The Absence of Water

There is something so eerie and yet beautiful about these photographs of pools in the UK that have fallen into a state of disuse. 






Source: Gigi Cafali's collection "Absence of Water"
Check out her website!

Boo! Ghosts? No, Infrasound.

You're in a house that you have been told is haunted. You walk into the room you think just might be the place where the event went down. Standing upright, you waver a bit in the dark, offput a little but still with resolve. Suddenly, chills crawl up your back and almost instantaneously you see a gray figure in your periphery. What just happened? What could possibly explain what you just experienced? Supernatural? Or just...natural?

The answer quite is just that...natural. In the form of inaudible, low-frequency sound waves known as Infrasound.

Now wait a second, sound waves can make you hallucinate, Randall? Come on! That doesn't even make sense. Oh but wait, it will.

Infrasound, as experienced in various experiments before, can cause a curious culmination of physical effects such as tingling on one's backside, curling of the gut, or even a rise in emotions such as panic (alerting fight-or-flight). Infrasound also has been reported to result in visual hallucination, whether it be blurring or even vibration of the eye. Peripheral vision in general is naturally very sensitive to any sort of movement evolutionarily (predators sneaking up from the side?). Also, lots of the places that are deemed "haunted" don't have furniture or other materials to absorb the sound waves, which makes sense as to why these reports of ghosts are often "localized" in certain rooms, chambers and hallways. Infrasound often "pools" in one area. Like I said before, Infrasound can signal the fight-or-flight response, which involves reducing the blood to extremities, which could explain "chills," a "racing heart" and overall "unease."

So next time you are taking a tour of a haunted place in say, England, look around. Is there any furniture? Are there lots of windows? Just some things to think about. And if you do become one of the "lucky ones" to actually experience a haunted manifestation, remember that there is a high chance what you are experiencing is Infrasound.

Boo to that!