Paranormal or Normal?

A person enters a dark room that has a feeling of dread about it. The air feels heavy, and there’s a feeling of someone watching him. There’s a sudden tingling down the back of his neck, a dark shadow passes to his right but disappears just as he looks at it head on. He feels a cold air drift past. Has he seen a ghost? Is this room haunted?

As a very interested party in the paranormal, I often take a neutral view of ghostly activity. That is to say, that I don’t use the word “haunted” and try to stay away from the word “ghost”. Sometimes there are readily rational natural explanations for occurrences, and sometimes not. It may be a ghost, a spirit, astral being, or some other form of entity. Or, it may just be a phenomenon for which we do not yet have a good explanation. I like the word “paranormal” best, because it best describes these events – meaning outside the normal.

Now, the following article presents both sides of the above situation with both a natural explanation and a supernatural one.

The first thing the man noticed upon entering this room was a feeling of dread. There are several things which could cause this. Firstly, the most obvious explanation for such a feeling might be that the man simply has an aversion to dark places. He may have a natural fear of such places, causing him to feel this sensation of dread. Writers and filmmakers would tell you that probably the most important tool for them to draw people into their stories is to establish a good atmosphere that causes certain emotions. A fear-inducing atmosphere in the real world can cause similar emotions.

The man might also have experienced a high amount of what scientists refer to as infrasound. These are sounds with frequencies so low that they cannot be heard by the human ear. They are typically below the 20 megahertz threshold. There have been lots of experiments with ultrasound for not only scientific study but also for commercial applications, such as non-lethal weapons. Infrasound can cause uneasy feelings, feelings of dread, feelings of discomfort, and can even make people ill. The military has made use of infrasound to develop a weapon that actually incapacitates the enemy by causing so much pain in the stomach that they actually double over or fall to the ground. Infrasound can occur from a variety of natural and manmade electrical sources.

Our man also notices the feeling of being watched. Oddly enough, there has been lab testing on the “feeling watched” phenomenon. In one particular lab experiment, people were told that, at times, an observer was staring at them, and that at other times, no one was watching. The test subjects then recorded when they thought they were being watched. There was almost no correlation whatsoever. Contrary to what is often popular belief, it would appear that people cannot discern when they are being watched without observing the person watching them directly.

The third thing our man notices is a heavy feeling in the air. It is possible that this particular room might have had a higher level of humidity. A common cliché is, “The air is so thick I could eat it.” Air doesn’t necessarily have to be warm to contain a lot of moisture. Cool air containing enough moisture can even produce a fog. How much more spooked might have our man been with fog in the room? It’s no secret that a lot of humidity in the air feels very heavy.

The next experience is a chill and a rising of the hairs on the neck. These are both natural responses to fear. It occurs both in humans and in animals. It doesn’t necessarily indicate a presence of something. It is more likely to be a response to fear, even mild fear. For those subscribing to evolution, this response would be one that originates in a mechanism that stands the hair up on animals to appear larger, and therefore more dangerous. You see it in most furry animals, such as dogs.

Shadows passing and even human shapes in peripheral vision can be misleading. Human peripheral vision is very responsive to movement, but very poor at discerning shapes. An unnoticed light outside the window moving past might cause a moving shadow in the corner of the room, which the observer perceives as a human-shaped shadow. The problem is compounded in dark spaces where a lack of good light makes discernment in peripheral vision even more difficult.

There are a number of natural causes for cold spots, as well. The most obvious one is a draft coming through an opening from outside. If a window were not properly sealed, or there were an opening somewhere in the room, this would easily explain the sensation. Air temperatures are not always evenly displaced in a room. There can sometimes be naturally occurring cold and warm spots. If you were swimming in a lake, you might notice a cold current of water drifting past your feet temporarily. Air also typically moves in currents, sometimes creating moving cold and warm spots.

All of these things put together might cause a person to feel as though he has most definitely experienced a ghost. As a means of discerning an opinion, we typically look to a preponderance of evidence. If there is a perception of a lot of evidence adding up to support a conclusion, our tendency is to accept that conclusion, even if the evidence may be flawed.

On the other hand, it is possible that either paranormal or ghostly occurrences can present themselves in the same manner as natural occurrences. It is also possible, some might argue, that these natural occurrences are the result of the paranormal. Perhaps the things that have been perceived can have either a natural or a supernatural explanation at the same time.

In supernatural theories regarding ghosts and hauntings, it is usually supposed that these beings need energy in order to manifest themselves. The energy is so weak that it can usually only be perceived in the dark. The beings must draw energy from what is available in the atmosphere around them. This might be electrical wiring, electrical appliances, warm air, or even the energy contained within a person.

In the case of a feeling of dread, some might argue that an entity is making use of the person’s personal energy, which would cause a draining feeling, an unpleasant feeling of dread and weakness.

Also in supernatural theory, people do indeed have the ability to discern presence of other beings even when not seen. This is usually reinforced by personal experience. Nearly everyone, at some point, has felt a presence of someone and then observed that presence to be accurate. For example, if you are like most people, you have felt as though someone were walking up behind you (even though you probably did not hear anyone) and then turned around to see your good friend coming to greet you. We write about the feeling of someone who doesn’t like us staring daggers down our backs. Are we cuing into minute details we hardly notice (such as slight noises very slight vibrations, or just an expectation of how another person is going to react to our own presence), or does it have more to do with the supernatural? In the study on staring above, is it possible that these supposed false positives where someone thought he was being watched but wasn't, was a case of actually being watched but from someone or something that was not noticed or seen by those conducting the experiment?

A rise in humidity, a believer might say, could be the result of energy drawing the vapors together in order to attempt to manifest itself to show the observer it is there. Maybe it’s trying to form a visible apparition, but simply does not have quite enough energy available to fully form and has merely only been able to draw in some additional moisture into the air.

The fear response of standing hair and tingles down the neck might be due to a response to the perception of the atmosphere, but might it also be a response to the slight draining of energy in one’s body? Perhaps the odd feeling of this occurrence has caused the fear response? Perhaps the sensation of presence in the room has caused the fear response.

Some believers insist that the best way to see an apparition is through peripheral vision, saying that there is something that makes the peripheral vision more discerning of weak energy than full frontal vision. Perhaps there aren’t any scientific studies to back this up, but that is the case with many phenomena that are later discovered to be true. Not everything is understood of the physiology of the human body. Perhaps it’s possible that the side vision receptors have different discernment capabilities that have not yet been fully developed and are more sensitive to witnessing weaker energies.

If we assume that ghosts (or whatever you want to call them) do make use of available energy to manifest, then one of the most available energies would be warmth in the air itself. This would result in a warmer area in the actual space taken by the entity, with a surrounding aura of colder air. If a person were to witness the colder air, it might be akin to being brushed by the ghost, like a lady’s dress brushing you as she passes by. Maybe the being is actually moving with the existing air currents, coasting along with the warm and cold currents.

As is often the case, the realm of the scientific and the realm of the spiritual do not explain each other very well. Perhaps only one gives the full explanation, or perhaps the combination of both gives us the full understanding of our universe. Maybe it’s the old cliché of the chicken and the egg that fits well here. Do natural events explain paranormal phenomenon or does the supernatural explain these naturally occurring events? Do paranormal spiritual activities actually occur and exist because these natural occurrences exist and are true experiences within that paradigm? Maybe the supernatural masks itself as natural occurrences. The appeal of the paranormal is that there are never answers that are completely clear.