Ghosts: The Science of Spooky Encounters

Summary

Science Vs - Episode Summary: "Ghosts: The Science of Spooky Encounters"

Release Date: October 24, 2024
Host: Wendy Zuckerman
Produced by: Spotify Studios

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Introduction: The Prevalence of Ghost Belief

In the Halloween-tinged episode titled "Ghosts: The Science of Spooky Encounters," Wendy Zuckerman delves into the widespread belief in ghosts and seeks scientific explanations for these paranormal experiences. Highlighting that approximately 40% of Americans believe in ghosts and 20% claim to have encountered one, Zuckerman sets the stage for an exploration that balances personal anecdotes with scientific inquiry.

Notable Quote:
Wendy Zuckerman [00:02]: "Surveys find that a ton of people, roughly 40% of Americans, believe in ghosts. Around one in five even say that they have had an encounter with a ghost."

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Lynn's Haunted House: Personal Encounters

The episode centers around Lynn, a resident of a haunted two-story clapboard house in Queens, New York, which is intriguingly surrounded by nine cemeteries. From a young age, Lynn reported unsettling experiences, including a recurring apparition she named "the priest."

Notable Quotes:
Wendy Zuckerman [01:43]: "Lynn grew up in this house. She moved here with her parents when she was just five years old. And she told us that from the first moments that she walked in, she knew something wasn't right about this place."

Anthony Simonelli [02:40]: "I would wake up in the middle of the night and there would be a black figure standing here. And I used to call him the priest when I was little."

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Paranormal Investigations: Anthony and Trey

Joining Lynn are paranormal investigators Anthony Simonelli and Trey Hayward, who bring their own ghostly experiences and equipment to the investigation. Anthony shares his childhood encounter in a cemetery and his lifelong commitment to uncovering the truth behind such phenomena.

Notable Quotes:
Anthony Simonelli [04:05]: "The first time he saw a ghost was when he was a kid. He and his friends were taking a shortcut through a cemetery on the way home."

Trey Hayward [04:24]: "I want to prove it because everybody tries to make you look silly doing this and, like, you're crazy."

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Theoretical Physics and the Possibility of Ghosts

To explore whether ghosts could exist within the realms of theoretical physics, Zuckerman consults Dr. Katie Mack, a theoretical astrophysicist. Dr. Mack discusses concepts like parallel universes and black holes, contemplating if these could harbor ghostly entities that interact with our world.

Notable Quotes:
Dr. Katie Mack [08:18]: "You can posit a parallel universe. You can posit a parallel reality that's disconnected from our own."

Wendy Zuckerman [09:41]: "But if they're not messing with this stuff, then they're not messing with our fundamental understanding of the world."

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Building a Scientifically Approved Haunted Room

Advancing the investigation, the Science Vs team undertakes a project to construct a scientifically approved haunted room. This endeavor aims to empirically determine whether ghosts can be detected or interact with their environment through measurable scientific means.

Notable Quotes:
Wendy Zuckerman [10:38]: "She's still checking her numbers on that black hole ghost theory."

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Sleep Paralysis: A Neurological Explanation

Introducing Dr. Balan Jalal, a neuroscientist from Harvard University, the episode explores sleep paralysis as a plausible explanation for many ghost sightings. Dr. Jalal describes his personal experience with sleep paralysis, where the inability to move upon waking can lead to vivid hallucinations of supernatural entities.

Notable Quotes:
Dr. Balan Jalal [21:29]: "I had this feeling of some evil presence. It was a ghost or some entity. And then I felt like suddenly this creature was pulling my legs..."

Dr. Jalal [24:17]: "So it's simply a glitch in the machine, right? A little technical glitch."

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Mold and Neurological Effects: Shane Rogers' Hypothesis

Shane Rogers, a professor of environmental engineering, proposes that mold spores in haunted locations might trigger neurological reactions that predispose individuals to perceive paranormal phenomena. Through his study, Rogers examines various sites, both reputedly haunted and not, testing for mold concentrations to identify any correlations.

Notable Quotes:
Shane Rogers [29:25]: "Perhaps as you process information in those types of places, and you're having unease, anxiety, and those sorts of things, you process it in a different way."

Lynn [34:32]: "We can see that locations that are haunted have higher concentrations of mold spores in the air."

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Psychological Factors: The Power of Suggestion and Confirmation Bias

Chris French, an emeritus professor at Goldsmiths, University of London, discusses the psychological underpinnings of ghost sightings. He emphasizes the roles of suggestion, confirmation bias, and the power of environment in shaping individuals' perceptions of paranormal activity.

Notable Quotes:
Chris French [36:14]: "It's just the power of suggestion."

