instance,
or the ghostly hitchhiker's always going the same place but
never get in there, going my way. Uh. Then then
there's the intelligent type of haunting, which is, you know,
a someone who was on a mission. You've seen this
in Hollywood films a lot. This is what the story of.
(23:09):
There's this haunting that's occurring, and until the mission is accomplished,
like you find out why they died, or you get
revenged for the person that killed them, like the Lovely
Bones for example. That's sort of what that story is about,
about the spirit of a young lady who has killed
before her time by a very dangerous criminal you know,
(23:30):
who lives in the neighborhood and goes unnoticed and her
spirit returns so that he can get his come up
and so that he can't do it to anybody else.
That is a trope, you know, and a lot of
these things to me are more fictional tropes than scientific things.
But that you know, that's just me being the skeptic here,
(23:51):
I guess, right. So there's the idea of this love
or the Crow the crew would be a th channel thing.
And the reason we're relying so so much so on
um fictional things is because, aside from one very dodgy
(24:12):
legal case UM centuries ago which actually happened, uh, the
law and ghosts don't really interact, you know, not as
much as it would be fun for it to happen.
I would totally watch though, like Law and Order Ghost condition. Yeah,
(24:33):
I would love to. I would love that's a million dollars.
I want to see one of those no nonsense Hollywood
Judge shows, you know, with the ghost Judge ghost the
Judge is a ghost. I thought it would be ghost
coming into like this is fertile ground here, yeah, yeah,
here be serpents were on the edge of the map. Man,
this is terra incognita. Uh. Those are great ideas and
(24:56):
following them away and there's you know, people say, well,
there's the idea that they're be a demonic haunting, right,
and then there's the idea that there could be a
When I say demonic, I mean any kind of non
human thing. And then there's the idea that um, certain
locations can be haunted, which we have found is kind
(25:17):
of true. I know it sounds like we're burying the lead.
We'll explain why later. And let's not forget about poulter Geist,
sort of the Gremlins of the ghost world. And this
is where, okay, just refresh my memory because I think
I have an understanding of the Poulter guist because of
the movies where there are things occurring two objects in
(25:38):
a house, like objects are being moved a lot. Well,
I think it has a largely to do with sort
of a telekinetic ability. Um yeah, physical disturbance, physical disturbances
and mean in poulter Geist, the movie, there's the little
girl who is largely seen as kind of being not
maybe not the cause, but definite catalysts, a conduit or
some sort of catalyst for these energies. But yeah, I
(26:01):
think it can just like be like you know, chairs stacking,
you know, or like you know, household appliances turning on
and off, or just uh uh knockings in the night. Uh.
The word Poulter guys to think in English means something
like noisy spirit or loud ghost, polka ghost, rumble ghost, yes,
(26:26):
polka ghosts. But but that's interesting because Poulter dieist had
often at least in folklore, been thought to be haunting
a specific person, you know, like a often an adolescent girl. Honestly, like, um,
I think that's how the report goes, That's how the
film Poulter Geis goes. And UM, correct me if I'm wrong.
(26:48):
But maybe the bell witch, which leads us to another
interesting point that people have believes for centuries that certain
locations or places can be haunted. And that's kind of true.
Oh yeah, and not just not just places and a
single object like a trinket or I don't know, maybe
somebody's a jacket. Interesting, And we'll get right back to
(27:10):
that after a quick word from our sponsor. Stumbling towards
(27:33):
the bus stop after a late night Halloween party, Paul
Cooper finds a pair of shoes. He's not sure where
the bus stop is. When he finds these shoots, He's
just sort of walking to where he thinks the stop
should be. He's going from memory, perhaps from a vague
optimistic belief that he can discover the bus stop with
nothing but the distant light of downtown skyscrapers to guide him,
(27:56):
the same way his ancestors crossed oceans following the stars.
The last stretch between ponds and iris is unlit. Careful
of the puddles flooding the curb, Paul shies away from
the street. The drizzle grows metastasizes. Haul runs beneath the
bridge spanning North Avenue, hoping to wait out the storm.
He's huddled against the concrete, hiding from the rain, cursing
(28:18):
softly at the car's sprain puddles onto the sidewalk as
they speed west. He leans against the concrete, wishing for
smoke or an uber, and he sees the shoes. They're
dark leather, something Italian. They're not new, but they seem
artfully warm, expensive, substantial. His shoes broken down paints matter,
(28:42):
Jordan's feel leaky and cheap. As he stares at the
dress shoes placed neatly against the concrete wall, heels back toes,
facing the street, all momentarily imagined some well dressed revolutionary
of by gone days, standing against the wall, fearlessly hiding
a last cigarette as he bids his executioners to steady themselves,
(29:04):
to remember there are men to shoot. The water seeping
into his Jordan's brings Paul back to reality. He regards
the dress, shoes and wonders should I. He's just drunk
enough to try them on, putting one foot in gingerly,
then the next they fit perfectly. The rain slows back
(29:24):
to a drizzle, and Paul stumbles into the night, is broken.
Jordan's discarded and forgotten as a passing car throws water
across their souls. Paul's beginning to worry he won't find
the stop. He's admitting he can't remember the exact location
of the bus stop. He's beginning to think he should
have called an uber before his phone died. When a
car pulls slowly beside him and honks the horn. The
(29:47):
window rolls down, revealing a woman Paul doesn't know. She
wears a long red scarf, one of those kinds. Paul's
mom calls an infinity. Hey, she says, get Paul thing,
she's pretty. Here's this? No way am I taking a
ride with this weirdo? And these thoughts come to him
all at once, tripping over one another, like strangers interrupting,
(30:10):
like runners in a crowded room. And he's just drunk
enough to hop in the car. I'm just headed to
the bus stop. The woman doesn't respond, just drives towards
the city in silence. She parks along then unfamiliar side
street and alley, almost in the heart of downtown. Where's
the bus stop? The woman doesn't answer. She hops out
of the car and Paul follows her. Are we near
(30:32):
a train station? The woman looks back over her shoulder.
She's heading toward peach tree, and Paul walks after her
into a bar. Woud Paul thinks out of that it
should be. The place is like one long hallway with
a pool table at the end. Most of the crowd
is in one sort of costume or another. Hey, says
(30:55):
a man at the bar, chewing on a toothpick. You
should watch our buddy Cooper A gonna be happy to
see you. Who the hell is Coop? Says Paul. The
man just turns back to the bar, staring at a
rerun of football on the staticky television. Paul's looking around
for the woman who took me here, he thinks, conducted me.
When another woman walks up to him, she hands in
(31:16):
an old fashioned You're a sight for sore eyes, Dave.
She's tall, with long hair and dark eyes. She looks
him up and down. Breath night. Do you know each other?
She raises an eyebrow, laughs, you always say that. The
tall woman leans close to Paul's face. Listen, what do
you say we are? You're cheating, bastard. What are you
(31:37):
doing in here? Paul turns just in time to raise
his hands in defense. The screaming man swings why, shattering
the old fashioned to the floor. Paul stumbles back, a dizzy,
heart racing, yells the tall woman. Paul's eyes race for
something to grab, a pool stick, a bottle, a chair.
No one in the bar moves to intervene. It is
(31:57):
as if he does not exist. Paul grabs the chair,
feeling like a lion tamer. He yells at the bar,
then to the man, who must be Coop. Look cute,
I don't know you. You gotta calm down. The man
Coop draws a gun. Paul throws the chair, knocking Cooped
to the floor. He glances at the door and sees
the woman in the red scarf leaving. He chases her.
(32:18):
As they round a corner, he hears the bar door slam,
the sound of heavy boots in pursuit. Hey yells Paul,
who the hell are you help me? The lady in
the scarf turns as she opens the car door. I can't,
it's too late. A gunshot brings impossibly loud behind Paul,
and his vision explodes to red to white to black.
(32:47):
Early the next morning, the medical examiner turns on an
audio recorder as he prepares to conduct the autopsy. Okay,
let's see what we got here. Unidentified mail, late twenties,
messy gunshot wound to the head from the rear, execution style.
(33:07):
What are those lately? Another day in Paradise, I guess.
The examiner pauses before continuing. He takes off one of
the corpse's shoes, then the other. He holds them up
to the light. Ralph furrowed watching the shine of the dark.
Hand made leather. Huh, he says you again, Giodorno's fine leather,
(33:35):
stay one step ahead. Gidorno's fine leather is not responsible
for any of the following possible side effect sussession, demonic possession,
grand theft, auto a facial convulsion, spring fever, compunction, consumption,
left handedness, hold your guys, activity, unexplained bounce of telekinesis,
phantom limb athletes foot LaDonna goes to the chiker's Jupicapa.
The phantom of the opera, irit Lame his rob ectoplasmic excretions,
Giodorno's Fine Leather, brought to you by Illumination Global Unlimited. Wow, guys,
(34:06):
that was not That was not great courses, you know
that was that was a pretty um you know, I
really feel like old Illumination Global Unlimited has been you know,
pumping a little more um, a little more Illuminati bucks
into those ads. Well, did it feel like an ad
to you? Guys? I felt like that was a story
and then it was an advertorial. I'm I don't know,
(34:30):
I'm a little scared. Well, I don't be scared. Don't
be scared. Okay, let's talk more about ghosts. Don't be
scared yet. Yeah, okay, let's talk about Let's talk about something.
