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Science wrecks a good ghost story
Hello and thanks for coming to this page. I'd like to say that this came from an Australian newspaper and online zine called "The Age" which was online as of June 1999. Their mail server, for some reason, has been bouncing my mail back to me so I was unable to get the permission to post this article.
Again, I apologize for putting it up but this is a very good and important article to people interested in researching ghosts and hauntings, I've left it up anyway. I truly hope that the folks at "The Age" do not mind me having this article online and I certainly hope that those who've sought it out find it usefull.
Science wrecks a good ghost story
By ROBERT MATTHEWS
Ghosts may have a scientific explanation after all _ and it is not all in the mind. New research into a real-life haunting has revealed that all the classic signs of ghosts can be explained as the result of very low frequency sound waves trapped inside
buildings.
Capable of being triggered by nothing more than the wind passing over walls, the sound waves cannot be heard. But scientific tests have revealed that they have effects on the human
body that can account for the wraith-like appearance of ghosts and even the feelings of cold and terror that accompany them.
The explanation emerged after a chance discovery by a university academic who found himself involved in a haunting in a laboratory. AE One night as Vic Tandy worked alone he began
sweating despite feeling cold and then he noticed a figure in the room. ``The hair was standing up on the back of my neck _ I was terrified.''
The explanation emerged the following morning. Mr Tandy, a fencing enthusiast, had left a foil clamped in a vice. ``When I returned, I noticed that the free end of the blade was frantically vibrating up and down.''
A trained engineer, he realised that the blade might be receiving energy from very low frequency sound waves filling the laboratory _ so low that they could not be heard.
Tests duly revealed the existence of a ``standing wave'' trapped in the lab which reached a peak in intensity next to his desk. ``It turned out to be caused by a new extraction fan ... When the fan's mounting was altered, the ghost left with the standing wave.''
Working with Dr Tony Lawrence of the university's school of health, he has now discovered the significance of this rate of vibration. In research published in the latest issue of the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research they reveal that ``infra-sound'' around this frequency has been linked to a whole host of physiological effects _ including breathlessness, shivering and feelings of fear.
While acoustic experts have known about the health effects of infra-sound, until now no one has made the link to ghosts. Mr Tandy said that he has since come across two more ``hauntings'' where low-frequency sound may be to blame.
TELEGRAPH - Copyright (c) David Syme & Co 1999.
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