Wendy Zuckerman [40:12]: "You start noticing every little anomaly, every little creak, every little noise that you might otherwise have not paid much attention to."

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Conclusion: Bridging Belief and Science

Despite the scientific explanations provided—ranging from neurological phenomena like sleep paralysis to environmental factors like mold—a significant portion of participants, including Lynn and her paranormal-investigating friends, remain unconvinced. They argue that personal experiences and beliefs transcend scientific theories, underscoring the deeply personal nature of ghost encounters.

Notable Quotes:
Anthony Simonelli [41:31]: "For people who believe, no proof is necessary. For people who don't believe, no proof is ever enough."

Lynn [42:22]: "Science can tell us a lot of things, but to rule out something like this with science, it's going to be really hard to do now, isn't it?"

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Final Thoughts

"Ghosts: The Science of Spooky Encounters" masterfully juxtaposes personal ghost stories with scientific inquiry, offering listeners a comprehensive look at why so many people believe in ghosts. While science provides compelling explanations for many paranormal experiences, the episode leaves room for mystery, reflecting the enduring human fascination with the unknown.

Notable Quote:
Chris French [38:45]: "The most parsimonious explanation is basically that if you say to some suggestible people, go in here and you might have some weird experiences, some of them do. It's just the power of suggestion."

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Additional Resources

For those interested in delving deeper, Professor Chris French has released a book titled "The Science of Weird: Why Our Minds Conjure the Paranormal," further exploring the intersection of psychology and paranormal belief.

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This summary is based on the transcript provided and aims to capture all key discussions, insights, and conclusions from the episode while omitting non-content sections such as advertisements and introductory remarks.

Transcript

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Oh, why am I getting this weird interference? Is it my phone? Could it be the occults? Is the interference gone now that you've moved my phone? Yeah, I've moved my phone. Okay, so not the occult this time. Not this time. Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and you're listening to Science Verses today on the show Ghosts. With the spooky season in full swing, we thought we'd revisit one of our favorite episodes. And you might be thinking, ghosts. What's science versus doing tackling ghosts? Well, you know what? Surveys find that a ton of people, roughly 40% of Americans, believe in ghosts. Around one in five even say that they have had an encounter with a ghost. And that number has actually gone up since the 90s. On top of all that, many of us have had moments where things get a little spooky and we start to believe. To tell you the truth, I was like, being sarcastic, but I was a little bit freaked out when you said you had interference on your microphone. Producer Caitlin Sory and I are about to enter a haunted house. It's this totally unassuming two story clapboard on a busy street in Queens, New York. Oh, here we go.

[Dr. Katie Mack]

This one.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

There's a blue door. It's very beautiful. It's pretty dark inside.

[Lynn]

Oh, hello.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Hello.

[Anthony Simonelli]

Come in, girls.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Thank you. This is Lynn. She's tall, has big glasses and a howling wolf shirt. And she mentioned that this house is surrounded by nine cemeteries.

[Anthony Simonelli]

I always say, I always make the joke, if the zombie apocalypse happens, I'm at ground zero, so I'm gone in the first wave.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Lynn grew up in this house. She moved here with her parents when she was just five years old. And she told us that from the first moments that she walked in, she knew something wasn't right about this place.

[Anthony Simonelli]

I don't remember it, but my grandmother always used to say, you came in and the first thing you said to me was, grandma, I don't want to move to the haunted house.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Her parents didn't believe her. They bought the place anyway.

[Anthony Simonelli]

But my grandmother knew right away that there was something in the house.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And soon after the family moved in, Lynn had her first paranormal experience. She woke up to a scary presence in her bedroom.

[Anthony Simonelli]

This used to be my bedroom.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

She showed us where it happened.

[Anthony Simonelli]

I would wake up in the middle of the night and there would be a black figure standing here. And I used to call him the priest when I was little.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

He had a long black gown.

[Anthony Simonelli]

I always found him very unsettling. In fact, I used to go to Sleep. And I used to line up all my stuffed animals in between me and.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

The corner to protect you from the priest.

[Anthony Simonelli]

My teddy bear, you know, all my little animals to protect me from him. But as I got older, he gradually, you know, went away.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So that was the first thing. That was the first thing.

[Anthony Simonelli]

That was the first thing.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

But over the years, lots of other stuff has happened. Like things seem to inexplicably move around her house. People who come over, they feel dizzy. Some have even fainted. She told us, especially when they go down into her basement. Sometimes Linh says that you hear the calls of a man yelling, get out. Tonight. She's invited friends over, her paranormal investigating friends. We could call them Ghostbusters. There's Anthony Simonelli and Trey Hayward. Anthony, hey, what's up, man?

