Haunted Spaces, Haunted Places, What's Really Going On?

A paper I wrote for a class:


Have you ever thought you heard strange "things that go bump in the night"? Have you ever thought you may have even actually seen a ghost ? If so, then you are among the roughly 20% of Americans recently polled who said that they believed they had seen a ghost. (CBS). Why do some places seem to be susceptible to reports of hauntings, while other places which seem similar to haunted places do not seem to generate such reports? Why do some people say that they see ghosts, while other people in the same place at the same time seem oblivious to such things? Although it might appear that there are many ways those questions might be answered, the truth is that there are only three answers; the people who see such things may be deluded; the people may be misunderstanding something that has an identifiable scientific cause; or they may have actually seen a ghost.

When speaking of ghosts the term "haunted" means a place where people say they believe they have encountered paranormal activity. Although tales of hauntings have been reported in modern buildings; most hauntings of structures seem to occur in older buildings, but hauntings have even been reported in the outdoors also. America has numerous reputedly haunted places, but Great Britain is the first place many people think of when thinking of haunted places. The Tower of London and Hampton Court palace, both in England, are probably two of the most well known places reputed to be haunted.
The Tower of London was started by William the Conquerer in 1078 and is today considered possibly the most haunted building in Britain. Built as both a royal residence and as a jail for important prisoners, the people who have lived and died there are like a "who's who" of British history. A few of the reported hauntings seem to be based on the following tales;
A memorial on Tower Green remembers all those unfortunate souls who have been executed here over the centuries. Anne Boleyn and Lady Jane Grey are both said to return to the vicinity, whilst the ghost of Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury returns here in a dramatic and alarming fashion. At the age of 72 she became an unwitting and undeserving target for Henry the VIII's petty vengeance. Her son, Cardinal Pole, had vilified the King's claim as head of the Church of England. But he was safely in France so Henry had his mother brought to the block on 27th May 1541. When told by the executioner to kneel, the spirited old lady refused. "So should traitors do and I am none." she sneered. The executioner raised his axe, took a swing at her and then chased the screaming Countess around the scaffold where he literally hacked her to death. The shameful spectacle has been repeated several times on the anniversary of her death, as her screaming phantom continues to be chased throughout eternity by a ghostly executioner.

The Bloody Tower, the very name of which conjures up all manner of gruesome images, is home to the most poignant shades that drift through this dreadful fortress. When Edward IV died suddenly in April 1483, his twelve year old son was destined to succeed him as Edward V. However, before his coronation could take place, both he and his younger brother, Richard, had been declared illegitimate by parliament and it was their uncle, the Duke of Gloucester who ascended the throne as Richard III. The boys meanwhile, had been sent to the Tower of London, ostensibly in preparation for Edward's coronation, and were often seen playing happily around the grounds.
But then, around June 1483, they mysteriously vanished, and were never seen alive again.
It was always assumed that they had been murdered on Richard's instructions and their
bodies buried somewhere within the grounds of the Tower. When two skeletons were uncovered beneath a staircase of the White Tower in 1674, they were presumed to be the remains of the two little princes and afforded royal burial in Westminster Abbey. The whimpering wraiths of the two children, dressed in white nightgowns, and clutching each other in terror have frequently been seen in the dimly lit rooms of their imprisonment. Witnesses are moved to pity and long to reach out and console the pathetic specters. But should they do so, the troubling revenants back slowly against the wall and fade into the fabric. (Haunted- Britain)

Sometimes even the employees at the Tower report strange occurrences;

Guards passing from the chapel into the gallery containing Henry VIII's armour have spoken of a terrible crushing sensation that suddenly descends upon them, but which lifts the moment they stagger shaking from the room. One guard patrolling through here in the early hours of a stormy winter morning got a sudden and unnerving sensation that a black cloak had been flung over his head. As he struggled, the cloak was seized from behind by his phantom assailant and pulled tight around his throat. When he arrived at the guard room, after freeing himself, gasping and choking, the marks on his neck bore vivid testimony to his brush with the unseen horror. (London Walks)


Hampton Court palace was purchased and extensively remodeled by Cardinal Woolesy between 1515 and 1521 making Hampton Court into one of the most beautiful and luxurious palaces in England. The Cardinal did not get to enjoy it for long though, because King Henry VIII coveted it and to maintain the king's good will, Woolsey was orced to give it to him. During the course of Henry's ownership two things happened which are said to be the source of at least some of theparanormal phenomena reported there.