Don't be scared yet, we say, as we're saying, let's
also talk about something frightening. Let's talk about famous ghost
investigations and hunters. There are, of course, the warr Ins
ed and Lorraine there that their investigations, and some people
(34:54):
in our crowd are going to get way overly emotional
and fury us about us referring to them as investigations.
Kind of their were not ours. It's fine, whatever you
wish to call them in your own time. Uh, we're
calling them investigations because they call them cases or investigations,
(35:14):
and they have been the basis for several films. You
might remember some, in my opinion, better than others. The Conjuring,
The Haunted, Amityville Horror, Haunting in Connecticut, Annabelle Haunting three,
the Haunting, A hunting in Connecticut to Haunting in Newark?
(35:34):
Wait what Hartford? The Hartford Haunt and they the stuff
that they remains a controversial legacy. There are people who
are completely completely convinced that the Warrens had a particular
skill with exorcising demons, right, but then there are other
(35:58):
people who believe at the warrants were essentially con artists. Yeah,
it's it's tough. It's it's a tough thing to prove,
but it's also a um, it's a tough thing to
even have a conversation about if you really believe in
any of this stuff. So I apologize to anyone who
really believes. We're not trying to just say that you're wrong.
(36:21):
We just want to find the avenue to the truth, right,
That's where that's what we're doing. Well, it's sort of
like proving or disproving someone's religion. You know, I mean
to believe pretty much impossible. You know, Yeah, they're not
gonna and and the frame of reference for having that
conversation means everything. You know, if they're trying to like
convert somebody to believing in ghost spiritual disturbances, believing that
(36:45):
you are a successful ghost hunter, if that person isn't
already on the same page as you, it's gonna be
pretty difficult. And they're also you know that there's more
than one type of ghost hunter. We should be completely
completely clear about that. There are people who believe that
they are encountering something through an inexplicable natural ability, like
(37:07):
a medium, the power of a medium, right, And there
are people who believe that the power of a religion
allows uh, the um the cleansing or the exorcism of
someone a priest, Yeah, like a priest, some unhelp helpful spirit.
And then you will also hear people say that you
should smudge a house or burnett with sage to purify it. Right.
(37:29):
But then there are people who rely more on the
technical side, and they say, let us see these drops
in temperature or see if there's anything odd on these cameras, right, uh.
And then there are people who go in entirely uh
to say this is this is wrong, this bs you
are either willfully ignorant or you are purposefully swindling um
(37:54):
yourself when people report it. Um. And then there are
people who are more in the I guess in the middle.
And that brings us to the here's where it gets
crazy part of the show, because they're they're various theories
explaining ghost sightings that are not necessarily You know, my
(38:15):
dead grandfather came back because he knows I stole his
Playboys true story. No, well the playboy part, dude, He's
just for the articles though, right, yeah, No, shel Silverstein
is published in there. It's pretty good. He has a
poem about meeting the devil. Actually I know that one. Yeah,
it's pretty good. Yea, what was it called? Sorry, I
(38:37):
just said that. I haven't thought about that. I'll have
to look back and tell you. But so, well, we'll
get back to that poem, we'll bring it up. Um.
But so some of these, let's get past some of
the easy ones, and people have heard before, like there's
a hallucination due to perhaps a physiological injury or mental instability.
Um no, Matt and I alluded to that a little
(38:59):
bit earlier. We're listening possible causes. You could have things
like the struct their structural damage of some sort, or
just some unexplicable uh noises that are occurring, maybe from
from pipes, let's say, or from the air conditioner making
noises don't be associated matha, she don't need the wind maybe,
(39:22):
or the raccoons in the attic twice but apples falling
from the tree. Get rid of raccoons in the attic
and then put on and sorry twice simply a bag
of hands dropping one by one on to the floor.
It was an acorn. Yes it was a different time,
but that's absolutely true. It's very easy to misidentify things.
(39:43):
Can I before we get into the real need of this,
can I just tell you, guys one of my least
favorite horror movie tropes. Please thank you, because if you
said no, we would have just kept going. But I
despise it. And there's a haunted house situation, and there's
(40:03):
that one person who not only doesn't believe that the
house is haunted but has to be a prick about it.
That always bothers me because I feel like it's such
a metaphor for all these other unacknowledged problems that people
have or standard you know, like you're you're in a
relationship and you've got uh, your partner's best friend like
(40:24):
hates you, and you know it and it's obvious. You're like, hey,
your best friend hates me and we shouldn't hang out
with them. And then they're like, oh no, no, no, no, no,
you don't. You just don't get Daphne or whatever. No
offense to anybody whose name is Daphne. I just pulled
that out of the ether. Yeah, So that's that's just
the ramp, because you've probably had this happen at some
(40:46):
point in your life where you feel like you are
telling somebody something terrible is happening, something very bad is happening,
and they're going, man, you it's a it's a comment
on denial, I think, and you all go through different
versions of that throughout our lives. Uh well, I mean
usually in those films, the person who believes the most
(41:08):
is the person that's rewarded you. So do you think
I think it's gonna work out with me and Daphne
or hope. So, man, I think she's a nice girl,
says you. Well anyway, Okay, so I don't. I'm sorry
that we picked this stranger's name. Oh man, if your
(41:28):
name is Daphne, right, and I'll write back and apologize.
But we have one other explanation, and this is by
no means the only explanation. But we have one thing
that proves how a locale an area house, if you will,
can be haunted. And it's crazy. Yes, it's certainly unexpected,
(41:51):
I would say, And should we just hop right into it?
I think we should. So what if the ghosts that
you're seeing, or you thought you saw, or you thought
you heard, what if it was just a low frequency
vibration causing your mind and your eyes to play tricks
on your brain? See, that's a great question. I gotta say,
(42:15):
though I don't like the use of just because I
still think this is amazing and I don't think this
is like a debunking thing. Okay, yes, you're right. I
do not mean to downplay the coolness that the vibrations,
that the effect is, the effect itself is very cool. Well,
I just I also don't Okay, I'm already used up
my one soupbox for the show. But I am gonna
(42:37):
say I don't think that the existence of low frequency
vibrations or infrasound necessarily means that that is the only
thing at play. Sure, it's one explanation for a possibility,
or or what if what if the vibrations somehow hit
a resonant frequency in your brain that allows you to
(43:00):
receive different or what if ghosts cause vibrations? Yeah, I
don't know how it's let's roll it back just a
couple of notches here. So, so there's this paper by
a man named Vic Tandy who's a university lecturer at
Coventry University, and the title of the paper is the
(43:21):
Ghost in the Machine And I'll just give you a
little preview of it by reading the abstract. I think
this is a really nice job of kind of summing
up with this is about which I guess is the
abstract is supposed to do. So it's well done, sir uh.
In this paper we outline and as yet undocumented natural
cause for some cases of ostensible haunting. Using the first
author's own experience as an example, we show how a
(43:43):
nineteen hurts standing air wave may, under certain conditions create
sensory phenomena suggestive of a ghost. The mechanics and physiology
of this quote ghost in the machine in quote effect
is outlined. Spontaneous case researchers are encouraged to rule out
this stentional natural explanation for paranormal experience in future cases
(44:03):
of the haunting or poulter Geistick type, which I think
is very thoughtful thing to put there the abstract. It's
like he's saying, hey, we did the study that explained
this thing, So doing you a solid ghost hunters rule
this out when you're looking for actual paranormal phenomenon because
(44:24):
this ain't that well. Yeah, because in the introduction of
that paper, it lists all the different things that a
quote unquote ghost hunter or someone who's trying to study
these things should, uh, first thing eliminated all of this,
eliminate every one of these. Here's a new one. Here's
what it's like. That's what this paper is. I just
think it's cool because this this this fellow is coming
(44:45):
at this from a very you know, research, scientific oriented place,
collaborative as well. But he's giving a nod. He's not
like being a jerk about you know, he's totally like saying, hey,
I'm not saying that what you guys do is is bunk.
You know, in fact, use this research that we have
(45:06):
done to help further your efforts. And I thought, I
don't know, usually people that are coming from a very
um academic place tend to be a little more snooty
about things like that. So I just thought that was interesting.
It can it can happen. The the science behind it
is so compelling because it it uses also some research
(45:27):
from NASA. Okay, so, uh, let's who all right, as
the mad Hatter said to somebody at the tea party,
will start at the beginning, go through the middle and
stop and and the three of us are pretty familiar
with this story, so we'll just pass the ball around. Uh.
And you might have heard this as well, audience members,
(45:47):
especially if you two are intrigued by the investigation of
the ghosts. This guy, Victandy, it wasn't always a university lecturer.
As a matter of fact, at one point in his
life he was working in a laboratory making a medical manufacturer, right.
