Despite the occasional unresponsive atheist, all was going well with Persinger’s theory until a team of Swedish psychologists, lead by Pehr Granqvist from Uppsala University, decided to carry out the same type of experiments.13 It all started well, with some of the Swedes visiting Persinger’s laboratory and even borrowing a portable version of one of his helmets for their own study. However, Granqvist became worried that some of Persinger’s participants may have known what was expected of them and their experiences could therefore have been due to suggestion rather than the subtle magnetic fields. To rule out this possibility in his own work, Granqvist had all of his participants wear Persinger’s borrowed helmet, but ensured that the coils were only turned on for half of the participants. Neither the participants nor the experimenters knew when the magnetic fields were on and when they were off.
The results were remarkable. Granqvist discovered that the magnetic fields had absolutely no effect. Three of his participants reported intense spiritual experiences, but two of these were not being exposed to the magnetic fields at the time. Likewise, 22 people reported more subtle experiences, but 11 of them were in the ‘coils off’ condition. When Granqvist’s work was published in 2004, Persinger argued that the poor showing may have been due, in part, to the participants in the ‘coils on’ condition only being exposed to the magnetic fields for 15 minutes, or Granqvist running the DOS-based software controlling the coils in Windows and thus possibly altering the nature of the magnetic fields. The Swedish team defended their work and stood by their findings.
Worse was to come for Persinger. In 2009, psychologist Chris French and his colleagues from Goldsmiths College in London carried out their own investigation into Persinger’s ideas by hiding coils behind the walls of a featureless white room, and then asking people to wander around the room and report any strange sensations.14 Seventy-nine people visited this most scientific of haunted houses for about 50 minutes each. Following in the footsteps of Granqvist, French and his team ensured that the coils were only switched on for half of the visits, and that neither the participants nor experimenters knew whether the coils were on or off. The magnetic fields had absolutely no effect on whether or not people reported a strange experience.
Some commentators have noted that we are all subjected to far greater magnetic fields whenever we use a hairdryer or turn on a television set, and so, if the theory worked, we would experience ghosts far more frequently.
The idea of infrasonic ghosts and electromagnetic spirits has caught the imagination of the media and public alike. However, the scientific jury is unconvinced.
So has anyone solved the mystery of hauntings? Before we delve deeper, it is time to discover more about the spectre of a rather strange clerical ghost.
The Power of Raman Spectroscopy
A few years ago I conducted an unusual experiment as part of a television series on human behaviour. We assembled 20 unsuspecting volunteers in a room, had them sit in four rows of chairs and explained that we were about to test their sense of smell. They were shown a small perfume bottle containing bright green liquid and we explained that once the lid of the bottle was unscrewed a strong peppermint smell would permeate throughout the room. We then carefully removed the lid and asked people to raise their hands once they could smell the peppermint. Within moments a few people in the front row raised their hands. Seconds later those in the second row followed suit. Before long about half of the group had their hands in the air. When we asked people to describe the smell they said that it was fresh, pleasant and stimulating. There was just one small problem. As you might have guessed by now, the bottle actually contained a mixture of water and odourless dye. The peppermint smell existed solely in the minds of the participants and was designed to demonstrate the power of suggestion.
This demonstration, first conducted by Edwin Emery Slosson in 1899 (who, according to a report from the time, was ‘obliged to stop the experiment, for some of the front row seats were being unpleasantly affected and were about to leave the room’), has been carried out in psychology departments across the land for over a hundred years.15
In the late 1970s sensory scientist Michael O’Mahony from the University of California took the idea to new heights when he persuaded the BBC to undertake an ingenious version of the study during a live programme.16 O’Mahony constructed some mock scientific apparatus (think weird-looking large cone, masses of wires and several oscilloscopes), and managed to keep a straight face as he told viewers that this newly devised ‘taste trap’ used ‘Raman Spectroscopy’ to transmit smells via sound. He then proudly announced that the stimulus would be a country smell. Unfortunately, the studio audience interpreted his comments to mean ‘manure’, resulting in a significant amount of smutty laughter. After clarifying that they would not be broadcasting the smell of shit into people’s homes, the research team played a standard Dolby tuning tone for ten seconds. Just as the bottles in the more pedestrian versions of the study contained nothing but water, so the tone did not actually have the ability to induce smells.