[Trey Hayward]

I see all your posts.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

I be wondering, you gonna hit New York anytime soon or what? Anthony is a committed investigator. The first time he saw a ghost was when he was a kid. He and his friends were taking a shortcut through a cemetery on the way home.

[Trey Hayward]

I'm standing in my friends in front of me, and I see over the shoulder, there's a woman over a grave praying with her hair blowing. She had this long red hair, a white gown, and she's praying like, you know, with her hands crossed with her head down. So, you know, 13 years old. Hey, you guys, check this out. And she was gone.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And Anthony has made it his life's work to try to find out what he saw.

[Trey Hayward]

But I want to prove it because everybody tries to make you look silly doing this and, like, you're crazy. And everybody that's into the paranormal now had experiences when they were kids or something, and they're trying to find an answer for themselves.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Lynn was nodding along. People have made her feel silly too.

[Anthony Simonelli]

My mother had spent her whole life telling me and my grandmother she was crazy and telling me that stop imagining things.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

But what if Flynn and Anthony aren't imagining things? I mean, for centuries, people have sworn that they've seen ghosts. Those who have crossed over, crossing back. And so today on the show, we want to know what is going on here. We first looked into the science of ghosts several years ago, but today we're picking up our ecto goggles and slime blower once more. We've updated the science and we are back hunting for ghosts. We are going to look for them in black holes in the multiverse. We're even building a scientifically approved haunted room to find out once and for all, is it possible? Could ghosts exist? And if not, what else could be going on here? Science versus Ghosts is coming up just after the break. This episode of Science Versus is brought to you by Ford. There are few pickups more iconic than the F150, and the 2024 F150 Lightning truck is no exception. With an EPA estimated range of 320 miles with the available extended range battery, it's the only EV that's an F150. Visit Ford.com to learn more. Excludes Platinum models. EPA Estimated Driving Range based on full charge. Actual driving range varies with conditions such as external environment, vehicle use, vehicle maintenance, high voltage battery, age and state of health. There's no better feeling than a personal win. And the State Farm personal price plan can help you do just that. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can bundle and save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts, and savings and eligibility vary by state. Welcome back to Science Versus, the show that's pitting facts against phantoms. After meeting Lynn and seeing her haunted house, we at Science Versus went searching high and low for what could explain Lynn's experiences. Now, ghost believers sometimes love to lean on theoretical physics to explain how ghosts might exist. Some paranormal groups, for example, argue that ghost exist in another dimension that closely parallels ours. So we spoke to a theoretical physicist to find out if that was possible. Dr. Katie Mack is at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario, Canada.

[Dr. Katie Mack]

I'm a theoretical astrophysicist. I do cosmology, which is the study of the whole universe from beginning to end, all that kind of stuff.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So everything in the universe that would include ghosts. Right. So we wanted to know if there was any room for ghosts in theoretical physics, if you really wanted ghosts to exist.

[Dr. Katie Mack]

Yeah.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

What would you pick as, like, where's your best bet?

[Dr. Katie Mack]

Right. So, yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, let's say that you want to believe in ghosts and you just really, really want to show that it's possible. Like, you can go to the edges of what we understand and what we have really solid theory about. You can posit another universe. You can posit a parallel universe. You can posit a parallel reality that's disconnected from our own.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yes, a parallel universe.

[Dr. Katie Mack]

You can put anything you want there, like absolutely anything. All the fairies live in the multiverse. Fine.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And the reason Katie is fine putting ghosts in another universe is because, you know, scientists have never reliably measured Ghosts with all their fancy sciency devices. But that would be okay, because lots of theories about parallel universes say that whatever is in that other universe, it can't interact with ours. So ghosts in another universe can't mess with our atoms, our electricity, or anything that we can measure in labs around the world. And if they're not messing with this stuff, then they're not messing with our fundamental understanding of the world.

[Dr. Katie Mack]

But that also means they can't talk to you and they can't move stuff around in your house. And, you know, you'll never know if they're real or not.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So that doesn't really help us, because Lin's ghosts and the ghosts that many other people have encountered do interact with our world. They're moving stuff around and scaring us. So can we squeeze ghosts into theoretical physics somehow? Katie thought for a bit, and she was like, you know, there is one theory about parallel universes that could mean that ghosts living in that parallel universe might just be able to interact with ours. Okay, but here's what you need to know. Katie's idea of a ghost is very different to Lyn's and probably yours. Katie is, after all, a theoretical physicist.

[Dr. Katie Mack]

If you had a ghost that was pure mass, like a black hole. If your ghost is a black hole, yes.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Let's say the ghost itself is a black hole, which, by the way, is a place in space where gravity is.

