Haunted house
A haunted house, spook house or ghost house in ghostlore is a house or other building often perceived as being inhabited by disembodied spirits of the deceased who may have been former residents or were otherwise connected with the property. Parapsychologists often attribute haunting to the spirits of the dead who have suffered from violent or tragic events in the building's past such as murder, accidental death, or suicide.
Upon scientific investigation, alternative causes to supernatural phenomenon are found, such as hoaxes, environmental effects, hallucinations or confirmation biases. Common symptoms of hauntings, like cold spots and creaking or knocking sounds, can be found in most homes regardless of suspected paranormal presences. Carbon monoxide poisoning has also been cited as a cause of suspected hauntings.
History
According to Owen Davies, a paranormal historian, hauntings in the British Isles were usually attributed to fairies, but today hauntings are usually associated with ghostly or supernatural encounters. In other cultures around the world, various spirits are said to haunt vacant homes and locations. In Middle Eastern countries, for example, jinn are said to haunt such areas. Historically, since most people died in their homes, whether they were mansions or hovels, these homes allegedly became natural places for ghosts to haunt, with bedrooms being the most common rooms to be haunted. Many houses gained a reputation for being haunted after they were empty or derelict. Davies explains that "if people were to fail to occupy a human space, then external forces would move in."Cultural attitudes to haunted houses
Haunting is one of the most common paranormal beliefs around the world, according to Benjamin Radford in his book Investigating Ghosts: The Scientific Search for Spirits. He says that almost every town and city has at least one "haunted" place; and that, despite over 100 years of investigation, there has not been a "single verifiable fact about ghosts having been established."In the first century AD, the Roman author and statesman Pliny the Younger recorded a ghost story in his letters, which became famous for their vivid account of life during the heyday of the Roman Empire. Pliny reported that the specter of an old man with a long beard, and rattling chains, was haunting his house in Athens. The Greek writer Lucian and Pliny's fellow Roman Plautus also wrote memorable ghost stories.
In a 2005 Gallup poll, 37% of Americans, 28% of Canadians, and 40% of Britons believed that houses could be haunted. In a 2009 Pew Research Center survey, about 29% of Americans believed they had been in touch with someone who had died. According to a Research Co. poll released in 2020, 40% of Canadian women and 25% of Canadian men stated they believed in haunted houses.
In Japan, there is a tradition, linked to Buddhism, of creating obakeyashiki in August, when it is believed that ancestral spirits may visit. People go to ghost houses to listen to frightening stories or seek elaborate decorations and costumes to experience shivers as a way to feel cooler in the hot summer temperatures.
The Shanghai Disneyland Park planners decided against building The Haunted Mansion because of the local cultural beliefs about ghosts and hauntings. Building the house would have been considered a mockery of their fear.
In Wuhan, China, the police have built a haunted house to train their police force by testing their nerves. They filled a dilapidated house with faked severed limbs, bones, skulls and a frightening atmosphere that includes lightning and rain. The house is also open to the public.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2020, Indonesian lawmakers of the Sragen region on the island of Java decided to lock people who did not follow quarantine guidelines in abandoned and supposedly haunted houses. It was an attempt to motivate a superstitious population when science failed to do so.
Proposed causes
According to Owen Davies's book, The Haunted: a Social History of Ghosts, "ven the most devout believers in ghosts over the centuries recognized that many hauntings were frauds." In an interview with USA Today, Davies states that "or skeptics in the past and present, the house was obviously the center of hauntings because it was where people slept and dreamed of the dead, or where people lay drunk, drugged or hallucinating in their sickbeds." Such basic poltergeist phenomena as rapping or knocking were very easy to orchestrate with the help of accomplices or a variety of ploys. According to science writer Terence Hines, cold spots, creaking sounds, and odd noises are typically present in any home, especially older ones, and "such noises can easily be mistaken for the sound of footsteps by those inclined to imagine the presence of a deceased tenant in their home."A sensed-presence effect, the feeling that there is someone else present in a room, is known to happen when people experience monotony, darkness, cold, hunger, fatigue, fear, and sleep deprivation.