Jane Seymour, the third and favorite wife of Henry VIII, died at Hampton Court twelve days after giving birth to her son, who later became Edward VI. She is often seen along Clock Court or in the Silver Stick Gallery, wearing a white robe and carrying a candle.
The most intriguing story at Hampton Court belongs to Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII. Her infidelity exposed, Catherine attempted to plead for mercy from her husband; but before she could reach him, she was apprehended by guards and dragged screaming through what is now known as the Haunted Gallery. To this day, people still claim to hear her terrified cries and see her apparition as she runs along the gallery at Hampton Court. ( Imboden)

Perhaps one of the most interesting possibly paranormal events that has occurred at Hampton Court was in 2003 when a closed circuit television camera caught an image of someone opening and closing a door, and the staff maintained that it was not any of them. The film appears to show a robed figure opening and closing a double door. (Appendix A) But was it a ghost, or a hoax? There is no way to know.

What might be going on in the Tower of London and in Hampton Court palace to make people believe that they have seen apparitions? Why do people think they are seeing ghosts? Certainly if there are such things as ghosts, and if they are connected with unexpected or violent deaths, then the gruesome execution of Margaret Pole at the Tower of London or the plight of doomed Catherine Howard who was dragged through the gallery at Hampton Court screaming for mercy from Henry VIII certainly might engender their spirits to remain nearby.

Let's reiterate that there are only three explanations for paranormal experiences; the witness was deluded for whatever reason; the witness misinterpreted something that was an explainable phenomena, or there actually was paranormal event. First of all, how might the witnesses be deluded? Both the Tower of London and Hampton Court have reputations as being places where sightings of "ghostly" events have been reported. Many people who go to these places are to some degree expecting to see something unusual and people who are already looking for a ghost when they encounter any sort of unusual occurrence may ascribe that occurrence to a supernatural cause. This does not necessarily mean that these people are lying about what they think they have seen, although that is a possibility. Humans will attempt to see a pattern in almost any occurrence, even where no pattern exists. This is sometimes illustrated in the occasional news stories of people seeing the face of someone or the image of some thing in the light and dark pattern on their toast, on a tree or wall, or the supposed "face" seen on photographs of the surface of Mars. Some sightings of ghosts may be explained by this phenomenon; diffuse patterns of light that are erroneously perceived as being a pattern of some sort of apparition. This tendency to see some sort of pattern in what are actually random occurrences is called the perception of randomness. There is research that indicates this tendency is innate in humans. Dr. Peter Brugger, a professor of neurology at the University of Zurich, says about the perception of randomness;
The second mechanism that I will discuss is the pervasive tendency of human beings to see order in random configurations. "Randomness" is as impossible to be experienced directly as it is impossible to be proven mathematically (Chaitin, 1975). To a large extent, randomness is in the eye of the beholder, and the bias of our perceptual-cognitive system to perceive order rather than disorder can betray the layman's senses as much as it can influence scientists' interpretation of noisy data ….the continuum from creative detection of real patterns at one end, to the "hypercreative" interpretation of patterns in "noise" at the other end. The ability to associate, and especially the tendency to prefer "remote" over "close" associations, is at the heart of creative, paranormal and delusional thinking ( Brugger)

Furthermore, Dr. Brugger's work indicates that there is a difference in the brains of
people who are highly creative from the brains of people in the more creatively average population. His research seems to show that one factor which is correlated with highly
creative people appears to be present not only in those who are highly creative, but also is
present in people who say they believe in paranormal phenomena, and in people with
acute schizophrenia, as compared to the rest of the population. Brugger says;

