Even though I'm quite fascinated by ghost stories and paranormal documentation, I'm a guy who believes every single occurrence has their own explanation; whether we have the luxury of knowing it or not is another thing to be considered. Paranormal activities have gained much attention from the media and people from all over the globe. It seems like we are not only afraid of something we couldn't understand but also fascinated by it. We are currently living in the world, full of people who can't differentiate between truly getting haunted, unexplained hallucinations or relatively risked to be killed by something. Even though we have a lot of explanations which can rule out paranormal occurrences from our own differential diagnoses such as infrasound and aberrant electromagnetic field in certain places, nothing surpassed the danger of being poisoned by carbon monoxide while thinking you were haunted by apparitions.
There is a lot of stuff in your home which contains carbon monoxide, a gas which can't be seen by our naked eyes and retain its potency to kill people while giving a false sense of horror, frequently misinterpreted as "being haunted". One of the most popular examples was documented by an ophthalmologist named W.H. Wilmer who hypothesized that carbon monoxide leak is the reason why a whole family experienced various symptoms such as hallucinations, lethargy and feeling dreaded for no reason after they moved into a new (yet old) house. Carbon monoxide has a greater affinity towards red blood cell compared to oxygen that would eventually cause oxygen deprivation to the brain. There have been a few records in which people who were poisoned by carbon monoxide felt like they weren't themselves anymore. It was accompanied by various aural hallucinations causing people to see whatever they weren't supposed to see (yeah, I'm talking about ghosts).
Take Carrie Poppy as an example. Putting aside the fact that she had an awesome and supportive friend who ask her to burn some sages to repel ghosts away, she was totally convinced that there are other creatures which live in a different dimension that can't be perceived by our senses but we can totally feel them. As the time goes by her symptoms were getting worse and eventually, she was told that she might have been poisoned by carbon monoxide. Reading up all the facts and compared it with what she has experienced, she decided to call the gas company and check her house for a potential gas leak. Thank god she took the action relatively quickly or she might suffer from irreversible consequences which have no medical treatment, death. If you were able to see something which no one else could perceive, carbon monoxide poisoning can be one of the potential diagnoses, but it certainly not definite.
Most of the paranormal occurrences (I think all which has been investigated) have their own scientific explanation but due to various factors such as culture, religious belief etc., investigation regarding those occurrences can be hindered either by other people or that particular individual themselves, fearing they will get cursed by supernatural means. I live in Malaysia and I've seen enough the significance of ghosts and anything related to it to the culture of people in this particular country. They knew they supposed to call upon some religious figure in order to repel ghosts or any evil spirit in a specified cleaning ritual (somewhat depends on religious belief). A Muslim will recite some verses from the Quran, a Christian would have brought holy water and I'm not sure what others would do; my point is, no one seems to have the initiative to call upon scientists or anyone who is capable of investigating these paranormal occurrences through scientific means.
Just to clarify, I'm not saying that I don't believe in ghosts, apparitions, spirits etc. I do hope someday we would have proofs that they exist but until then, I will commit to what I can see or what I can perceive. While hanging out in the clinic yesterday, one of my supervisors told me a story about a patient who came with symptoms that could point him towards the diagnosis of carbon monoxide poisoning but he was convinced that he was haunted by ghosts. He came to the clinic to get some sleeping pills to help him sleep and after a brief history taking, it seems he is quite convinced that a doctor can't help him; he can only be treated by spiritual healers. I get it, we (doctors) have been wrong for more than once but that doesn't mean medicine can be the frontier of treating people with hallucinations or anything related to paranormal stuff.
According to a paper written by Angela L. Chiew and Nicholas A. Buckley which has been published in 2014, people who are exposed to carbon monoxide for a long duration are prone to get severe neurological long-term effects such as a decrease in attention span, short-term memory and sure, depression (Source). I mean, who wouldn't, if you are being disturbed by those things every single day, you pretty much live in fear. We can deduce that most of the damages caused by carbon monoxide poisoning came from the fact that haemoglobins can't really carry sufficient oxygen to meet the metabolic demands of tissue all across the body, including the brain. However, according to a few research papers, the most significant damages were caused by reactive oxygen species that were generated through the binding of the carbon monoxide and the cytochrome C oxidase in the brain.
If you were thinking that treatment could make it better, you were right but not immediate. In some cases, catching up with severe carbon monoxide poisoning could cause apoptosis, increase in the production of reactive oxygen species and widespread systemic inflammatory reactions from various agents including platelets. The symptoms would be much more severe in people who had anaemia, heart or lung condition and genetic variants of diseases that could affect the integrity of the red blood cells. Every single year, approximately 500 Americans succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning and since they (carbon monoxide) were silent killers, it's pretty much difficult for people to admit themselves were having problems and submit to treatments. I mean, we believe only things we can see right and since we can see ghosts (and not carbon monoxide), it is easier to believe that you were haunted and rush yourself to the nearest church/mosque/temple or any spiritual places to dispel them.