Skeptical investigator Joe Nickell writes that in most cases he investigated, he found plausible explanations for haunting phenomena, such as physical illusions, waking dreams, and the effects of memory. According to Nickell, the power of suggestion along with confirmation bias plays a large role in perceived hauntings. He states that as a house, inn, or other place becomes thought of as haunted, more and more ghostly encounters are reported and that when people expect paranormal events, they tend to notice conditions that would confirm their expectations. Many places deemed to be haunted are purposefully left in a decrepit condition, with wall paper peeling off, old carpeting, and antique decor.
Toxicologist Albert Donnay believes that chronic exposure to substances such as carbon monoxide, pesticide, and formaldehyde can lead to hallucinations of the type associated with haunted houses. Donnay speculates on the connection between the prevalence of gas lamps, during the Victorian era and start of the twentieth century, as well as stories of ghost sightings and hauntings, describing it as the "Haunted House Syndrome". Donnay says that carbon monoxide poisoning has been linked to haunted houses since at least the 1920s. He cites a 1921 journal article about a family who claimed hauntings because they suffered headaches, auditory hallucinations, fatigue, melancholy, and other symptoms which are also associated with carbon monoxide poisoning. In a modern example, Carrie Poppy, a writer and co-host of the podcast Oh No, Ross and Carrie!, was convinced she was living in a haunted house. She felt she was being watched by a demon, experienced pressure on her chest and auditory hallucinations. Someone on a forum of skeptical paranormal investigators suggested she look into carbon monoxide poisoning. When the gas company arrived, unsafe levels of carbon monoxide were found.
Michael Persinger, an American-Canadian professor of psychology, suggested that perceived apparitions, cold spots, and ghostly touches are perceptual anomalies caused by variations in naturally occurring or man-made magnetic fields. However, a study by psychologist Chris French that attempted to replicate Persinger's findings found no link.
Investigating haunted phenomena
Investigations of supposed hauntings often result in simple explanations. For example, in an apparent haunted house in Somerset, England, in the eighteenth century, a boy would make the house shake by jumping on a beam in an adjoining property that ran through both houses. In 1857, a twelve-year-old girl confessed to tying her long hair around objects to give them the ghostly appearance of moving on their own. Tina Resch, a girl from Columbus, Ohio, who claimed that ghostly and paranormal activity occurred in her home, was photographed throwing a telephone while acting surprised at the sudden poltergeist activity.Ben Radford, of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, performed an investigation in 2003 on an allegedly haunted house in Buffalo, New York. The owner of the home, called Tom in the article, alleged that he felt tapping on his foot at night. As described by Tom, "I get a tapping on my feet, not a repetitive tap, a trying-to-wake-you-up tap… After the tapping, if I don't pay attention to it, then I feel a kick." Radford suggests the tapping was likely a case of "hypnagogic hallucination, a fairly common phenomenon that can easily lead to misperceptions." His wife, called Monica, also claimed to feel tapping similar to Tom. According to Radford, "that can be explained by suggestion and what psychologists term folie à deux, when one person takes on the symptoms of another." Tom also describes that "it will kick the bed—it will hit the side of the bed. I feel my whole body move… Then if I go back to sleep, I start to get a sound sleep, that's when it kicks again." Radford suggests his was likely due to restless leg syndrome in which a leg jerk in the middle of the night caused the bed to shake. Radford suggests that the owner's diagnosis of "sleep apnea is even further evidence for this explanation; restless legs is actually one of the most common symptoms of apnea." Tom and Monica also heard ghostly music and voices, noises that they recorded from the top of the stairs, causing them to leave their home in fright. Radford conducted an experiment where he set the recording device in the same spot, turned it on, then walked outside with Tom, talking constantly. They returned to the house and listened to the tape. Their conversations could be clearly heard, though muffled. The couple then agreed that what they were hearing in their house previously were outside noises and not noises from the paranormal.
Another test done by Ben Radford in 2009 was to investigate the claim that batteries are drained by ghosts in haunted locations. He purchased four sets of identical batteries, sealed them in signed, Ziploc bags and wrapped them securely in strong tape to prevent tampering. He placed half of them in the reputed haunted Wolfe Manor, in Clovis, California, and half in a different location. Twenty four hours later he tested the batteries using a meter and discovered that there was no battery drainage in either location. Radford claims that simple, controlled experiments like this are important and should be conducted by ghost hunters to clearly demonstrate if there is a difference between a supposed haunted location and one that is not haunted.