I will discuss the role of the right hemisphere in establishing associations between distantly connected concepts and events, and briefly summarize the experimental evidence for a right hemisphere processing bias in highly creative subjects, believers in paranormal phenomena, and people with acute schizophrenia. (Brugger)

This certainly does not mean people who see paranormal things are schizophrenic, but it does mean that there seems to be some sort of a correlation between the ability to view the world in a flexible creative manner with the perception of having experienced paranormal phenomena. This immediately brings to mind the question are these people just more likely to attribute anything and everything they see to paranormal causes, or do they actually perceive paranormal things that others can not? Unfortunately, the research does not specifically address that possibility. There is no way to know how many reports of paranormal activity may be from people who are just deluded by what they have seen, as compared to those who, because of the brain difference, can actually see things most others can not..

The second category of sightings is those by people who have actually experienced something, but misunderstand the cause of their perceptions and mistakenly attribute the event to the paranormal. There are several interesting ideas currently being put forth to scientifically explain "haunted" occurrences. Variation in the electromagnetic field has been shown to have an effect on the perception of paranormal activity. According to a paper by Wiseman et al :
Measuring of the local magnetic eld activity (i.e. all fluctuations between the range 0 to 3 kHz, whether of natural or artficial origins) was carried out because a relatively large amount of research has suggested a strong relationship between alleged hauntings and magnetic elds within this range. This work dates back to the mid 1980s, when Persinger (1985) speculated that changes in geomagnetic elds (created e.g. by tectonic stresses in the earth’s crust) could stimulate the brain’s temporal lobes and produce many of the subjective experiences associated with hauntings. Others have extended these ideas to account for physical manifestations including, for example, cold spots, electrical effects, popping sounds, etc. (see e.g. Houran &
Lange, 1998). In a preliminary test of this theory, Gearhart and Persinger (1986) examined large case collections of alleged hauntings, and reported finding signicant relationships between the time of onset of unusual phenomena and sudden increases in global geomagnetic activity (for a critique of this and related work, see Rutowski (1984) and Wilkinson & Gauld (1993)). More recent support has come from several
on-site investigations of alleged hauntings that have reported unusual local magnetic activity (for an overview, see Roll & Persinger, 2001). Some of this work has noted that the effect seems to be associated with high levels of magnetic activity (Halgreen, Walter, Cherlow, & Cranall, 1978: Konig, Fraser, & Powell, 1981), whilst other researchers have related the effect more to variance in magnetic elds (see e.g. Persinger, 1985)….. the presence of certain types of local magnetic elds may impact upon a range of psychological, psycho physiological and health-related variables (Korinevskaya, Kholodov, & Korinevskii, 1993; Voustianiouk & Kaufmann, 2000). A controlled laboratory study by Stevens (2001), for instance, showed psychological
and physiological reactions to a changing magnetic eld of comparable magnitude to those measured in our two experimental venues. Even subtle psychological and physiological changes occurring in a context that might suggest paranormal events (e.g. occurring to a person who believes in ghosts, occurring in a location with a haunted reputation) may lead to that person making a ‘paranormal’ attribution to what they might otherwise interpret as an ambiguous stimulus. And it has been shown that experimentally applied weak magnetic elds can lead to more powerful and compelling experiences, such
as a sensed presence, that are directly comparable to the kinds of experiences that are sponta-
neously reported (e.g. Persinger, 2001).

Such findings suggest that magnetic elds, along with a range of other variables, together may account for some haunting experiences.

This study was conducted at two sites in England, one of them Hampton Court Palace, and this may explain many of the reputed sightings at the palace. It is noteworthy that this study indicates magnetic elds can produce sound, and cold spots, two hallmarks of paranormal activity, and factors which are repeatedly mentioned in witness accounts of sightings at Hampton Court.

