Chapter 30 Walking on red-hot coals and ghosts and ghosts

Some people seem to be able to walk on fire and walk barefoot unscathed over a long line of glowing charcoal, which has a surface temperature of around 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.The scientific explanation for this astonishing feat goes something like this: Charcoal has a very low thermal conductivity and, combined with the relatively small area of ​​the embers, very little heat is actually transferred to the soles of the feet.However, many firewalkers have interpretations that sound unusual, and therefore consider firewalking to be a good means of livelihood.According to them, they use the power of the mind to create a magical and powerful force field that is strong enough to protect them from harm, and claim to be able to teach this skill to others.Scientists predict that people can walk up to 15 feet on red-hot charcoal without burning the soles of their feet. However, people who claim to have supernatural abilities boast that no matter how far they walk All will be unscathed.

In 2000, working with the BBC science program Tomorrowland, I decided to test this claim on live television.The program team spent huge sums of money burning 50 tons of wood and created a 60-foot-long charcoal fire corridor.Next, the firewalkers, who claim to be able to perform miracles, will test their supernatural theories in a live broadcast.It turned out that almost all of the firewalkers jumped off the coals when they reached about 25 feet and suffered second-degree burns on both feet.I interviewed the firewalkers afterward, and they found good excuses for their defeat.One Firewalker said that a deep hypnotic state was necessary to successfully walk the charcoal corridor, but the bright lights of the TV broadcast prevented him from entering this state at all.Another explained that just before she started walking onto the coals, her guardian angel left without knowing why.The quiz was unmistakable: Believing the impossible has the potential to do enormous damage to your physical health.Even with the tragedy of second-degree burns on their feet, these fire walkers still did not have the slightest doubt about their claimed superpowers.

Fortunately, most people don't think they have superpowers.However, many people believe they have experienced the same strange phenomenon.About a third of people believe in ghosts, and about a tenth or so claim to have actually encountered one.I don't know if ghosts really exist, but I'm pretty sure we're all pretty good at deluding ourselves into believing they do.Over the past many years, my colleagues and I have conducted a variety of extraordinary experiments in order to explore the psychological factors behind paranormal experiences.The number of haunted houses in the UK is among the highest in the world, and many of our experiments are carried out in the most famous haunted houses across the UK.We were also the first researchers to be invited to the British royal palace to investigate paranormal events, so we spent ten days in the gorgeous Hampton Court Palace outside London.On another occasion, we conducted a series of experiments in Edinburgh, Scotland, where several deep cellars beneath historic streets were apparently "haunted".

People often find that our experiments are very different from the methods presented in the movie "Ghostbusters", which is somewhat disappointing.We don't walk around in jumpsuits with vacuum cleaners on our backs, and we've never caught any ghosts with ghost traps.Our purpose is not to prove or disprove the existence of ghosts.Instead, our job was to unravel a question: Why do people often report having ghostly encounters at these famously haunted locations? Most studies invite people to walk carefully through haunted places in a consistent manner and ask them to describe whether they experience any spooky or unusual phenomena.Then we will study the people who claim to feel the supernatural phenomenon and the places where they have this feeling, and gradually sort out the psychological factors behind the supernatural phenomenon.

We found that some people are much more sensitive to the presence of ghosts than others.Many volunteers walked through the "haunted" place without experiencing any supernatural phenomena, however, a few minutes later, when another person walked through the same place, he immediately felt that something was wrong and said they It feels like there are weird things around.Those who can sense spooky phenomena usually have very good imaginations.These people make good subjects for hypnosis, for example, they often forget whether they unplugged the iron when they go out, or they imagine that they have forgotten to do so.They seem to be able to convince themselves that ghosts are standing behind them, or hiding in dark closets.As a result, they actually feel terribly frightened, which prompts their body and brain to send out a series of signals associated with fear, such as the hair on the back of their neck standing on end, or a sudden chill all over.

The study also found that contextual information played a crucial role during the experiment. In 1997, an experimental report published by American psychologist Jim Hean fully illustrated this point.Jim, my partner, found an abandoned movie theater that wasn't rumored to be haunted.Then Jim asked the two groups of people to walk around inside and describe whether he felt any strange phenomena.One group of people was told that there were many ghosts in this movie theater, so they paid special attention to the ghost activities that did not exist.Another group was told that the movie theater was going to be refurbished and asked to evaluate how each room made them feel.The two groups visited the exact same locations in the movie theater but were indoctrinated with completely different ideas prior to their visit, and as a result, the "ghost catcher" group reported far more unusual experiences than the other group.

