The Science of Ghost Busting

Most people have had had some sort of experience with a ghost or a family member who has recently been deceased or knows someone who knows someone who has. This can range anywhere from a feeling to a full on apparition.  Anyone who has experienced this will say it is indisputable that grandma or grandpa, Aunt Mildred or Uncle Howard showed up the night they passed away or they felt the presence of something or someone in their house.  For some, it may be a unique experience which will never happen again.  Just for the sake of saying it, I have an old boss who was a lunatic nutcase.  If there is a just and loving God, I will be allowed to taunt her from beyond just enough to nudge her over the brink, which trust me, isn’t that far.

One night while watching one of those ghost hunting shows, the “team” was at a lake investigating a haunting.  I approach these shows like a drunk watching Monday Night Football—I yell at the television assuming they can hear me.  They whipped out the trusty EMF Meter or Electromagnetic Field Meter. This is a commonly used instrument by ghost hunters to prove the existence of a discarnated soul.  What. A. Load. Of. Crap.  To dispel any questions about any electronic interference that may have affected  the EMF reading, the Alpha ghost hunter on this particular show announced to the viewer that they would turn off all electricity in the area.  Naturally, they got a strong “reading” from their little machine.  This is when I started yelling.  “ARE THEIR CAMERAS POWERED BY GASOLINE?”  NO ELECTRICITY AROUND AT ALL?  Give me a break.

The whole EMF Meter thing makes me nuts.  I mean it’s usage in the paranormal sense. 

The human brain has well over 100 billion electrical active neurons that emit EM fields.  To date, I have not been able to locate information on the exact amount of Hertz (Hz) the human body collectively emits*. Electricity is moved throughout the human body by means of our nervous system, we are determined “dead” or “alive” by measuring the electrical flux emitted by our cerebral activity (and cardiac activity).  While in deep REM sleep, the brain only throws a meager 0-4 Hz of delta waves, yet I know people who, wide awake, are so boring even this would be an off the hook number for them.  I am going out on a scientific limb here and assume that once we flat line on both a EKG and EEG it is safe to say that we are no longer a power house of electricity, thus we are dead as a doornail.  And I didn’t even go to medical school.

So how is it that Festus Jones, a civil war soldier who croaked in 1863 can throw out 26 hz of electricity with no body? Or what about little Timmy Paddock who died in a freakish head on collision with a bear on his bike in 1924, who can suddenly find the whopping 31Hz to alert a ghost hunter he still exists with no cerebral activity?  They can’t.  It makes it more palatable to the general public that this is proof.  It sells advertising and keeps the ratings up, that’s what it does.

Now, let me flip this around for the sake of argument. 

For proof that ghosts don’t exist, skeptics often use the “infrasound” explanation.  Infrasound again is based on frequencies, this time with sound the human ear can’t perceive.  Exposure to infrasound at around 20 Hz can cause a plethora of side effects.  At these levels, individuals report “eerie” sensations, disorientation, anxiety and in some cases hallucinations.  One explanation (among others) is the sound creates an almost undetectable resonating in the eyeball, causing someone to feel as if they are seeing things.  So effective is infrasound at higher levels that it is often added into the soundtrack in horror movies to evoke feelings of fearfulness.  

What are naturally produced sources of infrasound?  Elephants, whales, hippopotamuses, alligators—they use this as a method of communication.  If you are at the zoo or perhaps a circus when you have a meltdown, blame Jumbo the Wonder Elephant for the sudden download in your pants.  Other sources include earthquakes, severe weather and skeptics that pipe in the sound to prove a point.

Ok, that all makes sense.  I get it.  We have reactions to sounds the ear can’t easily detect. I buy that hook line and sinker. 

Let’s just say that a credible medium is in a location that is assumed to be haunted by a ghost.  And let’s also say that there are also documented high levels of infrasound at this location. Sure, he/she may feel the effects both psychological and physically, we understand that.  How do you explain the medium picking up clear and accurate information regarding precise particulars of the ghost’s former life, how they died, their name and any other grand details which is also documented and verifiable?  Where is that answer?  Don’t say “It’s because they researched the location.”  I said a credible medium.  Oh, maybe the proof is in the EMF Meter reading.

Some things are simply unexplainable.  Like why Brett Michaels is still famous.

So, how do we know ghosts exist?  I said so.

*Good luck Googling it.  You will find out how to rent a car.

The Vulcan Mind Melt

It was a hot summer night in 1978.  I was upset because my parents had rattled the cage of my teenage existence by not letting me go to the lake with my friends.  The forty minute drive out there made it a teen oasis not easily accessible to our parents, so we could pretty much run amok with minimal risk. It was where we basked in our adolescent debauchery.

My friend Lori had carelessly discussed plans well above the secretive decibel level to attend a party; after we announced to my parents we were going to the drive-in to see Grease.  My mother had overheard us, which triggered her highly vulnerable maternal instincts--forcing her to send Lori home followed by banishing me to my room for the evening.  At sixteen, this is a disaster of epic proportions.

I paced in my room careening through every possible argument as to why I should be allowed to leave the house.  I would run down stairs to where my parents were watching television, then state my case with the effectiveness of a salesman trying to convince a group of twelve year olds why they needed nursing home insurance.  Knowing I was fighting a losing battle, I gave up.  Ok, that’s not what really happened, that just made me sound good.  Really my dad was becoming increasingly agitated, warning me that my life would soon end if I didn’t stop whining.  He had a zero tolerance policy for lying. See?  It works to this day.