There also is some fascinating research that indicates that low frequency sound may also play an integral part in many reports of hauntings. This type of sound, called infrasound, is below 20 Hz, the commonly accepted low threshold of human hearing, so it is not audible to humans. One of the most interesting examples of the effects of infrasound occurred to a design engineer named Vic Tandy in the 1990's, and was the impetus for him to further investigate the phenomena. In a paper on the subject Dr. Tandy said;
Three people worked in a laboratory made from two garages back to back and about 10ft wide and 30 ft in length. One end was closed off by doors normally kept closed and the other end had a window, the other side of which was a cleaning bay. The company’s business was in the design of anaesthetic or intensive-care, life
support equipment so there was always some piece of equipment wheezing away in a corner. When V.T. heard suggestions that the lab was haunted this was the first thing he thought could be behind it and paid little attention. One morning however none of the equipment was turned on and V.T. arrived just as the cleaner was leaving obviously distressed that she had seen something. As a hard nosed engineer V.T. put it down to the wild cats, wild other furry things, moving pressure hoses (as the pressure fluctuates, flexible hoses sometimes move) or some sort of lighting effect As time went on V.T. noticed one or two other odd events. There was a feeling of depression, occasionally a cold shiver, and on one occasion a colleague sitting at the
desk turned to say something to V.T. thinking he was by his side. The colleague was surprised when V.T. was found to be at the other end of the room. There was a growing level of discomfort but the workers were all busy and paid it little attention. That is until V.T. was working on his own one night after everyone else had left. As he sat at the desk writing he began to feel increasingly uncomfortable. He was sweating but cold and the feeling of depression was noticeable. The cats were moving around and the groans and creaks from what was now a deserted factory were "spooky", but there was also something else. It was as though something was in the room with V.T. There was no way into the lab without walking past the desk where V.T. was working. He looked around and even checked the gas bottles to be sure there was not a leak into the room. There were oxygen and carbon dioxide bottles and occasionally the staff would work with anaesthetic agents, all of which could cause all sorts of problems if handled inappropriately. All of these checked out fine so V.T. went to get a cup of coffee and returned to the desk. As he was writing he became aware that he was being watched, and a figure slowly emerged to his left. It was indistinct and on the periphery of his vision but it moved as V.T. would expect a person to. The apparition was grey and made no sound. The hair was standing up on V.T.’s neck and there was a distinct chill in the room. As V.T. recalls, "It would not be unreasonable to suggest I was terrified". V.T. was unable to see any detail and finally built up the courage to turn and face the thing. As he turned the apparition faded and disappeared. There was absolutely no evidence to support what he had seen
so he decided he must be cracking up and went home. The following day V.T. was entering a fencing competition and needed to cut a thread onto the tang of a spare foil blade so that he could attach the handle. He had all the tools necessary but it was so much easier to use the engineer’s bench vice in the lab to hold the blade that he went in early to cut the thread. It was only a five minute job so he put the blade in the vice and went in search of a drop of oil to help things along. As he returned, the free end of the blade was frantically vibrating up and down. Combining this with his experience from the previous night he once again felt an immediate twinge of fright. However, vibrating pieces of metal were more familiar to him than apparitions so he decided to experiment. If the foil blade was being vibrated it was receiving energy which must have been varying in intensity at a rate equal to the resonant frequency of the blade. Energy of the type just described is usually referred to as sound. There was a lot of background noise but there could also be low frequency sound or infrasound which V.T. could not hear. As it happens sound behaves fairly predictably in long thin tubes such as organ pipes and ex-garages joined end to end so V.T. started his experiment. He placed the foil blade in a drill vice and slid it along the floor. Interestingly the vibration got bigger until the blade was level with the desk (half way down the room) after the desk it reduced in amplitude, stopping altogether at the far end of the lab. V.T. and his colleagues were sharing their lab with a low frequency standing wave! The energy in the wave peaked in the centre of the room indicating that there was half a complete cycle. It is important to understand that what we call sound is caused by variation in the pressure of the air around us. It is represented graphically as a wave. If someone were to shout at you the sound wave will travel from them to you transmitted by the air between you both, i.e. it is a travelling wave. However the wave sharing our lab was of just the right frequency to be completely reflected back by the walls at each end, so it was not going anywhere, hence it was a standing wave. In effect the wave was folded back on itself reinforcing the peak energy in the centre of the room. ….where is the energy coming from? …that was answered very quickly when V.T. discussed the problem with the works’ foreman who told him that they had installed a new fan in the extraction system for the cleaning room at the end of the lab. We switched off the fan and the standing wave went away.

