Do ghosts exist? Many people believe the existence of ghosts. As stated in a recent YouGov/HuffPost poll of 1,000 people, 45 percent claimed that they believe ghosts do exist. We don’t know their reason to believe but for many people, ghosts are real because either they experienced it or they just believe the millions of ghost’s stories that circulated around the globe.
Ordinary people can easily believe what they see or what they feel and hear, but for many experts, a proof is important and the rationalization behind the unexplained phenomenon.
For many centuries, in different parts of the world, people shared different ghost stories. Nevertheless, science counter these stories as mere illusions or hallucinations created by a science-based phenomenon.
There are many scientific justifications for the existence of ghosts but in this article, we’ll dig deeper into the explanation of electromagnetism on Ghosts existence.
Electromagnetic Field (EMF)
Moving charged particles create magnetic fields and static charges create electric fields. Thus, the interaction of electric and magnetic fields causes EMF. The electromagnetic field is one of the fundamental forces of nature as per basic physics.
Electromagnetic fields are present everywhere in our surrounding but we can’t see them. In some haunted locations, experts have measured EMF that are higher than normal. These can be a normal phenomenon if we relate it to EMF. Stronger EMF on haunted locations could be just because of a local build-up of electric charges from equipment or geological formations.
However, many paranormal experts believe that ghosts emit electromagnetic energy creating an area of high electromagnetic frequencies. Based on haunted places that have high levels of electromagnetic energy, paranormal experts claim that one of the best ways to get the true nature of ghosts is through EMF. This is the main reason why ghost hunters use electromagnetic field meter, to detect ghosts’ presence.
On the other hand, scientists believe that these occurrences of EMF cause hallucinations and illusions, thus creating the ghost effect. According to research and experiments conducted by a Canadian neuroscientist named Michael Persinger, EMF creates unusual activity in the brain.
In this experiment, a group of people wore a so-called “God Helmet,” that targeted their temporal lobes with weak EMF. For over 15 to 30 minutes, 80% of the people Persinger tested felt an unexplained presence. Persinger then concluded that magnetism creates surges of electrical activity in the brain, which produces paranormal experiences.
More on Electromagnetism
More research suggested that ghostly sightings at night came from the interaction of the solar wind with the earth’s own magnetosphere. This caused the planet’s magnetic field to expand during nighttime and thus interact more intensely with people’s brain.
In addition, recent experiments have demonstrated that electrical stimulation to the angular gyrus of the brain causes a sensation of a shadowy figure mimicking a person’s movements. According to studies, angular gyrus is the responsible part of the brain that causes not just paranormal sightings, but also out of the body and near death experiences.
Dr. Olaf Blanke corroborated the experiments of Dr.Persinger when he conducted an assessment for epilepsy surgery of two women at the University Hospital in Geneva. He implanted electrodes into the brains of the subjects to locate the part that causing the seizure. As Dr. Persinger activated the electrodes attached to different parts of the brain, the patients were asked what they were experiencing.
The experiment showed that inducing electric current to a specific region of the brain, the angular gyrus, causes an unexplained phenomenon. One woman felt she was hanging from the ceiling and the other woman felt someone was behind her. With this experiment, experts claimed that the angular gyrus was the reason for every paranormal activity like ghostly sightings.
So are ghosts real?
From the research and experiments above, one can conclude that ghostly sightings are mere hallucinations from electrical and magnetic stimulation of the brain. However, there are still unanswered questions that aren’t fully grasped by those experiments. How for instance, can groups of people see the same ghost or sense the same unknown presence, when hallucinations and illusions are typically individual by nature?
My own Ghost Experience
When I was in college, my friends and I did some spooky ghost hunting on the grounds of our university. We were staying late at school because of our academic project. When we finished our work, one of my friends suggested ghost hunting. Since we were curious and we didn’t want to go home yet, we took the chance of once in a lifetime ghost hunting.
My university isn’t a famous haunted school but we tried our luck on that particular night. We went to the darkest part of our school. We had our camera and phones ready and we started to stroll the dark areas of our university. We sneakily tried not to be discovered by the evening guard. After almost an hour of looking for some paranormal being, we were in no luck. Then, when we were about to give up, we saw a white silhouette floating few meters away from us. We were shocked. I thought at that time, it was just an illusion but what made me realized that I was really seeing a ghost was my other friends saw the same thing. We ran as fast as we can.
That is just one of my many encounters with ghosts but that was the first time I actually saw it with my eyes wide open. You might think, I am just making this thing up but I have nothing to gain from faking stories. We were not fortunate to capture the ghost with our camera or phones. We were so terrified that our camera just took videos of the floor while we were running. If I have some pictures or video, I could have shared it in this article.
From this personal account, we can infer that first-hand experiences can’t be validated by science. Our ghost story is something unique to us that we couldn’t even comprehend what really happened on that frightening night. If that incident were because of the electromagnetic field, why would we share the same experience as a group? My friends and I don’t have identical brain composition. If it were the mother earth’s magnetosphere at that night, why would our brains have the same illusions, given the fact that electrical stimulation may cause different results to every individual? I could have seen a different form of that unknown figure, and my friends could have just sensed it without seeing.
Ghost’s existence can’t be fully explained by electromagnetism and even by science as of the moment. Who knows if, in the near future, we can really capture a ghost and do a full evaluation of it? Right now, ghost’s existence will stay as a mystery unsolved.
Interesting Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ghost-lusters-if-you-want/
https://www.csicop.org/si/show/can_electromagnetic_fields_create_ghosts