[Dr. Katie Mack]

Incredibly strong and your ghost is living on this other plane.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And so a ghost is a black hole in another universe. And let's say that black hole in the other universe bumped right up against our universe.

[Dr. Katie Mack]

Then, in principle, your ghost could have. Could create some gravitational pull in our universe.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So if. If your ghost. If your ghost was a black hole, it could not. It could not scare you.

[Dr. Katie Mack]

Yeah, I mean, like, I don't know. I guess. I guess, like, it would. It could create a little bit of gravity here somewhere in the universe.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Could it knock over glasses or move things around by changing the gravity?

[Dr. Katie Mack]

Uh, sure. Yeah. If that happens. If you.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

If really? Really? Katie could.

[Dr. Katie Mack]

If you like.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah.

[Dr. Katie Mack]

I mean, if you have a black hole, stationary black hole, that you put on this other dimension and you got it to standstill and it happened to be nearby to one of your glasses, however, it would also be pulling on your table, and you probably would notice other effects from the gravity. And if you do, you should definitely make some measurements and write a paper and send it to the Astrophysical Journal, because that would be very interesting. Do not send it to me. That's an Important caveat. Please do not send it to me. Absolutely do not send it to me or any other physicist. However, if somebody can make a measurement of the gravity of a black hole from another dimension affecting their self aware, that would be a very interesting experiment. It would be very weird if it were just your own kitchen where this was happening. But I mean, yeah, I can't rule that out.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Can't rule it out. But even if there is something to this ghost black hole theory, it could only explain why some things are moving around Lynn's house. Right, but what about the phantom priest or Anthony seeing that ghost in the cemetery? We're going back to Lynn's haunted house to try to get more answers. We all head down to Lynn's creepy basement. It's hot, musty, and dark, and every now and then the heater turns on with this big creepy clank. Anthony has brought a whole bunch of equipment with him. It's all sorts of gadgets to capture and communicate with ghosts. He's got a digital audio recorder, cameras, and a meter that measures the activity of electromagnetic fields, which are huge in the ghost hunting community. So electromagnetic fields are these invisible energy fields that happen when there's an electric charge. It's what makes your hair stand up when you get static electricity. And you can feel the electromagnetic field when you move metal around near a magnet. But most of the time, there are electromagnetic fields all around you and you just don't notice. Like radio signals and the magnetic field of earth. Lots of stuff can affect these fields, like electrical power lines transmitting, TV antennas and cell phones, as well as thunderstorms. But according to Anthony, ghosts can also interfere with these electromagnetic fields, which takes us back to this device that he has to detect changes in these fields. His device looks a bit like a handheld transistor radio with a very long antenna. What is that? What is that noise?

[Trey Hayward]

That. That's just the noise. It goes. It's a detector. It's an alarm that if something comes close to it, like a spirit or a hand.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

You're doing it with a hand?

[Trey Hayward]

Yes. You know, you have electrical charges that pump your heart and everything. So when a spirit manifests, it has electrical charge. So that's what caused this to go on, because electrical charge is part of the spirit that's manifesting.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Anthony kept the magnetic field detector out the whole time that we were there, but it didn't pick up much. But our next question is, could ghosts be interfering with electromagnetic fields? That's what we asked our theoretical physicist, Dr. Katie Mack.

[Dr. Katie Mack]

No, I mean, I Mean, the thing is that, like, if ghosts created magnetic fields, then you would measure that in laboratories. We have very high precision measurements of things like electromagnetic fields.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So Katie's like, if ghosts were messing with electromagnetic fields, then what happens to all those precise measurements that scientists have recorded?

[Dr. Katie Mack]

Then all of our measurements would be off everywhere.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So I guess the other big pool of evidence that ghost hunters have are images. Perhaps you've seen these photographs with flashes of light that look like orbs, or maybe there's something blurry, a little spooky in the background. We scrolled through a bunch of these, and, I don't know, a lot of the time, they just look like tiny bits of dust that might have drifted close to a camera's lens. And academics have pointed out that, you know, they can look kind of creepy, particularly if a camera has infrared light, but you're not necessarily looking at a ghost. As we finished up our conversation with Katie, all we had was a theory about black holes in another universe. And then as we were saying goodbye.

[Dr. Katie Mack]

She said, so the bit about the black hole in another universe knocking the glass off the table. I feel like I need to check my numbers on that.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Hmm. While Katie's checking her numbers, this still all leaves us with a very, very big question. How could it be that one in five Americans reckon they've encountered a ghost? That's so many people and so many ghosts. After the break, scientists start meeting these ghosts too.

