Ghosts // Current

10 most haunted places in the world

Advised by a supernatural 'seer' that the only way to be rid of the ghosts in her sprawling new mansion would be keep up... more

mischabarrett
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Ghost Hustling.

Happy Halloween Current, Ghosts; what up with those things? Are they real? 3 months ago I would have said 'Nope!'... more

BenDorries
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The Raven -Edgar Allan Poe

Happy Halloween... And on Halloween it wouldn' t be complete without a reading from Vincent Price (the laugh from Michael... more

JanforGore
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Top 5 Science Conspiracies, Theories and Hoaxes

Discovery-News.com: James Williams uncovers five spooky scientific mysteries you may never have heard of.

DiscoveryNewsVideo
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The Secret of Spook Hill

Discovery-News.com: Are there really places that defy gravity? James Williams gets a first-hand look.

DiscoveryNewsVideo
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Haunting Meagan Good

"Saw V" star Meagan Good once had a real encounter with a ghost.

chapinyoung
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Spooky politics: Texas capital home to ghosts

"Politics can be plenty spooky, especially this time of year. But in Texas, some politicians have a way of sticking around way past Election Day.

Some say Sam Houston, the Texas hero who famously gave up his job as governor rather than join the Confederacy, still roams his old home here, pacing nervously. Others have seen the ghost of Lyndon Johnson watching election night returns in the mezzanine of the storied Driskill Hotel in Austin.

"That is one haunted city," said Fiona Broome, a psychic, ghost hunter and author who wrote "The Ghosts of Austin, Texas."

The state Capitol is a particular hot spot, she said.

"The Capitol is haunted day and night," she said. "If you've got a nice, misty day there, people see ghosts walking up the path to the Capitol building all the time."

Broome, who spent time in Austin over five years doing research for the book, said she saw many ghosts at the Capitol, including one possibly of Comptroller Robert Marshall Love walking up the promenade toward the building.

Love, who was shot and killed by a disgruntled associate in his first-floor office in 1903, has allegedly startled both tourists and state troopers in his outdated business suit. He was wearing a top hat when Broome saw him.

Across the street, the fire-blackened Governor's Mansion is known for its Sam Houston sightings. But in the turbulent years of the Civil War, the tortured wails and moans from a room where a lovesick teenager took his own life were so disturbing that Texas Gov. Andrew Hamilton locked it up and banned anyone from entering the room, according to the book "Ghost Stories of Texas" by Jo-Anne Christensen.

The fire that destroyed much of the historic landmark last summer likely didn't deter the home's spirits, Broome said. "They'll stay there and they'll be back when it's rebuilt," Broome said.

A few blocks from the Capitol, the legendary Driskill Hotel has a few apparitions of its own.

In the hotel and bar, where it's often said more state business takes place than any official site in Austin, both George W. Bush and Johnson have hosted election night parties and top-secret strategy sessions. And Johnson's ghost is still routinely seen at the hotel.

"He is spotted sitting in a chair right around where they used to set up the TV, where politicians used to come in and watch election results," Broome said.

With the Nov. 4 election shaping up to be a tense one, "I would definitely be looking for him there" on Election Night, she said. "I would be more surprised if people didn't see him there.""Politics can be plenty spooky, especially this time of year. But in Texas, some politicians have a way of sticking around... more

DeliaTheArtist
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21 days ago

If you want to see a ghost badly enough, will you?

"Most scientists dismiss the vast majority of ghost sightings as hoaxes. But researchers in Canada, England and elsewhere are exploring what happens in the brain to create the illusion that something is "haunted." So far, they have found evidence that some apparitions may be brain benders caused by spiking EMFs (electromagnetic fields), and possibly even extremely low-–frequency sound waves (known as infrasound) so subtle that the ear does not register them as noise.

EMFs emitted by power lines and towers, clock radios and other electrical sources may help debunk myths that people or things are haunted, says Michael Persinger, a neuroscientist at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, who has conducted research on the topic. One such study, published in 2001 in Perceptual And Motor Skills chronicles the experiences of a teenager who in 1996 claimed to be receiving nocturnal visits—one sexual—from the Holy Spirit. The 17-year-old girl, who had sustained mild brain damage at birth, said she also felt the presence of an invisible baby perched on her left shoulder.

When Persinger and his colleagues investigated (at the behest of the girl's mother), they found an electric clock next to the bed that was about 10 inches (25.4 centimeters) from where she placed her head when she slept. Tests showed that the clock generated electromagnetic pulses with waveforms similar to those found to trigger epileptic seizures in rats and humans. When the clock was removed, the visions stopped. Persinger determined that the clock, in combination with the girl's brain injury, were highly likely to have been contributing factors to the perceived nocturnal visits.

Although Persinger believes this case and others to offer compelling evidence that EMFs contribute to a person's perception that something is haunted, experiments intended to prove this theory leave room for doubt.

"There's a continuum, and this kind of framework is useful when you're talking about hallucinatory experiences," French says. "People are mistaking their attribution, feeling a product of their own mental processes as something that's taking place in the real world. Anything that can lead to making your mental events more similar to events that take place—a vivid imagination, for example—will make it more difficult to distinguish between the two."

Of course, believers say French cannot see or hear ghosts because he is a "horrible skeptic," which he readily admits. "I wish it was a bit more spooky," he says of his time waiting for apparitions to appear in dank, musty castles. "I'm sitting in the dark, in the cold. I wish something more would happen."

Persinger commends French's team on its "splendid experiment," even if it didn't validate his ideas. Still, he contends, EMFs do affect the body in many ways—from the brain to individual cells, to enzymes, and even DNA. The key to testing their effects on brain activity, he says, is to make sure that the fields are neither too strong nor too weak, and that they come in the right pattern. So he is not willing to give up on finding a way to prove scientifically that EMFs are behind at least some ghost sightings. "I'm a scientist," Persinger says. "I don't believe in anything."

"Most scientists dismiss the vast majority of ghost sightings as hoaxes. But researchers in Canada, England and elsewhere are... more