And this laboratory, I just like seeing it that way,
(46:09):
had a reputation. It was haunted, Oh yeah, super haunted.
In fact, people were seeing things, feeling things, hearing things
with no explanation. So let's talk a little bit about
the room. The rooms about ten ft wide by thirty
(46:30):
deep long, and their doors at one end getting a
picture like a garage, and then at the other end
there's uh some win there's some windows and there's like
a cleaning bay on the other side of those windows.
Vic Tandy not exactly a superstitious guy, you know what
I mean. Friday is just another day before Saturday to him,
(46:53):
and he notices, uh, this, this is pretty interesting. He's
also an I don't know if he's amateur, so uh, Vic,
if you're listening, don't get mad at us. But he
has an interest in fencing, and he doesn't know what's
going on with his these reports this ghost. He knows
that he's had some uncomfortable feelings before where he's got
(47:15):
that uh what's that song? Always feel like he's watching me? Yeah, yeah,
he has that moment and m and frequently for skeptical person.
So he um, he's trying to explain what's going on.
It's like, could this really be a ghost man? That's crazy?
(47:35):
And he's got some coworkers that are a little more
sold on the idea that are bringing this damn and saying, hey,
this is legit. I've had these experiences and you know,
he can connect with them in a sense, which is
making him, you know, think about this, what could be
the cause? What's the rational explanation? You know? For example,
I think there was a story where there was like
(47:55):
a hose or something that was moving around. They've got
like a cleaning hose, and he attributed to changes in
in pressure, you know, because this place is it's an
industrial type set up, so they've got some high pressure
sure water and air systems in there. You know, there's
different things that can happen. Changes in pressure in the
in the pipes, you know, can cause creaking sounds, you know,
expanding and contracting of metal, things like that. That's that,
(48:18):
that's where his mind is going. Absolutely. And so he
is using some lab equipment to ready one of his
fencing foils and the sorts, right, and that's when he
sees the foil itself just vibrating no discernible cause, well,
that doesn't make any sense, right, Why would there be
(48:40):
some kind of air disruption causing the spoiler move, especially
when that you can't just readily sense yourself exactly. You
can't hear anything. I mean, what what's the answer? Ghosts
like cats? Do they just like the smack things? You know? Yes,
something a little bit different though right now. So with
this point, Vic Tandy is on the hunt for what
(49:02):
the heck is causing this vibration in his laboratory. Well,
and he finds that there is a you might have
to help me out with this. Spin it's a fan
that's causing this, or an event a new Yeah, there's
there's a there's a fan fan duct, I believe, and
this duct is emitting a very low frequency sound and
(49:24):
then submitting it in what's called a standing wave. So
this is really cool. This is when well you can
you explain a standing wave? Yeah? Well, I mean this
in this case the wave. You know, sound is measured
in wave forms. If you've ever done any audio editing
or recording, you see um audio represented in a series
of peaks and valleys. So it sort of looks like
(49:47):
almost like waves on the ocean. Honestly, there's peaks and
there's troughs um. But different items vibrate at different frequencies.
And so what was happening with the four I was
that this vent or. This fan was emitting a wave
that was the precise or very close to the precise
(50:07):
frequency resident frequency of the actual blade. So it's sort
of like if you had a piano string or a
guitar string, for example, and you had another object or
item that was creating a vibration that was at the
same frequency as that string, it would cause the string
(50:27):
to vibrate in tandem with the other source. So that
was basically what was happening. And that's what's so strange
about that is that this is not a sound humans
can consciously here. Yeah, so low on the scale there
scale of hurts, but our our bodies can see. Our
(50:48):
bodies seemingly respond to it. By the way, I have
found of been doing some experimentation for the video for
this week, and you I think it's twenty around twenty
one or twenty two hurts. You can hear it with
the Sindhiser's um at least if it's what I have found.
You can kind of make it out. You can't hear
(51:09):
it necessarily, but you feel that something is happening with
your headphones. It freaks me out. So what I'm gonna
do if you haven't already watched the video. There's gonna
be a twenty hurts just tone going throughout the entire episode,
and I tested on some sub worffers. I don't think
it's gonna hurt anybody, but it should if there's any
(51:31):
truth to this, give you an eerie feeling while you're
watching it. You know, when the MythBusters did an episode
on this, uh, this frequency, they found that they had
um they had people saying that they had a sense
of aneyase, you know, like a whole body feeling. So
that's what that's what we find because not only is
this eighteen twenty hurts um range that the fan was
(51:55):
in resonant to that fencing foil, NASA found that this
is around the same resonant frequency of the human eye,
which could explain then how you might see smudges in
your vision shadow people. Yeah, you turn left really quickly
and all of a sudden, Oh, who's that there was
someone standing there? Maybe there was, Maybe there was, but
(52:19):
maybe there wasn't. The thing that it's interesting about this
is Tandy figures out there is a standing wave and
that's why it's concentrated more right in one place than another,
and he gets uh, he gets one of the four
minute construction workers to replace the fan and then boom,
exorcism complete. This is the nicest lab I've ever been in.
(52:42):
I want to stay here all the time. So what
we learned from that is that there are places in
the world that may naturally be haunted, but not necessarily
by sentient identities, instead by sounds. And it really cool
and still creates the same feeling all being haunted. So
it's almost like another It's almost in some ways it's
(53:03):
similar to a Turing test, you know, the haunted touring test.
Has it fooled you into thinking it's a ghost, then
how can we distinguish it from a natural ghost? I
don't know? And that so in the Tandy case, they
did trace it to a particular fan, and they investigated
(53:26):
and once they turned the fan off, the standing way
disappeared and this feeling of unease dissipated. The second question
that they had still that was left unresolved, was why
did this make people feel a certain way? Make people
feel uneasy? And they quote another bit of research that
(53:47):
they discovered and trying to answer this um and they
cite it as a book by tempest Ni. I'm not
sure what that means, but you can look it up
in the study Ghost in the Machine or the paper
Ghost in the Machine is available online DF for free
for free so quote noise Consultants were asked to examine
one of a group of bays and a factory where
workers reported feeling uneasy. That bay had an oppressive feel
(54:10):
not present in the adjacent areas. Although the noise level
appeared the same. Management, workers and consultants were all aware
of the unusual atmosphere, and on investigation it was found
that low frequency sound was present at a slightly higher
level than in other bays. However, the actual frequency of
the offending noise was not obvious. The cause of the
noise was a fan in the air conditioning system. Workers
(54:31):
in the University Radio Chemistry building experienced the same oppressive feeling,
together with dizziness when the fan in a fume cupboard
was switched on. Conventional soundproofing had reduced the audible sound
to the point where there was hardly any difference in
the noise when the fan was on as off. The
situation affected some people so much they refused to work
in the lab. It was concluded the low frequency component
(54:55):
of the sound was responsible, and that's a pretty good
way for us to end it today. I think we
would like to hear some of your ghost stories listeners
and how you can kinnot explain them, because I have
a few, to be honest, in my personal life that
I still meant a loss to explain. I don't know
what happened. Well, I am jealous if yet to have
(55:18):
anything of the sort, and I'm actively looking for it.
So ghosts, I called to you, I called to you.
What what do I what? How do you do it?
I summoned me. I think I think it's like if
you turn off the lights and say bloody Mary three
times in the mirror, you'll get dude. I tried that
so many times in elementary school and still never got
(55:39):
a drink. Gefty candy, man, get some candy. Tried that,
tried it all man. I do want to apologize so
that that quote that I read, I just looked in
the site and the sources in the paper and it's
a someone named w. Tempest and now he's Havny six.
The book is called Infrasound and Low Frequency Vibration, Academic Press, London.
(56:02):
That makes me think too about the brown note and
the the alleged brown Note and the the non lethal name.
By the way, DJ brown Note, you changed it, okay
for the kids, all right. So this brings us to
these other ideas, the effects that low frequency sounds can
have on the human mind. We don't have too much
(56:23):
time to get into it today, but if you're interested,
let us know, because we can tell you that Vic
Tandy and a few other, um, further academic researchers are
not the only ones poking into these effects on the
human mind, not by far, not by a long shot.
Uh So let us know. If you would like to
hear more about that. You can follow us on Facebook
(56:45):
and Twitter, where we are conspiracy stuff. You can go
there to see some stories that don't make it to
the air for one reason or another. You can always
check out every podcast we have ever done on our website,
Stuff they Don't want you to Know dot Com. And
one more thing. Two more things actually. The first one
is if you get a chance, check out now dot
(57:06):
how stuff works dot Com. It's a part of how
stuff works dot Com for whom we are employees. We
work for them, and um, we really like it here.
And one of the cool things we're doing now is
kind of getting up to date on new stories that
are coming out, more current stuff, a little more topical.
Some of the stuff on the old side is kind
of evergreen, and you know, this stuff is that tends
(57:27):
to be tied to more trendy you know, uh, topics
that are kind of popping off as we speaking. Yeah,
it's it's really great. We're even producing videos and I
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(57:54):
topic and other unexplained phenomena, visit YouTube dot com slash
conspiracy stuff. You can also get in touch on Twitter
at the handle at conspiracy stuff.
