Ghost and ghouls - fact or fiction?

Fake blood, canned screams and plastic skeletons are fun, but if you want to build a haunted house, turn to scientists.

Ever since records began, in every known society, a substantial proportion of the population has reported unusual experiences many of which we would today label as "paranormal". Opinion polls show that the majority of the general public accepts that paranormal phenomena do occur. Such widespread experience of and belief in the paranormal can only mean one of two things.  Either the paranormal is real, in which case this should be accepted by the wider scientific community or else belief in and experience of ostensibly paranormal phenomena can be fully explained in terms of psychological factors.

Christopher French, head of Goldsmiths Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit and editor of the Skeptic magazine, has carried out a unique piece of research to determine which it is.  With architect Usman Haque and fellow researcher he built a haunted room: a white, wood-frame canvas tent 9 feet in diameter, in the front room of a London house. Entirely featureless, the room contained hidden speakers casting infrasound waves and projecting sound waves that produced an electromagnetic frequency (EMF) similar to those found in supposedly “haunted" buildings.

French then invited seventy-nine students, friends of Haque and other volunteers to visit the room and record their experiences. Their responses, published in Cortex magazine revealed some interesting results.

Almost three-quarters of the visitors reported having more than three unusual feelings after spending less than an hour in the room. Only 6% reported feeling nothing. Tingling, dizziness, disembodiment, and “a presence” were among the sensations most commonly noted.

In response to the findings Chris French thinks “It might be that certain people are wired up in a particular way, and in the right environment, they actually are seeing something that’s objectively there, but others don’t have the ability to see.”

But there may also be a simpler explanation that people think about what they’re told to. If asked to record strange feelings and experiences people start to notice them, when otherwise they may not.

“We did manage to build an artificially haunted room, but it wasn’t related to the environmental factors, but to suggestibility,” said French.

French still admits that out-of-lab paranormal experiences could be real and hopes to repeat the study with a very different, very anomalous pattern of EMF activity.
French can’t really comment on his own feelings in the room “I went in and out when we were setting it up, but I didn’t even make myself a pilot participant,” he said. “Maybe I should have.”

Visit our Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit (APRU) webpages to find out more about this and other research.