Is Infrasound The Reason For Ghost Sightings?

Infrasound refers to extreme bass waves or vibrations, those with a frequency below the audibility range of the human ear (20 Hz to 22 kHz). Even though these waves can’t be heard by us, they can be felt and have been shown to produce a range of effects in some people including anxiety, extreme sorrow, and chills. “Loud infrasound in the range of 0.5 to 10 Hz is sufficient to activate the vestibular, or balance system, in the inner ear.” The study of such sound waves is sometimes referred to as infrasonics.

Infrasonic (aka Soundless Music) was a carefully controlled psychological experiment, in the form of two back-to-back concerts. These concerts were highly unusual because some of the music was laced with infrasound (i.e.extreme bass sound, below 20Hz in frequency).

Until recently, infrasound was thought to have no effect on humans, but when researchers in London played infrasound to a group of people, they started to get nervous, anxious and scared. This could be why people see ghosts - they’re in an old house, the house is moving slowly and making low vibrations (infrasound), the person starts to feel scared, so the brain creates ghosts out of shadows as a reason for the person being scared.

“Some scientists have suggested that this level of sound may be present at some allegedly haunted sites and so cause people to have odd sensations that they attribute to a ghost — our findings support these ideas,” said Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire in southern England.

In the first controlled experiment of infrasound, Lord and Wiseman played four contemporary pieces of live music, including some laced with infrasound, at a London concert hall and asked the audience to describe their reactions to the music.
The audience did not know which pieces included infrasound but 22 percent reported more unusual experiences when it was present in the music.
Their unusual experiences included feeling uneasy or sorrowful, getting chills down the spine or nervous feelings of revulsion or fear.
“These results suggest that low frequency sound can cause people to have unusual experiences even though they cannot consciously detect infrasound,” said Wiseman, who presented his findings to the British Association science conference.

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