From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups, histories with
unexplained events. You can turn back then or learn the
stuff they don't want you to now. Hello, and welcome
back to the show. My name is Matt and I'm Ben,
(00:21):
but I am null and most importantly you are here,
which makes this, ladies and gentlemen, anohing episode of stuff
they don't want you to know. And this is our
first time being together in the studio and in a
little while, isn't it. Since the Turkey Times, it's been
a lovely holiday break for all except for Matt. No,
(00:42):
it was great, good. Yeah, we all right, guess what
we're getting into this Now you're gonna have to wait
on your ghost content, y'alls, because we're gonna talk about
driving in a car for twelve and a half hours
with U by eBay. That's right. It was incredible. Yeah,
you feel like you know yourself better. Yeah, I know
the whole family. The whole family knows itself and h
(01:04):
we are all one. It's good to know. Yeah, it
looks good. I feel like I know you better. Excellent.
At one point we're driving down the road and uh
sons in the back and he is just inconsolable, and
we just finished changing him and he got the feed
for a while, and we're making a horrible time, supposed
to like take eight and a half hours to get
(01:25):
down where we're going, and it was already up words
of ten. So Diana said, you know what we're doing this.
She just leaned over him and fed him mid drive.
I thought you were gonna say she chucked him up
to one down. No, no, not this time, not yet.
It's a little early for that. But yeah, doing some
dangerous things on the highway, guys. And am I gonna
(01:49):
get in trouble for that? No? We do. Yeah, I
don't know the law. Maybe I'm going to go out
on a limb and say that I hope law enforcement
has something better to do. Yeah, I guess you're right.
But it was terrifying at the same time. So, speaking
of families and terror, I'm the only one who's gonna
share about my turkeys. Turkey times. I went to dinner
(02:11):
with my mom. We we ate, but we had a buffet.
It was you know, that's my favorite kind. It was good.
And then we went and saw the new Bond film, which,
as it turns out, was called Specter speaking of fantastic. Yeah. So,
as you have probably noticed from several of the incredibly
(02:33):
um clever hints that we have dropped in the beginning
of the episode, today we're going to return to a
topic that is interested a lot of our listeners, a
lot of our audience, and we have done a couple
of podcasts and videos on in the past, and that
is Oh my good, spooky ghosts. Spooky go So, first
(02:55):
things first, what is a ghost? What what do we
mean when we say that's a ghost. That's when you
leave the party and don't say goodbye to anybody. Okay,
I'm sorry, guys, That's just how I am, and that's
how I'm going to be. Oh oh god, I wish
I knew more context about why or which party it happened.
(03:19):
Any social occasion, you can't just walk around and say
goodbye to forty something people. You will never be able
to leave. Uh So, a ghost is the spirit of
a dead person, right then it's either not moved on
or it's returned from the grave. And then you have
terms like spirit and the definitions can vary wildly. Some
(03:43):
people describe the spirit as a person's soul well you know.
Others believe it's more of an energetic imprint that a
person leaves behind, sort of a psychic thumb print that
they leave when they pass on. I like that idea,
the idea that perhaps if there is a ghost, then
it is the energy of someone who was here before.
And it's not necessarily a thing that you can point to,
(04:04):
like a ghost or a spirit. It's just this imprint
that they've made. I love that idea, and I mean,
as we'll talk about later. And I've got a particular
story in mine. That can be something physical that is
left behind and that you then associate meaning connect meaning
to after the fact and that you know, I mean,
or it could be something a little bit more ephemeral.
(04:24):
Let's we'll get into as well, exactly. And one of
the great things about this kind of belief, if if
you do believe personally in these kind of things, the
spirits and goes, it's not in the fringes at all.
This is something that's been around for a long time
that a lot of you know, uh, really intelligent people
have believed in. And we talked about it before, and
it's also one of those things that it's extremely helpful,
(04:48):
helpful for the human experience to have a belief like this. Yeah.
I mean even Winston Churchill reported seeing ghosts, the ghost
of Abraham Lincoln while walking into a White House bedroom
in the Nude. Apparently, Churchill regarded Lincoln with a very pithy,
good evening, Mr President, do you seem to have me
at a disadvantage? That's not bad, That's not bad at all.
(05:12):
Working on the Churchill, I wonder what Lincoln said back.
Probably just gave him the dead eyes. According to this story,
the apparition of Abraham Lincoln kind of smirked and thats
appeared smiled. I was close. That's how Churchill said it. Um.
So Interestingly enough, Winston Churchill spent his entire life convinced
(05:35):
that he heard certain voices that changed the course of
his fate, and so he blamed a lot of or
not blamed. He attributed a lot of the close calls
in his childhood and adult life with these voices saying
things like, not that side of the carriage moved to
the other side. WHA, So who's the who's to say? Um?
(05:59):
For those believe in psychic powers, there's the idea that
maybe Churchill had some sort of sensitivity his antenna were
tuned to a different frequency, or maybe he was being
controlled by extraterrestrials, or maybe he was slightly schizophrenic. Yeah,
we could take our pick and we'll get to some
of those ideas or causes have seen ghosts that Another
example would be like Arthur Conan Doyle, famous creator of
(06:22):
Sherlock Holmes. He was very much a man of his time,
and if you were a man of your time at
that time, it meant that you thought mediums were the
real deal. That's a shame, because I mean to have
created a character like Sherlock Holmes, who was supposed to
be able to just see through the b as that
anyone was putting out there. I find it a little
bit troubling that that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was taken
(06:45):
in by these mediums who have pretty pretty much been
debunked across the board. But I can imagine that being
an exciting, a very thrilling, just thing to do after work,
after you've been writing for a long time. I'll go
down and even if just pretend it's almost like you're
in a little mini play. Well, now, we also have
to remember too that a lot of people were applying
(07:08):
critical thought. They were they were trying to figure it out.
They just didn't know all the tricks yet, because all
the tricks hadn't been invented yet, you know. Uh so
there they were clearly gonna be Um. I don't know
what Doyle's ending, um yeah, of of psychic powers was,
(07:31):
but I know for a time that he did believe
it was possible as to other people of the day,
and uh as do people now, which might be a
good idea for an episode because a lot of people
believe in the afterlife. Belief in the afterlife predates language.
Have we talked about mentalists and cold reading? I think
not yet. I think you wanted to talk about a
(07:54):
cold reader? Was it a gew Shoes? And then John?
It's John, I'm getting I know, I know a guy
named John. I do I know several John's. In fact,
got man. We should honestly get some people in the
(08:15):
studio to do like a reading of us. That would
be fun for an episode, that would be interesting. Not
to get too bog down, I want to say one
more thing just about so I know, I was kind
of ragging on Starthur Kunnan Doyle about being gullible and
being taken in by these mediums, and you brought up
the fact that this is something that still happens today today.
It happens usually in the form of reality television shows.
(08:36):
And I did a little side gig taking behind the
curtain of knol here Um as a sound op for
a pilot for a reality show that starred a celebrity psychic.
And one of her bits was she had these uh
people would bring family heirlooms out and she would wave
her hands around it and say things about the history
(08:58):
of the item, and it's related to the history the
person in their family. And she, you know, she made
some people freak out. And I know that they weren't
plants because one of them was actually the wife of
the guy that was running the production company, and she's
definitely a skeptic and it freaked her out to no end. So,
you know, but I'm on the fence about some some
of these things too. I gotta say, do you think
(09:20):
it was it was possible to explain that or because
when you're talking about psychometry, so I definitely think it
was possible to explain. I think there are ways that
she could have researched this person, and you know, especially nowadays,
with as much information as we put out there on
the Internet, it's probably pretty easy for someone that's in
a position where they know who's going to be coming
to do a little research. Gonna say, I don't want
(09:41):
to speak badly about the person who was running the production,
whose spouse it was, but I mean, if you want
some good TV or good video, then maybe speak a
little insider information. But even even the most skeptical people
that I that I've met at least have um how
have at one point or another had some serious event
(10:04):
occur or a dream which seems to predict something. I
know you guys have had something like that, and I
certainly have UM in my family. Maybe it's a maybe
it's some sort of mental illness carried down through the line.
But um, the big mystery that ghost or inches uh
(10:26):
inextricably related to is, of course the afterlife, the big
thing that no one can explain. Right, we know so
little about what happen. We know what happens to our bodies, right,
we totally get that part. Everybody knows that part, and uh,
our fellow podcasters have done some great and gruesome episodes
(10:48):
on what happens to you physically when you die. But
the real question that everybody asked the embody fights over. Um,
far be it for me to blame war on religion.
I'm just saying the big thing is is there an afterlife?
You know? And and who's in charge of it? And
who's gonna be there? Right? Well? What are the rules
(11:09):
to get in? That's have did you guys watched the
new with Bob and David stuff Heaven's Toad's for real,
Heaven's todes for real. It's a good one. Spoilers should
watch it pertains to It's sort of kind of turns
on its head, these preconceived ideas of who gets to
(11:30):
go to heaven? What's leave it at that? Yeah? Yeah,
I think it would be difficult to explain over an
audio pie thinks so. A two thousand and five Gallops
survey finds that, at least in the US, and we
may have mentioned this in earlier shows, uh, more than
one and three Americans believed straight up believe in haunted houses.