[Dr. Balan Jalal]

This was very real. I had a very real supernatural experience.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And using their own Scooby Gang devices, we'll find out what's going on. This episode is brought to you by Ford. I'm here with our editor and electric vehicle owner, Blyth. Yes, I'm recording inside my Ford F150 Lightning truck to chat about the Ford power promise. What's that? It is Ford's commitment to getting electric vehicle drivers started with confidence. When you buy or lease one of their electric vehicles, you get a complimentary home charger and standard installation. Wow, that's pretty impressive. Which models are included? The Ford Mustang Mach E, F150 Lightning, and E Transit cargo van. You can visit FordPowerpromise.com to learn more. Must purchase or lease a new Ford F150 Lightning Mustang, Mach E or E Transit cargo van vehicle from a participating ford dealer between October 1, 2024 and January 2, 2025. To be eligible to receive a one complimentary Ford charge Station Pro Ford Charger model may vary based on availability with complimentary home installation or B2000 bonus. Cash, no trade. In required offer not available to fleet or commercial customers. Complimentary home installation must be performed through qmerit Electrification LLC at a residential location with a dedicated electrical meter. Restrictions may apply based on structural and electrical limitations. Installation must be completed by June 30, 2025 for all offers. Must take retail delivery from an authorised Ford dealer's stock by January 2, 2025. See your Ford dealer for details and terms.

[Lynn]

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[Wendy Zuckerman]

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[Lynn]

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[Wendy Zuckerman]

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[Lynn]

Use as directed.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Welcome back. Today on the show Ghosts. Why do so many people have strange experiences with them? Scientists have gone searching for explanations. Which takes us back to Lyn's first run in with a ghost. She was sleeping when she saw a figure.

[Anthony Simonelli]

A lot of times I would wake up in the middle of the night and there would be a black figure standing here.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Dr. Balan Jalal is a neuroscientist at Harvard University and he has been researching this very type of encounter. And he got started about a decade ago because it happened to him too.

[Dr. Balan Jalal]

So basically I slightly woke up and I realized, okay, I'm paralyzed here. I can't move, I can't speak. And I had this feeling of some evil presence. It was a ghost or some entity. And then I felt like suddenly this creature was pulling my legs and it was pulling my legs up and down and up and down and I knew I wasn't dreaming. And then it started to choke me and it started to press on my chest so I couldn't breathe. This was very real. I had a very real supernatural experience.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Baland was totally confused.

[Dr. Balan Jalal]

It was just one of those things, right? You know, you're not crazy because you're not crazy in all other respects. It's only in this particular thing.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And so he's devoted a large chunk of his career to researching what on earth happened to him, because he tells us that similar experiences have been documented for thousands of years in cultures all around the world. In ancient Rome, this apparition was called incubus or succubus. In Japan, it's known as kana shibari, which literally translates to bound in metal. But Baland and other researchers now think that these ghostly encounters aren't quite ghosts, but actually something called sleep paralysis. This is where you wake up and you can't move your limbs. I've had it and it's actually really scary. Even though I knew there was this thing called sleep paralysis, when I woke up, I thought, oh my God, I'm paralyzed. But I wasn't because it was just sleep paralysis. And we've actually talked about this on the show before. It's pretty common. One review of 35 studies found that around 8 of the population might have had it, but people can experience it in very different ways. For me, I just couldn't move. But sometimes people have difficulty breathing or like bland they feel this pressure on their chest or even a full blown hallucination. Now we think this happens because when you're in REM sleep, which is a stage of sleep where you can dream vividly, your brain stem actually sends messages to your spinal cord to basically paralyse you. And this stops you from acting out your dreams at night. But during sleep paralysis, you wake up, but your brainstem is still sending those messages, so you can't move your body. Or as Beland puts it, you're awake, but you're still under the spell of REM paralysis.

[Dr. Balan Jalal]

So it's simply a glitch in the machine, right? A little technical glitch. And we are mentally awake even though our bodies are physically paralyzed.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

In fact, one study actually analyzed brain waves of a 59 year old man while he was experiencing sleep paralysis. And they found that it really did look like this intermediate state of mind between being awake and being in REM sleep. But just because you're paralysed, why would you start seeing ghosts or like Baland, thinking that your legs are moving up and down? Well, Beland has this idea that he hasn't fully tested Yet. But it has to do with our perception of our body.

[Dr. Balan Jalal]

So I occupy this body, you occupy your body. Okay. I don't occupy Brad Pitt's body, unfortunately. All right, so we all have a sense of a body image, right? Okay. This is created in the brain, but.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

During sleep paralysis, when the brain tells the body to move, it doesn't. Your brain's like, move, okay, move.

