Visited by a Ghost? It's Not Just Your Imagination

When I was 11 years old, I was awoken one night from a dead sleep by something that I couldn't comprehend. My bedroom door, located at the foot of my bed, stood wide open. And as I stared out into what should have been a dark, empty hallway, there stood a large, life-sized white stallion with jet-black eyes. It made no sound. It simply turned its head from side to side, as if looking for something.

I sat bolt upright in my bed, my heart pounding so hard that I felt like I couldn't get any air. I had no idea what was happening, but there were two things I knew for certain. One, I was wide awake. This was absolutely not a dream, and many years later I'm still positive of that fact.

And two, since I wasn't dreaming, that meant that either the horse was some kind of ghost or paranormal apparition, or I had lost touch with reality. Both possibilities were equally terrifying.

The horse didn't seem to be aware of me. He stood there gazing around this way and that, as if seeing past the walls that surrounded him. But as I watched, his calm demeanor was changing. He was getting agitated about something; he began pawing the ground and shaking his head violently from side to side.

I closed my eyes and rubbed them hard, then opened them again. The horse was still there. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't run. The horse was blocking the door. I couldn't hide. The horse was just steps away and any movement might attract his attention.

The horse suddenly reared up on its hind legs, pawing madly at the air in front of it. Its jet black eyes filled with anger or terror, I couldn't tell which. I crept backwards in my bed until my back hit the wall, wrapping the covers tight to my chest as the white beast raged on. It wasn't like watching a real, live horse, but rather a misty holograph. I got the sense that what I was seeing was real, but that it had happened in some other place, or maybe in another time.

And then, after an agonizing minute, the horse just faded away, like wisps of dissipating smoke.

I sprang from my bed and darted out into the hallway and down the stairs. The house was silent and still, the rest of my family sound asleep. I was shaking with fear, but I forced myself to get a glass of water and sit at the kitchen table, trying to make sense of what I'd just seen. Was it a ghost? The beginning of schizophrenia?

I'd never experienced anything like it before, and as it turned out, decades later, I've never experienced anything like it again. Since it clearly wasn't schizophrenia, did that mean it was all my imagination?

Not necessarily, scientists say

As it turns out, scientists say the experience may not have been all in my head. And it's all due to something you'd never hear coming: infrasound.

Infrasound, also called low-frequency sound, are sound waves that are so low in frequency, typically under 20 Hz, that they can't be heard by the human ear. This sound frequency can be used for all kinds of useful things, such as underground exploration for minerals and gas,monitoring earthquake and volcano activity, and even conducting medical tests.

But here's the weird thing: some studies have shown that infrasound can also interact with some people's nervous systems, causing them to feel frightened, uneasy, and that there's something eerily supernatural taking place. It can also affect the inner ear, making a person feel dizzy or nauseous. And since people can't even hear the infrasound, they have no idea where their creeped-out feelings are coming from.

The story of a researcher named Vic Tandy is a right scary example of just how wild and unnerving this phenomenon can be. Tandy worked for the school of international studies and law at Coventry University, in Coventry, England. Late one night, he was working alone in a laboratory that was rumored to be haunted. He started getting that creepy feeling. Suddenly, he saw a gray blob out of the corner of his eye. But when he turned to face it, the blob was gone.

Back at the "haunted" lab the next day, Tandy put his foil, a sword-like weapon used in the sport of fencing, into a vice to hold it. The blade started to vibrate, even though no one was touching it.

It certainly seemed like the lab was haunted, but Tandy dug around and eventually figured out it was all simply due to a rotating fan, which was emitting a sound of just under 19 Hz. He then investigated a number of other places around England that were deemed to be haunted, and in 1998, he and a colleague, Dr. Tony Lawrence, presented the findings in a paper called Ghosts in the Machine for the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. He concluded that infrasonic signals might be responsible for some ghost sightings.

I find this idea comforting, knowing that my ghost horse was perhaps simply due to a brief exposure of infrasonic sound. But I'll leave the (barn) door open for other explanations, since there's a part of me that still believes in ghosts...