Like do not go in there, Janet, I've seen the
movie That place is haunted. It will wear your flesh
(11:53):
and a different you will emerge from the gate. Well,
and that gives the preconceived notion that it's possible for
a location al sical space to be haunted by something.
Whether it's like the thumb print model that we described
the show, where something bad happened there and it left
behind some bad energy. Maybe it doesn't have to be bad.
It could be a good haunting. But usually you know,
(12:15):
I guess what makes it into popular culture is more
the the evil spirits than the you know, scary hauntings
and people are being tormented and things like that, and
it's more interesting stuff from this poll too. So people
believe that maybe there's a non haunted place, but given
certain circumstances, the ghost of someone can return. Your your
(12:36):
grandmother or your grandfather that visited you once when you
were three, may come back and say, the buildings on fire,
you know what I mean, Yeah, look out for you,
almost like it would Guardian Angel of Swords, but it's
someone directly from your past. Of the people in the
poll believe, like Arthur Conan Doyle did, that it is
(12:56):
possible to communicate with the spirits of the dead well
and specifically that they could do it right, that's what yes, Yeah,
that they have had some sort of contacts more than
I thought it would be. It's more than I thought
it would the two. But these numbers pale in comparison
to uh to the next statistic. Yes, Ben, forty two
(13:17):
of the Americans that were pulled believe that quote people
on this earth are sometimes possessed by the devil, And
we've talked about exorcisms before. That is it's interesting because
it leads you down a specific belief system, right, a
system of belief to believe that the devil exists first
(13:37):
of all, or Satan, and then that that entity, when
it is real, can enter or at least a demon,
can enter a human body. So our demons ghosts, is
the devil a ghost man. There's a lot of minutia
there that's being rhetorical, But I guess what I'm saying
is I wonder, is there anything in the Bible about ghosts? Uh? Yeah,
(14:00):
there are mentions of ghosts. One of the first, because
it's such an old belief, one of the first mentions
of ghosts, which we had talked about before, is in
the Epic of Gilgamesh, which, um, that's just a strange
name for me, uh to say. So anyway, it always
makes me think of Gargamel Gargamel. Yeah, and why isn't
(14:21):
anybody naming their kid gilgameshter gargamell uh and Matt. That
was that was your shot? Missed opportunity missed it this time. Yeah,
But seriously, I mean, like, as far as you know,
you you're talking about the idea of ghosts dating back
to this really really early text. Obviously, the Bible is
a very important old text that we you know, many
(14:43):
people rely on daily. Um, and I just wonder what
the stats being what they are with so many people
believing in ghosts and believing the ability to communicate with ghosts.
I wonder what the religious connection is there, And I
would just be interested in finding out more about that. Yeah,
it's interesting because, um, I'd like to hear from some
people who are perhaps a little more familiar with that,
(15:05):
because you know, most of the use of the phrase
ghosts in the Christian Bible is probably going to be
related to the Holy Ghost Act, right. I guess what
I'm kind of fumbling around to say is that I
I kind of feel like, uh, folks that are devout
in their religion in terms of especially Christianity, would be
(15:26):
less likely to believe in ghosts, simply because the idea
of spirits lingering after death sort of goes against the
basic principles of of Christianity in terms of like, if
you did good, you go to heaven. If you did bad,
you go to hell. There's really no niddle ground, there's
no sticking around as far as what I've read got well,
it could also that's interesting bringing up because then there
(15:49):
could still be a belief in non human spirits such
as possessive demons or angels, right exactly, and in um.
In Islamic addition, you know, we've talked about this before.
It's a fascinating thing to me. There is a third
sort of sentient race, right that the Jinn, and they're
(16:11):
brought from a smokeless screen fire and very different. Throw
the Aladdin stuff out. The Disney film Aladdin is great,
so the stories in a thousand one Nights great, but
the actual jin are much, um much closer to something
like an angel or a demon. Um. So that that
(16:34):
that's a belief in something that is otherworldly yet not
quite in the afterlife. Um. But that's also an interesting
point raised too, like if we go back to Christianity, Yeah,
wouldn't people be much less likely to believe in that
I would. I'm gonna go ahead and just really quickly disagree,
(16:56):
just because I think if you are, if you have
that belief system that there is something that is so
outside of the normal everyday experience, right, so the belief
that that just through faith, I believe that there's this
whole other plane called Heaven that exists. I believe there's
this other plane called Hell that exists, perhaps and all
(17:17):
these other things like h especially if you believe in
some of the parables, if you believe that they are
absolutely true to the word, then perhaps you could believe
that there's this thing that you've never seen before called
a ghost. But I absolutely believe that it's there. And
maybe you know, something gets caught up in the in
the process and gets left behind, you know, like the
(17:40):
spirit didn't make it to Heaven, hasn't passed on. It's
just interesting. There's just like you said, there's just so
many sex there's so many different belief systems that there
are just as many ideas for this stuff as there
are you know, stars in this But the poll shows
that there's no statistically significant differences that if you look
(18:00):
at age, gender, race, region of the country education. Uh,
Christians are if anything, a little more likely to hold
generally paranormal beliefs rather than non Christians. But also guys,
when we say paranormal beliefs, this pole didn't just ask
about ghosts necessarily, and it didn't just ask about um
(18:25):
identifying as by religion. This Uh, this asked about you know,
the belief in the idea of extrasensory perception esp. Do
you believe that you can read binds? Alan Turing did?
By the way? Um? But whether regardless of religion, the
point is that there seems to be a pretty even
(18:46):
slice across demographics. Um. The believing in an afterlife in
and of itself is a paranormal belief on its face,
in that it can it hasn't been proven right in
a way that everybody accepts. So what we're going to
talk about, We're gonna talk about a little bit of
of hauntings right here are the facts, and then uh,
we're gonna talk about Oh, let's see, you know, we
(19:09):
can talk a little bit about famous ghost investigations and
ghost winters. Uh, And we can tell a little bit
of maybe a little bit of behind the curtain stuff too.
So types of hauntings described hauntings. You can find all
sorts of lists for these things. But then again, with
no hard proof of what creates the phenomenon that we
(19:31):
call ghosts. Uh, it's tough to say that this is
our anything other than someone's opinion. But we have we
have stuff like knowls, um nols, psychic thumb prints, residual
thing right, yeah, I mean, and the way I was
talking about the top of the show, Um, how some
of these things that get left behind. You can think
of it in a couple of ways. You could think
(19:52):
of it as this energy or this spirit of this
thing that was left behind, in terms of a life
force or some sort of like imprint the a person
has made that's left behind, you know, outlives them. Um.
I have a little short story. I actually think I've
told this before and this on the podcast. But it
was just a moment where I experienced what I thought
was that thing, and at that moment I didn't I
(20:13):
thought it could be nothing, but what I thought it was,
which was proof positive that there is an afterlife. That
I was witnessing the presence of some sort of spirit,
and it was a girl I was dating at the time,
a dear friend of hers had passed away in a
car accident. And I met this girl, my my girlfriend
at the time, in her car and it was kind
(20:34):
of a cold day, cold evening rather, and so her
windows were fogged up, and I got in the car
with her to go get dinner, and she was and
was kind of sobbing, and she pointed to the inside
of the windshield and then she blew on it. And
this girl who had passed away recently, her signature was
inside of this windshield, just clear as day. And at
(20:54):
that exact moment, I was just like, I freaked out.
I just started, you know, crying, and it is just
this very cathartic moment. And then separated from it, I
very quickly realized, well, you know, these girls were good friends.
They were, you know, in their late teens, early twenties
kind of stuff girls do they you know, write their
name on the inside of a windshield and you have
like oils on your fingers that will cause that residual
(21:18):
fingerprint to stick around. So I just think it's kind
of an interesting parallel because it is both of those things.
You know. It is not only a sort of a memory,
sort of a left behind a bit of someone's essence
or energy. But it was very literally a fingerprint. Yeah,
that's your that's that's Ereie man. Yeah, I remembered when, Um,
(21:41):
you've mentioned that before and it stayed, it stayed with you.
And I think a lot of people in their audience
have had some sort of inexplicable experience, right, and can
you can find um, you can find anecdotes, especially surrounding
loved ones or family members. Um, you know, the people
who say they have a that a feeling of sudden
(22:04):
dark epiphany that someone had passed and they just knew, right,
And it's something that people have, people have attempted to
study and in many but there's no you know, there's
no accepted psychic alarm system. Right, So there's that residual
type of haunting, the kind that's kind of a JEF
(22:24):
in a place that just repeats and repeats and repeats
and repeats. So when you ever, whenever you go to
the hotel, you're gonna see this essentially this same thing occur.
This ghostly apperation appears to fall out the window, this
guy in a bear costume and the shining I remember that.