So, Why People Are Seeing Ghosts?
If it is carbon monoxide, then it's relatively easy to be detected but there are others which are not being poisoned by carbon monoxide but they were seeing things. Seeing, hearing, feeling something on your skin when there was nothing, that was hallucinations. An illusion is a misinterpreted stimulus (i.e. we misinterpret white curtains as ghosts). Neither I not everyone else can say for sure what has been bugging you all day long, but with a few investigations and probably environment scanning, we can pretty much figure out and rule out some causes to achieve a definite conclusion. Science has been winning all the paranormal battles (they were supposed to win all), and I would expect someday, if we were to discover other forms of entities, it would be by using science as well. There are a lot of people who have been listening to unknown voices especially when they were stressed, usually known as the auditory hallucination.
Schizophrenia is one of the most popular diagnoses of mental disorder if people started to complain they can hear, see, perceive or feel something that isn't there. I have repeated over and over again that nothing is absolute in medicine. Even though schizophrenia is a popular opinion among medical practitioners, scientists have found various explanation to uncover the mystery of seeing things that others can't. It was speculated that all of the places across the globe, possessed various degrees of electromagnetic waves. This particular wave can mess with our head as they can interact and alter the activity in the temporal lobe causing visual and auditory hallucination. Some research at the most haunted places in the world has proved that electromagnetic waves can cause different sets of symptoms that give weird sensation to an individual. We are talking about feeling dread for no reason, feel like being followed/observed, hear weird sounds etc.
One of the most popular experiment to investigate the effect of high electromagnetic waves on humans was carried out by Dr Michael Persinger by utilising a specific apparatus called Koren's helmet developed by Stanley Koren. Of course, you might know this particular apparatus with different names, sometimes it is called God helmet and sometimes, people knew this apparatus as Shiva helmet. All of the name mentioned describe the same apparatus and initially, it was developed to study the effect of religion on the temporal lobe's activity. The helmet can't really produce high electromagnetic waves but the level of emission (which is relatively weak) is just enough to trigger an unusual temporal lobe's activity which would cause some kind of perception that there is something in a specified place whereas normal, healthy individual would find nothing.
There are a lot of discussions which have been held in the past regarding this topic but most of the scientists believe that the most important factor which could have made you hallucinate is not only the emission of weak electromagnetic forces but rather suggestibility. People would see what they want to see/believe. It's undeniable that our mind holds the power of making certain things possible when someone is really convinced that they were, in fact, would become affected by a specified variable of an event. People who think they are sick would really get sick and sicker as the day goes by and it was well-documented regarding how mass hysteria could cause some manifestations of unrelated physical symptoms that couldn't be explained by any medical diagnosis. When people saw someone was sick and they were convinced they have been infected, any related symptoms that would have appeared after that would only make things worse (even if they have that kind of symptoms when they were healthy like tremors etc.).
Can people see ghosts if they were affected by a certain level of electromagnetic waves? Probably but I can say for certain that it can be caused by others as well. We have a lot of deductions and even research papers which has been presented in certain publication sites regarding how certain factors can cause people to hallucinate and see something others don't i.e. infrasound, electromagnetic waves, psychological consequences, psychiatric condition, drugs and alcohol intoxication etc. So far, whatever has been documented still can be explained by science but as a believer, even if we believe there is a realm which can't be perceived with our naked eyes, even if we can't really prove that kind of hypothesis, doesn't necessarily mean they aren't real. Yeah, we might be living with other paranormal entities in the same world (different realms) but if someone saw something which can't be perceived by others and can be explained by science or a specific medical condition, then, it is pretty much null on the ghost hypothesis, isn't it?
Yeah, people have their own right to see any kind of spiritual healers when they believe they have been possessed by evil spirits, but my recommendation would be to never abandon science as a potential solution to the problem at hand. Whatever kind of hallucination you would have experienced, I bet some of them can be fatal or causes some kind of deterioration in health status; it will be too late if the condition progresses up to the point there is nothing we can do, even with science.
Sources
- Carbon monoxide poisoning in the 21st century
- The REAL reasons why some people see ghosts, according to experts
- Carbon Monoxide Manifestations: A Real Life Ghost Story
- What's Really Behind Paranormal Experiences (Hint: It's Not Ghosts)
- 6 Scientific Explanations for Ghosts
- Effects of carbon monoxid upon the eye
- God helmet
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