Complex Numbers

Who Ya Gonna Call?

I ain't 'fraid'a no ghosts.

PROMPT May 16th

Do you believe in ghosts or other supernatural entities? Have you ever experienced something you could not explain?

No. And yes.

Just to get this out of the way first: the word "supernatural" is a semantically null term. If something exists, it's natural. If it exists and it's human-made, it's still natural because we are natural. If something exists and it's outside our experience, it still exists, and is therefore natural.

But, okay, I can accept that we have the word "supernatural" and it generally refers to concepts outside the realm of everyday experience. Or science. Or however you want to define it; I'm trying to, but it's slippery. "Attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature" according to one dictionary definition, but I don't really like it because belief in the supernatural preceded scientific understanding and formulation of the laws of nature.

Now, I do believe in Supernatural. It's a fun show, and I'm sad that it's about to end. The concepts -- ghosts, werewolves, vampires, demons, angels -- can make for great fiction. Or not-so-great fiction. I mean, seriously, I do like the show, but objectively it's kinda silly.

An argument can be made that even conceptualizing something makes it real, in a sense, but I'll save that argument for the next time Santa Claus shows up, which, given the state of retail in the US right now, should be, oh, sometime around tomorrow.

"But Waltz, what about all the eyewitness accounts of ghosts and fairies and whatnot? Surely they can't all be hoaxes." Well, I'm not saying they're all hoaxes. Some are, of course, like the footage of Bigfoot and Nessie. But I have no doubt that people have seen things they can't explain, even things that currently defy explanation. That doesn't mean we should jump right to the "it's the spirit of a little girl that was brutally murdered in 1886 and now she seeks vengeance" or whatever.

Consider, for example, infrasound  .

But the main focus here is on the science behind hauntings. Even if you don't admit you believe in ghosts, it turns out there might be explanation for hauntings that any Scully can appreciate: infrasound. Infrasound refers to low-frequency sounds vibrating from 0.1 to 20 Hz, just below the threshold for human hearing. It's used for monitoring earthquakes, in World War I, for locating artillery. But it was engineer Vic Tandy in 1980 who discovered that infrasound could be responsible for perceived "hauntings."

I didn't listen to the attached podcast - I've never listened to a podcast and I'm not going to start now - but a simple Google search can get you more information on the link between infrasound and reported hauntings. In essence, not only does it affect emotion (causing anxiety and fear and so on), but it can also create visual apparitions.

As the above linked article points out, it's not the final word on the subject. There's plenty that hasn't been explained. Hell, that's what I love about science: always something else to try to figure out.

Now, don't get me wrong; I try to keep an open mind about such things. But, like anyone, I'm biased. It's just that in my case, I'm biased on the side of rational explanations. I just assert that the existence of ghosts and whatnot would require solid evidence, and that evidence just isn't here. We live in a time when nearly everyone carries around a high-quality camera / video recorder, and so you'd think that more "supernatural" stuff would be captured. Of course, the flip side of that is that photos and videos are more easily faked than ever.

You may note I haven't said anything about space aliens. That's because, while they're lumped in with "supernatural," if they existed, they wouldn't, by any useful definition of the word, be supernatural. I've argued before that our reports of flying saucers and strange lights in the sky are a product of our scientific, technological age; the same phenomena, 200+ years ago, would have been (and was) attributed to angels or whatever. We make shit up, but we make shit up based on what we do understand. Again, yes, I accept that people have seen stuff in the sky that they couldn't process. Hell, I have. I just didn't make the cognitive leap from "stuff I don't understand" to "we're being visited by little blue cosmonauts from Procyon IV."

Incidentally, many UFO sightings -- and I use the term literally, as in "unidentified flying object" -- can be attributed to atmospheric mirages or rare weather phenomena. And alien abduction stories track with my own experiences with sleep paralysis.

As I've said before, it's a big universe, and I'd be extremely surprised if we were the only spaceship-builders in it. But as to whether they like to barnstorm our little planet, well, I'm not convinced. And yet, we probably know more about space than we do about our own minds; there's still a lot to be discovered there. What we do know is that we humans are really, really good at making shit up -- intentionally or not.