Oh that's right. Yeah, we're a family show though, But
that's a perfect example, exactly the right example. Someone continually
(22:47):
reenacting the moment leading up to their death, for instance,
or the ghostly hitchhiker's always going the same place but
never get in there, going my way. Uh. Then then
there's the intelligent type of haunting, which is, you know,
a someone who was on a mission. You've seen this
in Hollywood films a lot. This is what the story of.
(23:09):
There's this haunting that's occurring, and until the mission is accomplished,
like you find out why they died, or you get
revenged for the person that killed them, like the Lovely
Bones for example. That's sort of what that story is about,
about the spirit of a young lady who has killed
before her time by a very dangerous criminal you know,
(23:30):
who lives in the neighborhood and goes unnoticed and her
spirit returns so that he can get his come up
and so that he can't do it to anybody else.
That is a trope, you know, and a lot of
these things to me are more fictional tropes than scientific things.
But that you know, that's just me being the skeptic here,
(23:51):
I guess, right. So there's the idea of this love
or the Crow the crew would be a th channel thing.
And the reason we're relying so so much so on
um fictional things is because, aside from one very dodgy
(24:12):
legal case UM centuries ago which actually happened, uh, the
law and ghosts don't really interact, you know, not as
much as it would be fun for it to happen.
I would totally watch though, like Law and Order Ghost condition. Yeah,
(24:33):
I would love to. I would love that's a million dollars.
I want to see one of those no nonsense Hollywood
Judge shows, you know, with the ghost Judge ghost the
Judge is a ghost. I thought it would be ghost
coming into like this is fertile ground here, yeah, yeah,
here be serpents were on the edge of the map. Man,
this is terra incognita. Uh. Those are great ideas and
(24:56):
following them away and there's you know, people say, well,
there's the idea that they're be a demonic haunting, right,
and then there's the idea that there could be a
When I say demonic, I mean any kind of non
human thing. And then there's the idea that um, certain
locations can be haunted, which we have found is kind
(25:17):
of true. I know it sounds like we're burying the lead.
We'll explain why later. And let's not forget about poulter Geist,
sort of the Gremlins of the ghost world. And this
is where, okay, just refresh my memory because I think
I have an understanding of the Poulter guist because of
the movies where there are things occurring two objects in
(25:38):
a house, like objects are being moved a lot. Well,
I think it has a largely to do with sort
of a telekinetic ability. Um yeah, physical disturbance, physical disturbances
and mean in poulter Geist, the movie, there's the little
girl who is largely seen as kind of being not
maybe not the cause, but definite catalysts, a conduit or
some sort of catalyst for these energies. But yeah, I
(26:01):
think it can just like be like you know, chairs stacking,
you know, or like you know, household appliances turning on
and off, or just uh uh knockings in the night. Uh.
The word Poulter guys to think in English means something
like noisy spirit or loud ghost, polka ghost, rumble ghost, yes,
(26:26):
polka ghosts. But but that's interesting because Poulter dieist had
often at least in folklore, been thought to be haunting
a specific person, you know, like a often an adolescent girl. Honestly, like, um,
I think that's how the report goes, That's how the
film Poulter Geis goes. And UM, correct me if I'm wrong.
(26:48):
But maybe the bell witch, which leads us to another
interesting point that people have believes for centuries that certain
locations or places can be haunted. And that's kind of true.
Oh yeah, and not just not just places and a
single object like a trinket or I don't know, maybe
somebody's a jacket. Interesting, And we'll get right back to
(27:10):
that after a quick word from our sponsor. Stumbling towards
(27:33):
the bus stop after a late night Halloween party, Paul
Cooper finds a pair of shoes. He's not sure where
the bus stop is. When he finds these shoots, He's
just sort of walking to where he thinks the stop
should be. He's going from memory, perhaps from a vague
optimistic belief that he can discover the bus stop with
nothing but the distant light of downtown skyscrapers to guide him,
(27:56):
the same way his ancestors crossed oceans following the stars.
The last stretch between ponds and iris is unlit. Careful
of the puddles flooding the curb, Paul shies away from
the street. The drizzle grows metastasizes. Haul runs beneath the
bridge spanning North Avenue, hoping to wait out the storm.
He's huddled against the concrete, hiding from the rain, cursing
(28:18):
softly at the car's sprain puddles onto the sidewalk as
they speed west. He leans against the concrete, wishing for
smoke or an uber, and he sees the shoes. They're
dark leather, something Italian. They're not new, but they seem
artfully warm, expensive, substantial. His shoes broken down paints matter,
(28:42):
Jordan's feel leaky and cheap. As he stares at the
dress shoes placed neatly against the concrete wall, heels back toes,
facing the street, all momentarily imagined some well dressed revolutionary
of by gone days, standing against the wall, fearlessly hiding
a last cigarette as he bids his executioners to steady themselves,
(29:04):
to remember there are men to shoot. The water seeping
into his Jordan's brings Paul back to reality. He regards
the dress, shoes and wonders should I. He's just drunk
enough to try them on, putting one foot in gingerly,
then the next they fit perfectly. The rain slows back
(29:24):
to a drizzle, and Paul stumbles into the night, is broken.
Jordan's discarded and forgotten as a passing car throws water
across their souls. Paul's beginning to worry he won't find
the stop. He's admitting he can't remember the exact location
of the bus stop. He's beginning to think he should
have called an uber before his phone died. When a
car pulls slowly beside him and honks the horn. The
(29:47):
window rolls down, revealing a woman Paul doesn't know. She
wears a long red scarf, one of those kinds. Paul's
mom calls an infinity. Hey, she says, get Paul thing,
she's pretty. Here's this? No way am I taking a
ride with this weirdo? And these thoughts come to him
all at once, tripping over one another, like strangers interrupting,
(30:10):
like runners in a crowded room. And he's just drunk
enough to hop in the car. I'm just headed to
the bus stop. The woman doesn't respond, just drives towards
the city in silence. She parks along then unfamiliar side
street and alley, almost in the heart of downtown. Where's
the bus stop? The woman doesn't answer. She hops out
of the car and Paul follows her. Are we near
(30:32):
a train station? The woman looks back over her shoulder.
She's heading toward peach tree, and Paul walks after her
into a bar. Woud Paul thinks out of that it
should be. The place is like one long hallway with
a pool table at the end. Most of the crowd
is in one sort of costume or another. Hey, says
(30:55):
a man at the bar, chewing on a toothpick. You
should watch our buddy Cooper A gonna be happy to
see you. Who the hell is Coop? Says Paul. The
man just turns back to the bar, staring at a
rerun of football on the staticky television. Paul's looking around
for the woman who took me here, he thinks, conducted me.
When another woman walks up to him, she hands in
(31:16):
an old fashioned You're a sight for sore eyes, Dave.
She's tall, with long hair and dark eyes. She looks
him up and down. Breath night. Do you know each other?
She raises an eyebrow, laughs, you always say that. The
tall woman leans close to Paul's face. Listen, what do
you say we are? You're cheating, bastard. What are you
(31:37):
doing in here? Paul turns just in time to raise
his hands in defense. The screaming man swings why, shattering
the old fashioned to the floor. Paul stumbles back, a dizzy,
heart racing, yells the tall woman. Paul's eyes race for
something to grab, a pool stick, a bottle, a chair.
No one in the bar moves to intervene. It is
(31:57):
as if he does not exist. Paul grabs the chair,
feeling like a lion tamer. He yells at the bar,
then to the man, who must be Coop. Look cute,
I don't know you. You gotta calm down. The man
Coop draws a gun. Paul throws the chair, knocking Cooped
to the floor. He glances at the door and sees
the woman in the red scarf leaving. He chases her.
(32:18):
As they round a corner, he hears the bar door slam,
the sound of heavy boots in pursuit. Hey yells Paul,
who the hell are you help me? The lady in
the scarf turns as she opens the car door. I can't,
it's too late. A gunshot brings impossibly loud behind Paul,
and his vision explodes to red to white to black.
(32:47):
Early the next morning, the medical examiner turns on an
audio recorder as he prepares to conduct the autopsy. Okay,
let's see what we got here. Unidentified mail, late twenties,
messy gunshot wound to the head from the rear, execution style.
(33:07):
What are those lately? Another day in Paradise, I guess.
The examiner pauses before continuing. He takes off one of
the corpse's shoes, then the other. He holds them up
to the light. Ralph furrowed watching the shine of the dark.
Hand made leather. Huh, he says you again, Giodorno's fine leather,
(33:35):
stay one step ahead. Gidorno's fine leather is not responsible
for any of the following possible side effect sussession, demonic possession,
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The phantom of the opera, irit Lame his rob ectoplasmic excretions,
Giodorno's Fine Leather, brought to you by Illumination Global Unlimited. Wow, guys,
(34:06):
that was not That was not great courses, you know
that was that was a pretty um you know, I
really feel like old Illumination Global Unlimited has been you know,
pumping a little more um, a little more Illuminati bucks
into those ads. Well, did it feel like an ad
to you? Guys? I felt like that was a story
and then it was an advertorial. I'm I don't know,
(34:30):
I'm a little scared. Well, I don't be scared. Don't
be scared. Okay, let's talk more about ghosts. Don't be
scared yet. Yeah, okay, let's talk about Let's talk about something.