The experience of Dr Tandy (referred to as VT in the quote) is exactly what many people say they experience at places they believe are haunted, from the first feelings of unease, to feelings of growing distress and fear, through the feeling of being watched right up to seeing a figure which disappears when looked at directly; all these are the elements of a classic report of a paranormal experience. But is there is any evidence that infrasonic sound has been known to have those same effects on human beings? In his paper Dr. Tandy went on to address that question.

Tables 5-12 of Kroemer (1994) on p. 288, indicate that the resonant frequencies of body parts are; Head (2-20 Hz causing general discomfort), Eyeballs (1-100Hz mostly above 8 Hz and strongly 20-70Hz effect difficulty in seeing). However, different sources give different resonant frequencies for the eye itself. The resonant frequency is the natural frequency of an object, the one at which it needs the minimum input of energy to vibrate. As you can see from above, any frequency above 8 Hz will have an effect and some sources quote 40Hz. Most interestingly, a NASA technical report mentions a resonant frequency for the eye as 18 Hz (NASA Technical Report 19770013810). If this were the case then the eyeball would be vibrating which would cause a serious "smearing"of vision. It would not seem unreasonable to see dark shadowy forms caused by something as innocent as the corner of V.T.’s spectacles.

This indicates that it is very possible that many reports of sightings of ghostly figures may be caused by vibrations in the eyeballs of witness, causing them to see things that are not actually there. Significantly, Dr. Tandy also said "The resonant frequency of one person’s body parts would also be different from another so standing wave resonances may affect one individual but not another." This may explain why only some people perceive "haunted" or paranormal events, yet others in the very same place at the same time see nothing out of the ordinary.


Finally, there is the possibility that there may actually be something paranormal going on, andfor whatever reason some of us are better at sensing such things than others. Exactly what is being seen though, is the question. In Vancouver, British Columbia, there is an organization called Vancouver Paranormal which checks reports of paranormal happenings in the Vancouver area. This group investigates these occurrences with still pictures and video cameras. The group has placed a number of photographs on their site with what appear to be various sorts of anomalies in the pictures. There are two sets of photos from their website gallery which are particularly interesting because they seem to clearly show "something" in some of the photographs. (Appendices B and C ) In the picture taken in the cemetery it appears as if some amorphous light colored shape is in one photo, but not in another photo taken as a "control" at approximately the same time and place. In the photograph taken in the church the control photo shows some sort of a shadow behind the pulpit area, but even more surprising is that when the photo is computer brightened, several other artifacts appear in the photo. There is at present no explanation for any of the figures that appear in either photo. The photographer, Jan, who is in the group of investigators; had this to say about whether there are ghosts;

I am convinced that "something" is going on but whether or not it's a paranormalexperience is really up in the air. We have been to locations here in Vancouver that some have said were haunted. Spirits were seen to bemoving about and objects moved with no apparent cause. I have, forexample, seen a sleeping cat pushed across a kitchen counter until itwas pushed right onto the floor. At one time, believing I was talkingto a member of our group during an outdoor training, yelled at thisperson (bear in mind it was twilight and the lighting was not great)anyway I yelled at it and told it to go to the other side (meaning goto the other side of the cemetery) and this person took two steps andvanished. Three others with me saw the same thing. Technically to usethe phraseology we saw an apparition. (Jan)

If there are indeed ghosts, are they the actual spirits of people who have passed away, or are ghosts really demons or evil spirits masquerading as spirits of the departed? There is of course no way to be sure. Traditional Christian belief is that once you die, you are judged, so whatever these apparitions may be, according to Christian teaching they are not spirits of the actual deceased . If they are spirits of some sort, they may be demonic spirits for some reason taking the appearance of humans.

Of the three explanations for what people see when they report paranormal experiences; it is likely that the vast majority fall into the first two categories, either a delusion of some sort, or a mistaking of normal explainable occurrences for something paranormal. After accounting for the first two explanations though; it is those cases, however few they may be, which still remain, that will leave us wondering.