[Dr. Balan Jalal]

But there's no feedbacks from your body.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And so your brain is pretty confused at this point. And so it tries to clear up this confusion by constructing a body image for you. The blonde reckons ends up getting kind of projected out in front of you. So you wake up, and you see something strange, and they don't look good. Other researchers have suggested that the intense fear that can come when people get sleep paralysis is also playing a role here. We know that fear on its own can make it hard to breathe and can give you this tightness and pressure in your chest. We also know that during rem, parts of the brain linked to strong emotions are really activated. And so it just means that your brain is going through a lot at this time, and it's just desperately trying to make sense of it all. And in the end, it just goes.

[Dr. Balan Jalal]

And you create a very vivid, very real hallucination of creatures in your bedroom that can have all kinds of shapes.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So it's like a little bit like when you misspell something in Google and it just says, I think this is what you meant exactly.

[Dr. Balan Jalal]

Well, that's a very good way to put it.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

But in this case, of course, your mind's autocorrect has gotten it totally wrong. You might see a shadowy figure that perhaps looks like a scary priest or something else. So while we're still working out the details of why people see these visions when they have sleep paralysis, many academics in this space think that this is one reason why a lot of people encounter ghosts. But of course, while it's a very ghoul idea, it would only explain the ghosts that people encounter when they're just waking up. What about when we see spooky stuff when we're wide awake and maybe even hanging out in Lyn's basement? Well, to answer that, we need a new Ghostbuster. So meet Shane Rogers. He's a professor of environmental engineering from Clarkson University in upstate New York. And Shane has been interested in paranormal activities since he was a boy. When Shane was 11 years old, he also lived in a creepy house like Lyn's, close to a cemetery. And he had this really spooky Experience.

[Lynn]

One night, I came downstairs to get a glass of water, and it was dark in the living room, and I saw a light kind of shining around the living room. And then the light itself, I realized, wasn't on the wall, and it was in the room. And so, of course, I ran back upstairs into my room and had to process that information.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And so by you had to go upstairs and process that information, does that mean you were, like, scared out of your.

[Lynn]

I spent some time under my blanket there.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

More than a decade ago, Shane got to thinking back to that experience, but he was thinking about it from a new perspective. He was a scientist now, and he was seeing things a little differently. And he thought about that house. It was old and musty, and it made him think that maybe mold was growing there. Yeah, mold. And maybe that's what made him see that paranormal light. So why would mold cause something strange in the neighborhood? Well, when molds reproduce, they can release spores in the air that you then breathe in. And sometimes, if you're sensitive, these spores can make you cough or weeze and potentially trigger an inflammatory reaction. And Shane suspected that maybe this inflammatory reaction just maybe might affect your brain as well, potentially making you more anxious and more likely to think that you see ghosts. And he thinks maybe this is more likely to happen if you're already in a creepy place.

[Lynn]

Perhaps as you process information in those types of places, and you're having unease, anxiety, and those sorts of things, you process it in a different way.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Oh, so you're, like, already primed to be thinking this is going to be a haunted house, and then the mold tips you over the edge.

[Lynn]

Yes. Yes. The experiences that you have because of your exposure to the mold tips you over that edge. Yeah.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

To make his case, Shane leans on studies that have found neurological symptoms like fatigue or difficulty concentrating in people living or working in damp and mouldy places. And studies in mice have found that when they're exposed to certain mold spores, you can actually see inflammation in their brain. But this idea that mold in buildings can cause neurological problems is actually pretty controversial. And there's no conclusive evidence that living in a mold infested place can mess with your brain, let alone make you see a ghost. Which is why Shane started this study.

[Lynn]

There's no official name for it. Students like to call it mold busters.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

The mold busters head to haunted places. Houses, museums, restaurants, abandoned buildings. And then they test for mold at each site. They'll take air samples.

[Lynn]

Okay, so basically, what you're hearing is just vacuum pump. And so we'll put on kind of just a filter. So we're trapping whatever might be in the air.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And this mold busting gadget, his vacuum pump. It really does look like it's straight out of Ghostbusters.

[Lynn]

If I could strap it on my back, I would.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

By now, him and his team have headed to almost 30 places. Half of them haunted, half of them not. Have you had any spooky experiences personally while visiting these places?

[Lynn]

Oh, my gosh. Some of the places that we went are definitely very spooky. There's no doubt.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

In what way?

[Lynn]

Oh, I mean, you know, dark places, you know, just that creepy vibe, you know, some of the places. Holy smokes. Like who I really want to be down here.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Right, right.

[Lynn]

It looks like something out of a horror film.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Oh, God. Is anything anything like just a vibe? Is that any very specific, like a hand on your shoulder or to get out from deep within the basement?