Don't be scared yet, we say, as we're saying, let's
also talk about something frightening. Let's talk about famous ghost
investigations and hunters. There are, of course, the warr Ins
ed and Lorraine there that their investigations, and some people
(34:54):
in our crowd are going to get way overly emotional
and fury us about us referring to them as investigations.
Kind of their were not ours. It's fine, whatever you
wish to call them in your own time. Uh, we're
calling them investigations because they call them cases or investigations,
(35:14):
and they have been the basis for several films. You
might remember some, in my opinion, better than others. The Conjuring,
The Haunted, Amityville Horror, Haunting in Connecticut, Annabelle Haunting three,
the Haunting, A hunting in Connecticut to Haunting in Newark?
(35:34):
Wait what Hartford? The Hartford Haunt and they the stuff
that they remains a controversial legacy. There are people who
are completely completely convinced that the Warrens had a particular
skill with exorcising demons, right, but then there are other
(35:58):
people who believe at the warrants were essentially con artists. Yeah,
it's it's tough. It's it's a tough thing to prove,
but it's also a um, it's a tough thing to
even have a conversation about if you really believe in
any of this stuff. So I apologize to anyone who
really believes. We're not trying to just say that you're wrong.
(36:21):
We just want to find the avenue to the truth, right,
That's where that's what we're doing. Well, it's sort of
like proving or disproving someone's religion. You know, I mean
to believe pretty much impossible. You know, Yeah, they're not
gonna and and the frame of reference for having that
conversation means everything. You know, if they're trying to like
convert somebody to believing in ghost spiritual disturbances, believing that
(36:45):
you are a successful ghost hunter, if that person isn't
already on the same page as you, it's gonna be
pretty difficult. And they're also you know that there's more
than one type of ghost hunter. We should be completely
completely clear about that. There are people who believe that
they are encountering something through an inexplicable natural ability, like
(37:07):
a medium, the power of a medium, right, And there
are people who believe that the power of a religion
allows uh, the um the cleansing or the exorcism of
someone a priest, Yeah, like a priest, some unhelp helpful spirit.
And then you will also hear people say that you
should smudge a house or burnett with sage to purify it. Right.
(37:29):
But then there are people who rely more on the
technical side, and they say, let us see these drops
in temperature or see if there's anything odd on these cameras, right, uh.
And then there are people who go in entirely uh
to say this is this is wrong, this bs you
are either willfully ignorant or you are purposefully swindling um
(37:54):
yourself when people report it. Um. And then there are
people who are more in the I guess in the middle.
And that brings us to the here's where it gets
crazy part of the show, because they're they're various theories
explaining ghost sightings that are not necessarily You know, my
(38:15):
dead grandfather came back because he knows I stole his
Playboys true story. No, well the playboy part, dude, He's
just for the articles though, right, yeah, No, shel Silverstein
is published in there. It's pretty good. He has a
poem about meeting the devil. Actually I know that one. Yeah,
it's pretty good. Yea, what was it called? Sorry, I
(38:37):
just said that. I haven't thought about that. I'll have
to look back and tell you. But so, well, we'll
get back to that poem, we'll bring it up. Um.
But so some of these, let's get past some of
the easy ones, and people have heard before, like there's
a hallucination due to perhaps a physiological injury or mental instability.
Um no, Matt and I alluded to that a little
(38:59):
bit earlier. We're listening possible causes. You could have things
like the struct their structural damage of some sort, or
just some unexplicable uh noises that are occurring, maybe from
from pipes, let's say, or from the air conditioner making
noises don't be associated matha, she don't need the wind maybe,
(39:22):
or the raccoons in the attic twice but apples falling
from the tree. Get rid of raccoons in the attic
and then put on and sorry twice simply a bag
of hands dropping one by one on to the floor.
It was an acorn. Yes it was a different time,
but that's absolutely true. It's very easy to misidentify things.
(39:43):
Can I before we get into the real need of this,
can I just tell you, guys one of my least
favorite horror movie tropes. Please thank you, because if you
said no, we would have just kept going. But I
despise it. And there's a haunted house situation, and there's
(40:03):
that one person who not only doesn't believe that the
house is haunted but has to be a prick about it.
That always bothers me because I feel like it's such
a metaphor for all these other unacknowledged problems that people
have or standard you know, like you're you're in a
relationship and you've got uh, your partner's best friend like
(40:24):
hates you, and you know it and it's obvious. You're like, hey,
your best friend hates me and we shouldn't hang out
with them. And then they're like, oh no, no, no, no, no,
you don't. You just don't get Daphne or whatever. No
offense to anybody whose name is Daphne. I just pulled
that out of the ether. Yeah, So that's that's just
the ramp, because you've probably had this happen at some
(40:46):
point in your life where you feel like you are
telling somebody something terrible is happening, something very bad is happening,
and they're going, man, you it's a it's a comment
on denial, I think, and you all go through different
versions of that throughout our lives. Uh well, I mean
usually in those films, the person who believes the most
(41:08):
is the person that's rewarded you. So do you think
I think it's gonna work out with me and Daphne
or hope. So, man, I think she's a nice girl,
says you. Well anyway, Okay, so I don't. I'm sorry
that we picked this stranger's name. Oh man, if your
(41:28):
name is Daphne, right, and I'll write back and apologize.
But we have one other explanation, and this is by
no means the only explanation. But we have one thing
that proves how a locale an area house, if you will,
can be haunted. And it's crazy. Yes, it's certainly unexpected,
(41:51):
I would say, And should we just hop right into it?
I think we should. So what if the ghosts that
you're seeing, or you thought you saw, or you thought
you heard, what if it was just a low frequency
vibration causing your mind and your eyes to play tricks
on your brain? See, that's a great question. I gotta say,
(42:15):
though I don't like the use of just because I
still think this is amazing and I don't think this
is like a debunking thing. Okay, yes, you're right. I
do not mean to downplay the coolness that the vibrations,
that the effect is, the effect itself is very cool. Well,
I just I also don't Okay, I'm already used up
my one soupbox for the show. But I am gonna
(42:37):
say I don't think that the existence of low frequency
vibrations or infrasound necessarily means that that is the only
thing at play. Sure, it's one explanation for a possibility,
or or what if what if the vibrations somehow hit
a resonant frequency in your brain that allows you to
(43:00):
receive different or what if ghosts cause vibrations? Yeah, I
don't know how it's let's roll it back just a
couple of notches here. So, so there's this paper by
a man named Vic Tandy who's a university lecturer at
Coventry University, and the title of the paper is the
(43:21):
Ghost in the Machine And I'll just give you a
little preview of it by reading the abstract. I think
this is a really nice job of kind of summing
up with this is about which I guess is the
abstract is supposed to do. So it's well done, sir uh.
In this paper we outline and as yet undocumented natural
cause for some cases of ostensible haunting. Using the first
author's own experience as an example, we show how a
(43:43):
nineteen hurts standing air wave may, under certain conditions create
sensory phenomena suggestive of a ghost. The mechanics and physiology
of this quote ghost in the machine in quote effect
is outlined. Spontaneous case researchers are encouraged to rule out
this stentional natural explanation for paranormal experience in future cases
(44:03):
of the haunting or poulter Geistick type, which I think
is very thoughtful thing to put there the abstract. It's
like he's saying, hey, we did the study that explained
this thing, So doing you a solid ghost hunters rule
this out when you're looking for actual paranormal phenomenon because
(44:24):
this ain't that well. Yeah, because in the introduction of
that paper, it lists all the different things that a
quote unquote ghost hunter or someone who's trying to study
these things should, uh, first thing eliminated all of this,
eliminate every one of these. Here's a new one. Here's
what it's like. That's what this paper is. I just
think it's cool because this this this fellow is coming
(44:45):
at this from a very you know, research, scientific oriented place,
collaborative as well. But he's giving a nod. He's not
like being a jerk about you know, he's totally like saying, hey,
I'm not saying that what you guys do is is bunk.
You know, in fact, use this research that we have
(45:06):
done to help further your efforts. And I thought, I
don't know, usually people that are coming from a very
um academic place tend to be a little more snooty
about things like that. So I just thought that was interesting.
It can it can happen. The the science behind it
is so compelling because it it uses also some research
(45:27):
from NASA. Okay, so, uh, let's who all right, as
the mad Hatter said to somebody at the tea party,
will start at the beginning, go through the middle and
stop and and the three of us are pretty familiar
with this story, so we'll just pass the ball around. Uh.
And you might have heard this as well, audience members,
(45:47):
especially if you two are intrigued by the investigation of
the ghosts. This guy, Victandy, it wasn't always a university lecturer.
As a matter of fact, at one point in his
life he was working in a laboratory making a medical manufacturer, right.
And this laboratory, I just like seeing it that way,
(46:09):
had a reputation. It was haunted, Oh yeah, super haunted.