Viewers were then asked to contact the television station and describe their experiences. A few hundred viewers responded, with the majority stating that they had detected a strong smell of ‘hay’, ‘grass’ and ‘flowers’. Although they were explicitly told that the smell would not be manure-related, several people mentioned that they had detected the subtle hint of silage. Many respondents described how the tone had brought about more dramatic symptoms, including hay fever attacks, sudden bouts of sneezing and dizziness.
These experiments demonstrate how nothing more than the power of expectation can cause some people to experience various smells. James Houran (of internet dating and ghost-busting fame) also believes that they play a vital role in unlocking the mystery of hauntings.
Houran speculated that if suggestible people believe that they are in a haunted house, they may experience the strange sensations typically attributed to ghostly activity. In addition, he noted that those experiences are likely to create a feeling of fear that will cause people to become hyper-vigilant and pay attention to the subtlest of signals.17 They will suddenly notice that tiny creak in the floorboards, the swaying of the curtains, or a brief whiff of burning. All of this will cause them to become even more afraid and therefore exhibit even greater hyper-vigilance. The process feeds on itself until the person starts to become highly agitated, anxious and prone to more extreme sensations and hallucinations.
The findings from many studies support Houran’s ideas. In my own work, those who believed in ghosts reported far more weird experiences than sceptics, and their sensations tended to focus around the type of scary-looking locations that frequently feature in horror films. In the experiments investigating the (lack of) impact of weak magnetic fields on the brain, those reporting strange experiences tended to be far more suggestible than most. Although these findings are encouraging, the ultimate testing of the theory involves taking suggestible people to a place that does not have a reputation for being haunted, making them believe that it does, and seeing if they experience the same kind of ghostly activity reported in ‘genuine’ hauntings. Houran has conducted several of these experiments, with intriguing results.
In one experiment he took over a disused theatre that had absolutely no reputation for being haunted, and asked two groups of people to walk around it and report how they felt.18 Houran told one group that the theatre was associated with lots of ghostly activity and the other that the building was simply undergoing renovation. Those in the ‘this building is haunted’ group reported weird sensations all over the place, while the other group experienced nothing unusual. In another study Houran asked a married couple living in a house that had no reputation for ghostly activity to spend a month making a note of any ‘unusual occurrences’ that they noticed in their home.19 Reporting the results in the paper ‘Diary of events in a thoroughly unhaunted house’, he noted that the couple reported an amazing 22 weird events, including the inexplicable malfunct
ioning of their telephone, their name being muttered by a ghostly presence, and the strange movement of a souvenir voodoo mask along a shelf.
Although these studies are impressive, perhaps the prize for the best test of Houran’s theory goes to journalist Frank Smyth.
The Phantom Vicar of Ratcliffe Wharf
In 1970 Frank Smyth was an associate editor of a magazine dealing with paranormal phenomena known as Man, Myth and Magic.20 One Sunday morning Smyth travelled to Ratcliffe Wharf in London’s Docklands to meet his friend John Philby (son of spy Kim Philby). Throughout the nineteenth century Ratcliffe Wharf was a busy dock. As a result of the constant coming and going of sailors, it also became a hotbed of iniquity, crammed full of gambling dens, drinking houses and brothels. Philby was renovating an old warehouse in the area, and suggested to Smyth that it might be fun to create a ghost story.
After a couple of hours of productive brainstorming in a nearby pub, Smyth and Philby emerged with the phantom vicar of Ratcliffe Wharf – an emotive tale of sex, sailors, and murder. So, if you are sitting comfortably, I will begin . . .