[Lynn]

Yeah, you know, we didn't get. Yeah, we didn't get any, you know, yelling at us, but strange sounds that you can't, you know, you can't define. And you know, where did that come from? I'm not really sure. And playing around, you know. Cause you see on the Ghost Hunter shows people doing, you know, like the knocking and then, hey, knock back, you know, and you knock and then something knocks back. You're like, wait a minute.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Oh, that did happen to you. That happened. Which is.

[Lynn]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Just playing around and it was like, okay. But obviously, you know.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

But obviously.

[Lynn]

But obviously. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. We're just there to test for mold, Wendy.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So that was one of the so called haunted places that he's visited. But I know what you're thinking. Well, you're probably thinking a lot of things right now, but one question might be, well, what's he using for a control? Well, he's chosen comparable creepy places, but ones where no one has seen a ghost. So for example, he told me about this basement at his university that he tested. Picture this. He and his students go into this pitch black basement. There's this concrete hallway, almost like a bunker, which leads to this large room.

[Lynn]

I'm like, I don't even really know what this room is for.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Oh, gosh.

[Lynn]

And halfway down this room to the right was a door. And it's like the only door in the room.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Oh, God.

[Lynn]

Like what? You know, and it's dark, pitch dark. You know, we have flashlights and we go down there and we open the door a little Bit and go to walk in. And in the middle of the room is just a chair, just like an old wooden chair, just sitting there facing the door as if like someone were just sitting in this room staring at the door. What? Water on the floor. And the students that were working with me were like, I don't want to go in there. You know, it just raise your hackles. You're just like, what in the world?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

This is a non haunted place. These are good controls.

[Lynn]

It was probably the scariest one.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So after all of these spooky adventures, what has he found? Well, Shane's work is unpublished and preliminary, but his early analysis suggests that this mold theory might have something to it.

[Lynn]

We can see that locations that are haunted have higher concentrations of mold spores in the air. Significantly higher concentrations of mold spores in the air than places that are not.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Places where people have had haunting experiences tend to have worse infestations of mould.

[Lynn]

Yes, yes. You're far more likely to find mold in a place that's haunted than you are in a place that's not.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Which is all very curious, but there is still this very big question around whether these moulds really are affecting people's brains and then increasing the chance that they see a ghostly hallucination. And I gotta say that some other academics that I reached out to about this thought, you know, maybe there's something here, but it's a little bit sporious, you know, like spurious, but sporious. I mean, bottom line, we all just want to see the data published in a peer reviewed journal. Okay, so while things in our environment like mold might increase the chance that you'll encounter a ghost, for now the evidence is about as weak as the electromagnetic fields around you right now. So until we get more data, we have to move to a science that's a little more concrete psychology. So who are we going to call? Chris French, an emeritus professor at Goldsmith's, University of London. And Chris studies, among other things, why people believe in ghosts.

[Chris French]

Well, ghosts are a tricky one because typically with ghosts. Sorry, we've got a dog in the room with us and she just flapped her ears.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Let's listen again. Definite dog flap.

[Chris French]

Stop it, Chacey. Right.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So for a long time, Chris was a real believer.

[Chris French]

When I was a kid, I was terrified of ghosts. I had to sleep with a nightlight for very, for many, many.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Did you see a ghost?

[Chris French]

No, I don't think I ever actually saw one, but I always lived in fear that I might.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

All through university, and even as he started his Ph.D. chris thought that ghosts might exist, but now as a professor, he thinks something else might be going on here, which is why he did this very cute and very creepy study.

[Chris French]

So we thought, wouldn't it be fun to create an artificial haunted room? Can we actually induce these kinds of experiences in people?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So he builds this room.

[Chris French]

If you went inside, it was just white, it was circular, and there was nothing in it.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

He got about 80 people to wander around alone in the room, and he told them that they might experience mildly unusual sensations.

[Chris French]

Go in there, stay in there for 50 minutes, you can wander around and tell us whether you have any strange experiences.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Were you tempted to go on the speakers?

[Chris French]

Ooh, that would be totally unethical and we wouldn't dream of it. Yeah, it would have been funny. But no, we didn't do it.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And people did have experiences in the room. No full blown ghosts.

[Chris French]

But some people came out saying, whoa, that was really weird.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Some people felt dizzy or odd, a few even experienced terror.