In fact, people were seeing things, feeling things, hearing things
with no explanation. So let's talk a little bit about
the room. The rooms about ten ft wide by thirty
(46:30):
deep long, and their doors at one end getting a
picture like a garage, and then at the other end
there's uh some win there's some windows and there's like
a cleaning bay on the other side of those windows.
Vic Tandy not exactly a superstitious guy, you know what
I mean. Friday is just another day before Saturday to him,
(46:53):
and he notices, uh, this, this is pretty interesting. He's
also an I don't know if he's amateur, so uh, Vic,
if you're listening, don't get mad at us. But he
has an interest in fencing, and he doesn't know what's
going on with his these reports this ghost. He knows
that he's had some uncomfortable feelings before where he's got
(47:15):
that uh what's that song? Always feel like he's watching me? Yeah, yeah,
he has that moment and m and frequently for skeptical person.
So he um, he's trying to explain what's going on.
It's like, could this really be a ghost man? That's crazy?
(47:35):
And he's got some coworkers that are a little more
sold on the idea that are bringing this damn and saying, hey,
this is legit. I've had these experiences and you know,
he can connect with them in a sense, which is
making him, you know, think about this, what could be
the cause? What's the rational explanation? You know? For example,
I think there was a story where there was like
(47:55):
a hose or something that was moving around. They've got
like a cleaning hose, and he attributed to changes in
in pressure, you know, because this place is it's an
industrial type set up, so they've got some high pressure
sure water and air systems in there. You know, there's
different things that can happen. Changes in pressure in the
in the pipes, you know, can cause creaking sounds, you know,
expanding and contracting of metal, things like that. That's that,
(48:18):
that's where his mind is going. Absolutely. And so he
is using some lab equipment to ready one of his
fencing foils and the sorts, right, and that's when he
sees the foil itself just vibrating no discernible cause, well,
that doesn't make any sense, right, Why would there be
(48:40):
some kind of air disruption causing the spoiler move, especially
when that you can't just readily sense yourself exactly. You
can't hear anything. I mean, what what's the answer? Ghosts
like cats? Do they just like the smack things? You know? Yes,
something a little bit different though right now. So with
this point, Vic Tandy is on the hunt for what
(49:02):
the heck is causing this vibration in his laboratory. Well,
and he finds that there is a you might have
to help me out with this. Spin it's a fan
that's causing this, or an event a new Yeah, there's
there's a there's a fan fan duct, I believe, and
this duct is emitting a very low frequency sound and
(49:24):
then submitting it in what's called a standing wave. So
this is really cool. This is when well you can
you explain a standing wave? Yeah? Well, I mean this
in this case the wave. You know, sound is measured
in wave forms. If you've ever done any audio editing
or recording, you see um audio represented in a series
of peaks and valleys. So it sort of looks like
(49:47):
almost like waves on the ocean. Honestly, there's peaks and
there's troughs um. But different items vibrate at different frequencies.
And so what was happening with the four I was
that this vent or. This fan was emitting a wave
that was the precise or very close to the precise
(50:07):
frequency resident frequency of the actual blade. So it's sort
of like if you had a piano string or a
guitar string, for example, and you had another object or
item that was creating a vibration that was at the
same frequency as that string, it would cause the string
(50:27):
to vibrate in tandem with the other source. So that
was basically what was happening. And that's what's so strange
about that is that this is not a sound humans
can consciously here. Yeah, so low on the scale there
scale of hurts, but our our bodies can see. Our
(50:48):
bodies seemingly respond to it. By the way, I have
found of been doing some experimentation for the video for
this week, and you I think it's twenty around twenty
one or twenty two hurts. You can hear it with
the Sindhiser's um at least if it's what I have found.
You can kind of make it out. You can't hear
(51:09):
it necessarily, but you feel that something is happening with
your headphones. It freaks me out. So what I'm gonna
do if you haven't already watched the video. There's gonna
be a twenty hurts just tone going throughout the entire episode,
and I tested on some sub worffers. I don't think
it's gonna hurt anybody, but it should if there's any
(51:31):
truth to this, give you an eerie feeling while you're
watching it. You know, when the MythBusters did an episode
on this, uh, this frequency, they found that they had
um they had people saying that they had a sense
of aneyase, you know, like a whole body feeling. So
that's what that's what we find because not only is
this eighteen twenty hurts um range that the fan was
(51:55):
in resonant to that fencing foil, NASA found that this
is around the same resonant frequency of the human eye,
which could explain then how you might see smudges in
your vision shadow people. Yeah, you turn left really quickly
and all of a sudden, Oh, who's that there was
someone standing there? Maybe there was, Maybe there was, but
(52:19):
maybe there wasn't. The thing that it's interesting about this
is Tandy figures out there is a standing wave and
that's why it's concentrated more right in one place than another,
and he gets uh, he gets one of the four
minute construction workers to replace the fan and then boom,
exorcism complete. This is the nicest lab I've ever been in.
(52:42):
I want to stay here all the time. So what
we learned from that is that there are places in
the world that may naturally be haunted, but not necessarily
by sentient identities, instead by sounds. And it really cool
and still creates the same feeling all being haunted. So
it's almost like another It's almost in some ways it's
(53:03):
similar to a Turing test, you know, the haunted touring test.
Has it fooled you into thinking it's a ghost, then
how can we distinguish it from a natural ghost? I
don't know? And that so in the Tandy case, they
did trace it to a particular fan, and they investigated
(53:26):
and once they turned the fan off, the standing way
disappeared and this feeling of unease dissipated. The second question
that they had still that was left unresolved, was why
did this make people feel a certain way? Make people
feel uneasy? And they quote another bit of research that
(53:47):
they discovered and trying to answer this um and they
cite it as a book by tempest Ni. I'm not
sure what that means, but you can look it up
in the study Ghost in the Machine or the paper
Ghost in the Machine is available online DF for free
for free so quote noise Consultants were asked to examine
one of a group of bays and a factory where
workers reported feeling uneasy. That bay had an oppressive feel
(54:10):
not present in the adjacent areas. Although the noise level
appeared the same. Management, workers and consultants were all aware
of the unusual atmosphere, and on investigation it was found
that low frequency sound was present at a slightly higher
level than in other bays. However, the actual frequency of
the offending noise was not obvious. The cause of the
noise was a fan in the air conditioning system. Workers
(54:31):
in the University Radio Chemistry building experienced the same oppressive feeling,
together with dizziness when the fan in a fume cupboard
was switched on. Conventional soundproofing had reduced the audible sound
to the point where there was hardly any difference in
the noise when the fan was on as off. The
situation affected some people so much they refused to work
in the lab. It was concluded the low frequency component
(54:55):
of the sound was responsible, and that's a pretty good
way for us to end it today. I think we
would like to hear some of your ghost stories listeners
and how you can kinnot explain them, because I have
a few, to be honest, in my personal life that
I still meant a loss to explain. I don't know
what happened. Well, I am jealous if yet to have
(55:18):
anything of the sort, and I'm actively looking for it.
So ghosts, I called to you, I called to you.
What what do I what? How do you do it?
I summoned me. I think I think it's like if
you turn off the lights and say bloody Mary three
times in the mirror, you'll get dude. I tried that
so many times in elementary school and still never got
(55:39):
a drink. Gefty candy, man, get some candy. Tried that,
tried it all man. I do want to apologize so
that that quote that I read, I just looked in
the site and the sources in the paper and it's
a someone named w. Tempest and now he's Havny six.
The book is called Infrasound and Low Frequency Vibration, Academic Press, London.
(56:02):
That makes me think too about the brown note and
the the alleged brown Note and the the non lethal name.
By the way, DJ brown Note, you changed it, okay
for the kids, all right. So this brings us to
these other ideas, the effects that low frequency sounds can
have on the human mind. We don't have too much
(56:23):
time to get into it today, but if you're interested,
let us know, because we can tell you that Vic
Tandy and a few other, um, further academic researchers are
not the only ones poking into these effects on the
human mind, not by far, not by a long shot.
Uh So let us know. If you would like to
hear more about that. You can follow us on Facebook
(56:45):
and Twitter, where we are conspiracy stuff. You can go
there to see some stories that don't make it to
the air for one reason or another. You can always
check out every podcast we have ever done on our website,
Stuff they Don't want you to Know dot Com. And
one more thing. Two more things actually. The first one
is if you get a chance, check out now dot
(57:06):
how stuff works dot Com. It's a part of how
stuff works dot Com for whom we are employees. We
work for them, and um, we really like it here.
And one of the cool things we're doing now is
kind of getting up to date on new stories that
are coming out, more current stuff, a little more topical.
Some of the stuff on the old side is kind
of evergreen, and you know, this stuff is that tends
(57:27):
to be tied to more trendy you know, uh, topics
that are kind of popping off as we speaking. Yeah,
it's it's really great. We're even producing videos and I
don't I think I think you're gonna like it. Check
that out and you can tell us what you think
by writing us a good old fashioned email. We are
conspiracy at how stuff works dot com. From on this
(57:54):
topic and other unexplained phenomena, visit YouTube dot com slash
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