In the early 1800s a former vicar of the Wharf’s largest church, St Anne’s, set up a guesthouse in the area for sailors. However, when business failed to boom this most corrupt of clergymen adopted more unsavoury ways of making ends meet. The vicar would pay young attractive women to tempt sailors back into his guest house, ply the men with drink, and then invite them upstairs for a bit of ‘how’s your father?’ When the men stripped off and climbed into bed, the vicar would emerge from his hiding place in the room, batter them to death with his silver-topped cane, steal their money and dump their lifeless bodies into the muddy Thames. According to local lore, the vicar’s spectre still haunts the area.
After carefully checking that the area was not associated with any ghostly activity, Frank described his completely fictitious story in the latest issue of Man, Myth and Magic, noting that both he and Philby had actually seen the ghost.
Three years later a BBC documentary programme described the hoax, presenting a dramatized account of the phantom vicar of Ratcliffe Wharf (including a sign outside the guesthouse where the vicar used pretty women to lure sailors, appropriately announcing ‘Lodgings for Seamen’) and went in search of people who had seen the non-existent ghost. They didn’t have to look far. One local woman reported seeing the ghostly vicar and described how he was dressed in a white shirt, with a cloak and flowing grey hair. Believing the ecclesiastical spirit to be a rather lecherous figure, the woman described how she often had the sense that he was watching her when she undressed at night. Next, a landlord in the area described how his daughter and her two-year-old son had had a chilling encounter with the spectre when they had come to stay with him. After several sleepless nights the child pointed to an area of the room and screamed out that he didn’t like the man standing there. The child’s mother then turned around and saw the ghostly vicar looking at her. Other witnesses included a workman who had seen the vicar walk round a corner before melting away in front of his eyes, and two policemen who told the untruth, the whole untruth and nothing but the untruth about the ghostly activity in the wharf.
The phantom vicar of Ratcliffe Wharf is a vivid vindication of Houran’s theory. Hauntings do not require genuine ghosts, recording walls, underground streams, low frequency sound waves or weak magnetic fields. Instead, all it takes is the power of suggestion.
The Big Question
Although the psychology of suggestion accounts for many ghostly phenomena, there still exists one final mystery – why on earth should our sophisticated brains have evolved to detect non-existent ghostly entities?
Scientists have proposed various theories to account for what goes bump in our minds. Psychologist Jesse Bering from the University of Arkansas has suggested that both ghosts and God help forge a more honest society by convincing people that they are constantly being watched.21 Bering and his team tested their idea by carrying out a somewhat strange experiment. In their study, students were asked to complete an intelligence test. The test had been carefully constructed to ensure that the students could cheat if they wanted to, and that the experimenters could secretly monitor each person’s level of deception. Just before taking the test, a randomly selected group of the students was told that the test room was apparently haunted. As predicted by the ‘ghosts make people more honest’ theory, the students who thought that they were in a haunted room were far less likely to cheat on the test.
However, perhaps the most popular theory to account for the evolution of ghostly experiences concerns the ‘Hypersensitive Agency Detection Device’.22 Oxford University psychologist Justin Barrett believes that the idea of ‘agency’ – being able to figure out why people act the way they do – is essential to our everyday interactions with one another. In fact, it is so important that Barrett thinks the part of the brain responsible for detecting such agency often goes into overdrive, causing people to see human-like behaviour in even the most meaningless stimuli. In the 1940s psychologists Fritz Heider and Mary-Ann Simmel conducted a now classic experiment that provides a beautiful illustration of Barrett’s point. Heider and Simmel created a short cartoon animation in which a large triangle, small triangle and a circle moved in and out of a box. They then showed the meaningless cartoon to people and asked them to describe what was happening. Most people instantly created elaborate stories to explain the cartoon, saying, for example, that perhaps the circle was in love with the little triangle, and the big triangle was attempting to steal away the circle, but that the little triangle fought back, and the small triangle and circle eventually lived happily ever after.
