British researcher says infrasonic wave sounds create ghosts


British specialist in information technology Vic Tandy says he will
never forget that night. He was working overtime in his laboratory at
the University of Coventry, England. The clock showed 7 p.m. All of his
colleagues had already left yet Tandy seemed to have lost the sense of
time because his work absorbed him completely. All of a sudden he felt
cold sweat running down his back – he could feel somebody watching
him. He looked around and saw something gray, fog-like and somewhat
shapeless moving closer in his direction. It was apparently moving and
looking right at him. The apparition vanished in thin air when it was
just couple of feet away from Vic. The researcher cursed loudly, took a
deep breath, and wiped the sweat from his face.

The above is just the beginning of a story relayed by Tandy to one of
the British dailies. The remaining part unfolds like a detective movie
interspersed with scientific details.
Being a true researcher, Tandy decided to do research on the phenomenon
and place it on the solid scientific grounds. Having become a "ghost
buster" of sorts, he spent five years looking into all the stories
related to ghosts observed in the old English castles. He lay in wait at
night. He studied the readings of scientific equipment. Eventually, he
learned from whence the ghosts came. He even put forth the reasons why
the English happen to witness ghosts more frequently than the residents
of other countries.

"The 'dead people' in this country have more reasons to walk round the
corridors and towers of the old castles and mansions because of the
strong sea winds blowing swiftly across the British Isles," says Tandy.
"The winds produce the sound waves of a particular range, which until
recently researchers have failed to take note of. The people
traditionally see the phenomena created by those sound waves as
specters," adds he.

The researcher arrived at the conclusion by accident. He brought a
rapier to his workplace one day after he saw the ghost in his
laboratory. The rapier needed repairing for a competition Tandy was
going to participate later that week. He held the rapier in a vice and
soon saw it oscillate as if an invisible hand was swinging the rapier
back and forth. The researcher was confident that he was witnessing the
phenomenon of resonance.
It was very quite in the laboratory at the time. Tandy got down to
measuring procedures using a number of devices. He was really amazed to
find out that a terrible noise and rumbling was, in fact, filling the
laboratory at the very moment. But all the sounds were infrasonic i.e.
with frequencies below the audible range.

It did not take Tandy long to locate the source of noise. The noise was
coming from a new ventilator, which was recently installed in an air
conditioning system. Once the researcher switched off the ventilator,
the rapier stopped vibrating. A moment later an interesting idea crossed
his mind: "What if the infrared phenomenon has to do with ghosts?"
The sound waves in the laboratory measured a frequency of 18.98 Hz. It
roughly equals the frequency movement of a human eyeball.
The wind gusts blowing against the walls of an old tower produce the
sound waves within the infrasound range. The sounds can penetrate the
thickest walls. When in a tower, one can hear the wind howling and
moaning like mad in the corridors.

"It's not a coincidence that the ghosts allegedly walk along the long
corridors where drafts fly bouncing over the walls," says the researcher
in proof of his theory.
So far Tandy has failed to explain why the "resonant sounds" took shape
in such a form.

Besides, it is still unclear how the potent infrasonic waves react if
they are produced by strong gusts of wind or vehicles and airplanes
zipping by.

Komsomolskaya Pravda
Translated by Guerman Grachev
Pravda.Ru