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Article URL: https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/04/that-spooky-sensation-likely-due-to-rumbling-pipes-not-spirits/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47926010 Points: 2 # Comments: 0

Article URL: https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/04/that-spooky-sensation-likely-due-to-rumbling-pipes-not-spirits/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47926010

Low-frequency infrasound (below 20 Hz) can raise cortisol levels in saliva and increase irritability.

The next time you walk into a purportedly “haunted” house and sense a ghostly presence, consider that those feelings might be due to vibrating pipes, mechanical or climate control systems, rumbling from traffic, or wind turbines, rather than anything paranormal. That’s the conclusion of a new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. All of those are sources of infrasound .

Scientists have long sought to find logical explanations for alleged hauntings. In 2003, for instance, University of Hertfordshire psychologist Richard Wiseman conducted two studies that investigated the psychological mechanisms underlying supposed “ghostly” activity. Subjects walked around Hampton Court Palace in Surrey, England, and the South Bridge Vaults in Edinburgh, Scotland—both with reputations for manifesting unusual phenomena—and reported back on which places at those sites they sensed such phenomena. The subjects reported more odd experiences in places rumored to be haunted, regardless of whether the subjects were aware of those rumors or not.

Those areas did, however, feature variances in local magnetic fields, humidity, and lighting levels, suggesting that such sensations are simply people responding to normal environmental factors. Wiseman hypothesized that stronger magnetic fields may affect the brain, similar to how electrical stimulation of the angular gyrus can make one feel as if there is another person standing behind, mimicking one’s movements.

Furthermore, 70 percent of subjects in a related study of Mary King’s Close—another “haunted” location—reported suddenly feeling cold, like they were being watched or touched, or heard unexplained footsteps. The areas where they felt those things had markedly lower humidity. The experiences are therefore “real” in the sense that people are feeling the sensations; they’re just not likely due to ghosts. And those sensations are heightened when there is an expectation of a place being haunted.

The late Vic Tandy , an engineer at Coventry University, proposed another explanation : infrasound , particularly at a frequency of 18.9 Hz. This is just below the range of human hearing, but research has shown that humans may still subconsciously sense such sounds. Tandy thought infrasound was the culprit of an alleged haunting in a laboratory in Warwick, as well as a suspected ghost in the cellar of Coventry Cathedral.