In short, people saw agency where none existed. Barrett believes that the same concept helps explain God, ghosts and goblins. According to the theory, many people are very reluctant to think that certain events are meaningless, and are all too eager to assume that they are the work of invisible entities. They might, for instance, experience an amazing stroke of good luck and assume it is angels at work, be struck down with an illness and see it as evidence of demons, or hear a creaking door and attribute it to a ghostly woman in white. If Barrett is right, ghosts are not the result of superstitious thinking. Neither are they spirits returning from the dead. Instead, they are simply the price we pay for having remarkable brains that can effortlessly figure out why other people behave the way they do. As such, ghosts are an essential part of our everyday lives.
6. MIND CONTROL
In which we climb inside the head of the world’s
greatest thought-reader, discover whether hypnotists can
make us act against our will, infiltrate some cults, learn
how to avoid being brainwashed and investigate
the psychology of persuasion.
Think of any number between one and a hundred. Feel free to change your mind a few times before deciding on your number. Do you have a number in mind? OK, focus on it. I am getting the impression that you are thinking of . . . number 73. Research suggests that around 1 in 50 of you have just dropped the book in amazement. Unfortunately, the same work also shows that the vast majority of you are totally underwhelmed by my thought-reading skills.
However, imagine that I had been able to accurately name the number that you were thinking of. Moreover, imagine that my remarkable telepathic powers were not limited to naming numbers, but also worked with shapes, names, locations, and colours. Finally, imagine that my abilities stretched far beyond rummaging around in the contents of your mind, and that I also had the ability to actually control your behaviour. Over the years a small number of people have claimed to possess these abilities. These rather curious individuals are not interested in staring into a crystal ball, talking with the dead or analysing your astrological chart. Instead, they appear to have an uncanny and remarkable ability to play directly with your mind. How do they appear to achieve the impossible? Do their feats constitute compelling evidence for the paranormal, or is there some subtle and mysterious psycholog
y at work?
To find out, we are going to journey deep into the world of a remarkable telepath, meet a mind-reading horse and spend some time with a terrifying mind control expert. Our journey starts over a hundred years ago, with one of the world’s first thought-readers.
Thought-reading on the Brain
Washington Irving Bishop was, by any measure, a remarkable man.1 Born in 1856 in New York City, Bishop was raised primarily by his mother, Eleanor, who made her living as an actress, opera singer and part-time medium. Eleanor was a colourful character who was frequently at the centre of controversy. In 1867, for example, she attempted to divorce her husband Nathaniel on the grounds that he had tried to murder her. In 1874 Eleanor attended Nathaniel’s funeral and, despite the two of them having been separated for the last seven years, was apparently so moved by the event that she felt the need to throw herself on Nathaniel’s casket as it was lowered into the grave. A few weeks later she claimed that Nathaniel had been deliberately poisoned by a mysterious enemy, and demanded that his body be exhumed. A thorough examination of the body failed to produce any evidence of foul play.
Bishop didn’t excel at college and, perhaps helped by his mother’s connections with Spiritualism, ended up working as the manager for a well-known stage medium of the day named Annie Eva Fay. At the start of her act Fay would place a chair and various musical instruments in a large open-fronted cabinet. Next, she would invite several audience members onto the stage, and ask them to tie her to the chair. A curtain would be drawn across the front of the cabinet and Fay would allegedly summon the spirits. After a few moments the spirits would apparently make their presence known by playing the instruments and then throwing them out of the cabinet. Various rumours circulated about how Fay was producing these seemingly miraculous phenomena, with some going as far as to suggest that she smuggled her young son into the cabinet by secreting him under her dress. The truth was far more straightforward. Fay was a skilled escapologist who was able to free herself from the chair, play the instruments, throw them out of the cabinet, and then wriggle back into her bonds.
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