Appendix A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFf0Ntdv2Jc









Appendix B
photo by Vancouver Paranormal



Appendix C
photo by Vancouver Paranormal



Annotated Works Cited
Brugger, Peter. "From Haunted Brain To Haunted Science:
A Cognitive Neuroscience View of Paranormal and Pseudoscientific Thought". University of Southern California, San Diego. June 3 2007.
<http://66.102.1.104/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:nljQo6DjGYJ:philosophy.ucsd.edu/%20%20%20%20Faculty/HauntedBrain.pdf+haunted+places>.

This site contains research by Dr. Peter Brugger, of the Dept. of Neurology at University Hospital, Zurich Switzerland, and in part describes research into the cognitive functions of the brain as regards perception of patterns in random occurrences and the correlation of degrees of creative ability with perception of paranormal phenomena and schizophrenia.


CBS News Poll: Majority Believe In Ghosts. October 30 2005 "22 Percent of Americans
Say They've Seen or Felt a Ghost." June 4, 2007.
<http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/29/opinion/polls/main994766.shtml >
This site is on CBS news, and discusses a 2005 poll of Americans and their
perceptions of paranormal phenomena.


Imboden, Durant. Europe for Visitors. "Revel in haunted tales at London's historic
palaces" June 3, 2007.
<http://europeforvisitors.com/europe/news/historic-royal-palaces-ghosts.htm>

This site is a travel guide for European destinations. It has a few stories of haunted palaces in London.


Haunted Britain. Haunted London. "The Tower of London" June 3, 2007
<http://www.haunted-britain.com/Haunted_London.htm >
This site discusses haunted places in Britain, specifically in London, and gives
anecdotes about reputed hauntings.

Richard Jones. London Walks. "True Ghost Stories From the Tower of London's White
Tower". June 4, 2007
<http://www.london-walks.co.uk/49/true-ghost-stories-from-t.shtml >
This site features a walking tour of places in London, and stories of those places being haunted.

Annotated Works Cited, continued


Jan. Vancouver Paranormal. Webmistress. vancouverparanormal@gmail.com.
June 9, 2007
<http://usersites.horrorfind.com/home/ghosts/phantomphive/main.html>

Jan is the webmistress at Vancouver Paranormal and responded to my email asking questions about her experiences with paranormal phenomena.

Tandy, Vic, Tony Lawrence . " The Ghost in the Machine " Journal of the Society for
Psychical Research. Vol.62, No 851 April 1998. June 4, 2007.
<http://66.102.1.104/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:RmG7TyBIlxQJ:www.ghostexperiment.co.uk/ghost-in-machine.pdf+infrasound+haunting>

This site contains a scholarly paper by Dr. Tandy telling of his own experience with a "haunted lab", how he determined what was really happening, and how he rectified the situation.


Vancouver Paranormal Picture Gallery. June9, 2007.
<http://usersites.horrorfind.com/home/ghosts/phantomphive/pictures.html>

This site contains pictures taken by members of Vancouver Paranormal on various investigations of places reputed to be haunted.


Wiseman, Richard , Caroline Watt, Paul Stevens, Emma Greening, Ciarán O’Keeffe.
"An Investigation into Alleged ‘Hauntings" British Journal of Psychology (2003), 94, 195–211. June 6, 2007.
< http://66.102.1.104/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:e-v8XO_OoTkJ:phoenix.herts.ac.uk/ghost/BJP_Wiseman_paper.pdf+%22An+Investigation+into+Alleged+%E2%80%98Hauntings%22+British+Journal+of+Psychology+(2003)

This scholarly paper discusses the results of research conducted by the writers on possible electromagnetic disturbances in places reputed to be haunted.


YouTube. " Famous Hampton Ghost". May 8, 2007. June 7, 2007.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFf0Ntdv2Jc
This site has videos that people upload to it. This particular video of what is reputed to be a ghost came from a security camera at Hampton Court.