Unsolved Mystery: Voices
What It Could Be
You’re tired. Lack of sleep, especially REM sleep, can make you think you’re hearing things. “A brain lacking sleep or under emotional stress is like a brain on drugs,” says psychologist James Houran. “When I used to stay up all night in college cramming for exams, phantom voices often plagued me. Proper nutrition and healthy sleep the next day exorcized the spirits.”
The electronics are talking back. Radio waves can interfere with audio devices. That means you could be watching The Price Is Right when a CB radio interjects, “Papa Bear to Baby Bear. Do you copy?” Thankfully, since this applies only to audio gadgets, you won’t hear your toaster play “Fly Me to the Moon” or your blender criticize your banana daiquiris.
Your aquarium. Wilson and Hawes once cracked a case in Connecticut in which home owners
were positive they heard voices. The team traced the sounds to a fish tank — but the guppies were not plotting a great escape. “The water filter was releasing air, and it sounded just like voices,” says TV host Jason Hawes.
Unsolved Mystery: Apparitions
What It Could Be
Electromagnetic fields, or EMFs. An EMF is a low-frequency radiation that can be emitted by power lines, cell phones, earthquake fault lines, appliances, electrical outlets, and the sun. Whether or not EMFs have an effect on people is controversial, but studies have shown they may be able to create hallucinations by interfering with the brain’s electrical patterns. One woman told Wilson and Hawes that she was being haunted in her bedroom. When they whipped out their EMF meter, they found “her bed was right next to one of those old, flip number–style motorized alarm clocks, which made the meter react,” says TV host Grant Wilson. “We were able to solve her ‘haunting’ by replacing her clock.”
Yikes! An actual ghost? “When we recently investigated a penitentiary in Pennsylvania, we had a presence run right at our camera,” says Hawes,
who uses an infrared video camera to capture heat sources that can’t be seen with the naked eye. “I honestly believe that we caught some sort of apparition.” Houran is dubious: “Whenever I’ve investigated ghosts that were reportedly caught on tape via a specialized medium, such as infrared, it has always turned out to be a simple recipe: one part lighting and shadow effects mixed together with strong suggestion and a big heap of belief in the paranormal.”
A problem even worse than a ghost. “Grant and I worked a case in which a woman was seeing strange things,” says Hawes. “It turned out she had cataracts. We had another client who mixed a new prescription with an old prescription and wound up creating a hallucinogenic drug.”