[Chris French]

And those are the kinds of experiences that people typically report when they go to reputedly haunted locations. I mean, it's actually. Although typically when you talk about ghosts, it summons up an image of some kind of full blown apparition that is actually kind of remarkably rare. It's much more common for people to just report these kinds of milder, anomalous experiences that I'm talking about. So the most parsimo explanation is basically that if you say to some suggestible people, go in here and you might have some weird experiences, some of them do. It's just the power of suggestion.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And there's a bunch of other really fun studies that have found that the power of suggestion plays a really important role in all of this paranormal stuff. Like in one study, researchers created fake seances with an actor and brought in over 100 people to these events. The actor suggested that a table had moved during the seance, when it hadn't. And after the fact, almost a third of the participants thought that the table had moved. A third. They did the trick again with a handbell. And that time one in 10 were like, oh, yeah, that handbell moved. So the power of suggestion, it is huge here. And Chris says, you know, so people don't like being told that this is what might have made them think that they saw an apparition.

[Chris French]

Typically, if you say to someone who reports that they've seen a ghost, or, well, maybe you were just seeing things, in other words, you were hallucinating, they'll get very defensive because they interpret that to mean you're Saying I'm crazy, but it doesn't mean that at all. We can all, under the kind of appropriate circumstances, hallucinate. I'm sure you've had this experience yourself that if you go into an old building and somebody says, oh, it's supposed to be haunted, it suddenly feels very different. You start noticing every little anomaly, every little creak, every little noise that you might otherwise have not paid much attention to.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Could it be the occult? No. No idea what he's talking about. And the people around you can also make a big difference here. So, for example, studies have found that when someone new says that they're seeing paranormal things, like literally, there's been research where someone will say that they see that a key is bending when it's not. And then others around them were more likely to agree, oh, yeah, the key is bending. On top of all of this, once you believe that something is true, you can start seeing signs of it all around you. This is sometimes called confirmation bias, and we can all fall prey to it. So bottom line, when you've got a group of people who believe in ghosts and go on hunts together expecting to find these ghosts, psychological forces can kick in, which ultimately means that the friends create a world where ghosts do exist. And that's really the science of ghosts. I walked Lynn and her friends through all of these theories. They weren't really buying it. For them, the ghosts exist. So we haven't. We haven't convinced you, or these scientific theories don't help you out?

[Anthony Simonelli]

No, I'm not. I mean, I'm not saying these aren't theories that might actually explain other situations and other things, but it's not my reality. We're not here to convert anybody. We believe what we believe. We have our reality and our experiences. You know, I mean, for people who believe, no proof is necessary. For people who don't believe, no proof is ever enough. That's just the way I look at it.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And while a lot of these ghost stories really can be explained by sleep paralysis or our own psychology, Shane, our mold buster, well, he's had so many ghost stories by now that he still sees a little mystery in all this.

[Lynn]

Science can tell us a lot of things, but to rule out something like this with science, it's going to be really hard to do now, isn't it?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

To rule out something like ghosts, you mean?

[Lynn]

Yeah. So, I mean, you can't science these experiences away so easily. And I think that, you know, this is part of the human experience, and it's interesting, and I think that it enriches our lives. I think it would be about a boring place if we were to not have cool, interesting things like this happen and to have a mystery that we just maybe can't solve yet. Mysteries are what drives us. It's what drives science. We don't know all the answers and so we do it.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

That's Science versus Ghosts. Oh, wait, Katie Mac. Oh my gosh. She's still checking the numbers on that black hole ghost theory. Katie, could the black hole ghost knock over your glasses?

[Dr. Katie Mack]

No.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

No.

[Dr. Katie Mack]

So if no, I'm just going to say no.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

That's science versus ghosts. Professor Chris Fredge has a new book out now called the Science of Weird why Our Minds Conjure the Paranormal. And it's a really fun read. My TikTok is wendysuckerman. Come say hello. Our Instagram is science verses. That's science BS. This episode has 54 citations in it. If you want to read more about ghosts, just check out the show notes and click on the link to the transcript. This episode has been produced by me, Wendy Zuckerman, Ben Kibrick, Diane Wu, Heather Rogers, Shruti Ravindran, Kaitlyn Sorey and with help from Michelle Dang and Akedi Foster. Keys edited by Annie Rose Strasser with help from Blythe Tyrell. Production assistants, Audrey Quinn. Fact checking by Michelle Harris. Sound engineering and spooky mix by Bobby Lord. Original scoring by Bobby Lord and Emma Munger. Thanks to all of the researchers that we reached out to for this episode, including Professor Barry Markovsky, Dr. Kieran O'Keefe, Dr. Neil D. Agnell, Dr. Giulio Rognini, Raymond Swires, Dr. Joseph Baker, Professor Kwai Man Luk, Professor Kingseng Chinag, Professor Tappan Saka, Professor Maxim Gitlix. And also a big thanks to Jorge Juss, Devin Taylor, the Zuckerman family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. And finally, thank you to Hayley Shaw for the spooky violins during the Science versus theme. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.