So, does this mean that all ghost experiences are the result of an overly rich imagination with the right background information?In fact, it is not entirely so.Another experiment done by the late Vic Tandy showed that some spooky experiences might indeed be caused by something weird in the air.Vic, an electrical engineer-in-training, spends much of his time researching phenomena that interest him, including magic and ghosts. In 1998, he worked for a company that designed and produced life-saving equipment for hospitals.Vic shares a small laboratory with several other scientists.There are often rumors of ghosts in this laboratory, and many cleaning staff say that it feels weird to be inside.Vic always thought it was just nonsense, or the reason there were little furry animals living in the lab.Until one day, he himself encountered a strange phenomenon.It was one night, he was working alone in the laboratory, and suddenly he felt more and more uncomfortable, and he was cold all over.Next, he clearly felt something was watching him, he raised his head, and vaguely saw a vague shadow slowly appearing in the corner of his left eye.The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and, as he recalls, "It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say I was terrified." Finally, Vic mustered up the courage to force himself to turn his head straight Watch that shadow.As a result, that thing slowly disappeared.

Vic is a good scientist, so he thinks that some bottles of anesthetic may have leaked, so he is hallucinating.So he quickly checked the bottle in the laboratory, but found no leakage of anesthetic.In the end he could only go home confused and restless. The next day, he was going to participate in a fencing competition, so he hurriedly took his foil to the laboratory for temporary repairs.As he put the foil into the vise, it suddenly began to shake violently.Some might chalk this up to a poltergeist's prank, but Vic set out to find a plausible explanation anyway.This time, he made an important discovery.He took the vise to the floor and let it move slowly. It turned out that when the vise was in the center of the laboratory, the foil shook most violently, but when the vise was moved to a corner of the room, the flower fencing The shaking of the sword will not be so violent.Vick guessed that there should be low-frequency sound waves in the laboratory, which cannot be heard by the human ear.Further investigation confirmed Vick's conjecture.After tracing, he found that the low-frequency sound waves originated from a newly installed fan in the extraction system.When the fan starts, the foil will start shaking.When the fan is turned off, the foil will stop shaking.However, can Vic's discovery explain the seemingly supernatural phenomenon?

These sound waves are usually called "infrasound waves". Vic knew that such sound waves were inaudible, but possessed huge energy, so it was entirely possible to produce weird effects. In the 1960s, NASA was eager to understand how the infrasound waves produced by rocket engines during rocket launches would affect astronauts.Experiments they conducted showed that infrasound waves may indeed cause chest vibrations, affect breathing, and cause nausea, headaches and coughing.Further research has found that sound waves of a specific frequency may also cause eyeballs to vibrate, thereby distorting vision.These sound waves can move small objects and surfaces, and even make candles flicker eerily.Writing about his experience in the Journal of the American Psychological Association, Wick speculates that infrasound waves may be present in some buildings (possibly caused by strong winds blowing through open windows, or by nearby noisy traffic ), the strange effect of this low-frequency sound wave may be the reason some people believe that these buildings are haunted.

This statement sounds plausible, because infrasound is indeed very strange.Such sound waves can be produced by natural phenomena such as ocean waves, earthquakes, hurricanes and volcanic eruptions. In 1883, infrasound waves from the Krakatoa eruption in Indonesia circled the Earth for weeks, and were recorded by instruments around the world.This low-frequency sound is also a by-product of nuclear explosions — which is why we have a network of infrasound listening for possible evidence of a nuclear bomb test. Many animals are very sensitive to frequencies inaudible to the human ear, including ultrasound (high frequency) and infrasound (low frequency).Humans have a long history of monitoring and exploiting these subtle vibrations in the animal world.Back in the early 1880s, the Victorian scientist Francis Galton fitted a whistle that emitted ultrasonic waves to the tip of a hollow crutch that Galton would press when walking around the Zoo in Regent's Park. A rubber ball on the tip of a cane, and began to observe which animals responded to the high-frequency sound waves emitted by the rubber ball.The modern dog whistle was developed from the whistle used by Galton, who described the results of the experiments as follows: "...my parades have apparently made the canines in the zoo abnormal. Restless, which inevitably attracted a lot of curious eyes." Recently, scientists have done some conceptually similar studies, and the results show that whales, elephants, squid, guinea fowl and rhinos are very sensitive to low-frequency sound waves. They use these acoustic signals to migrate or communicate over long distances.In view of the existence of this phenomenon in the animal kingdom, and the fact that earthquakes and hurricanes in nature also produce infrasound waves, some researchers have come up with the idea of ​​whether animals can detect the infrasound waves emitted by such natural disasters and use them as What about the early warning signs?Some have speculated that infrasound may have been responsible for the escape of animals before the 2004 South Asian tsunami.

The military has also investigated low-frequency sound waves to see if they could be used to create terrifying acoustic weapons.Known colloquially as the dreaded "brown note", the sound waves are said to vibrate a person's large intestine, causing incontinence.While sound engineers have long known about this possibility, it was only in 2000 that the concept became known to the general public.There is a scene in the cartoon "South Park" in which a young child accidentally broadcasts infrasound on an American radio station, causing simultaneous diarrhea across the country.In light of some follow-up reports in the media, the American science show Mythbusters decided to test the effects of intense infrasound waves on the human body.Although those who were tested reported nausea and vomiting, they did not experience the rumored incontinence. However, there is one more problem.Most military and industrial activities use relatively strong infrasound waves, and Wick speculates that low-intensity infrasound waves are also enough to cause some eerie experiences.So it's time to confirm this experimentally.