I fell asleep after all the cardio from running up and down the stairs. A few hours later, I woke up from a dead sleep with a headache.  This wasn’t an ordinary headache.  It was a very precise area across my forehead as if I had been smacked with something.  I jumped up and got a tissue to wipe my brow, feeling as if I had sweat pouring down my face.  I wiped my forehead, nothing was there.  As I lay back down, feeling bewildered to what was going on, I got an image.  It was like a flash of a scene that I was hovering over, observing and indirectly receiving the feelings involved.  

By the way, at this point it became solidified  that “hovering” was one of the methods in which I receive information.  It is actually called remote viewing, but I am going with the Hovering Method®, that way I can sucker people out of a few hundred bucks for teaching something that can’t be taught in the first place.  Well, unless you are unscrupulous and don’t mind robbing people of their hard earned cash.  Here is what you would get for your money; a ten second DVD that says “I have no clue how this works.  You really don’t want to know how to do this.  It’s a bitch on birthdays, holidays or any other occasion.  Surprises no longer exist. Just ask my husband.”

It felt like a memory, like when you sit and remember a specific event…but I knew that I wasn’t remembering because I had never seen anything like this occur.

I saw a white four door Toyota turned upside down in a ditch on a gravel road. In fact, I saw the dust had still not settled yet. There was an eerie silence.  It was out on the road to the lake, I could tell by the surroundings that I was so familiar with.  I knew exactly where.  The driver had hit his head on the steering wheel with great impact and was bleeding.  There was a female in the passenger seat and I saw three individuals in the back…two females and a male.  No one was severely injured, but I could see cuts and abrasions and felt a collective sense of shock. 

I wasn’t sure what to do.  By now, I had a deep seated mistrust with this kind of thing, it seemed far more logical to think I was completely and utterly insane than to believe this stuff happened. 

By then my parents had gone to bed. Feeling a powerful sense of conviction, I decided to act upon it. I ran to their room flipping the light on, yelling “Get up!  Get up! There’s been an accident!” 

My poor mother, completely startled jumped out of bed to her feet.  “Who?  What? Who is it? I didn’t hear the phone ring.”  My father snoozed through the entire thing.

I asserted with a condescending tone, like she was a total moron.  “The phone didn’t ring,  Mom.  I saw it happen.”  (I would now call her a “muggle.” In the Harry Potter series, a muggle is a person who lacks magical abilities.)

She was getting angry, speaking to me in her staccato I-am-sick-of-this-pain-in-the-ass-teenager voice, “For. Pete’s. Sake.  Where have you been?  We told you that you couldn’t go out”.  Unexpectedly, she cocked her head sideways, then slumped down taking a deep breath that filled up her cheeks like a puffer fish and let the air seep out slowly as she thought.

“Ok, is it one of those things? Or are you jiving me?”

“I didn’t go out, Mom. I swear.  Yea, it’s one of those things.  We have to go help these people.”

By this point in my life, although it made her uncomfortable, she had come to a place of acceptance with what I what I did.  Time and time again, since I had been five she had witnessed enough that my credibility was in good standing with her.  She was far more comfortable with it than I was.  I hated it. 

Still in a haze she didn’t miss a beat, “Okay.  Get dressed.  Where are we going, by the way?”

“Out by the lake.  Hurry let’s go!”

To this day, I still think about that night.  I wonder what she was thinking, but didn’t say.  Do we call the police?  How does a parent explain on a 9-1-1 call that your psychic kid saw an accident forty miles away, but we weren’t quite sure where?  We would have both been institutionalized.

As we headed down the street, I thought maybe there would be a sermon on how I was manipulating to get a chance to go out to the lake or some comment like “How long did it take you to think this one up?”  As if I would want to show up at the lake with my mother?  She said nothing of the like, except for questions on what I had seen.  We drove down the old highway and took a right on the gravel road to the lake.  We drove for quite a distance, finding nothing and finally gave up just short of a huge hill that was a few miles from the lake.

“Maybe you were dreaming. Can we go home now?”  It was around 1:00 in the morning, so I didn’t push the issue any further.  Perhaps I was wrong.  I felt like a fool.  It was nice to know my mother had so much faith in me, but it didn't take away my embarassment.

The next morning, my boyfriend was supposed to pick me up at 9:30 am.  By 11:45 he had not called or shown up.

He finally called,  “You’re not gonna believe……”

I interrupted him. “You saw a white Toyota that had rolled upside down in a ditch.  The driver hit his head. The passenger was okay and there were three people in the back seat. They were pretty beat up, but all okay. The driver must have hit his head on the steering wheel.”

“Yea, I took them to the hospital. I was there most of the night.….wait…how do you know?”  Ever so reluctantly I said  “I saw it in a dream. My mom and I drove out there last night.  We turned around because we couldn’t find it”. 

We began comparing stories.  He had driven up on the accident just moments after it had happened.  I had seen it through his eyes or that was my best guess.  This was something I would do from that point on…see images people have in their heads or read their memories.  Don’t ask me how because I have no explanation whatsoever how it happens or why.  It can’t be taught.  It doesn’t go away. 

I spent about three days completely freaked out, worrying it would happen again.  I made my boyfriend swear he wouldn’t share this with anyone for fear of the label that would become attached to me.  He never did.