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‘Haunted’ Houses Give Off Literal Bad Vibes, Scientists Say

What people are interpreting as the work of ghosts is really just the subtle hum of aging toilet pipes.

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Arthur C. Clarke once said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Does plumbing count? It should, at least according to new research suggesting that many “ghostly” experiences in haunted houses may come down to something as mundane as rumbling old pipes.

A recent experiment detailed in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience points are suggesting that the ghostly creeks and moans you might hear when exploring a spooky dilapidated building that is supposedly haunted are really just infrasound, aka sound waves below 20 Hz, which are beyond the range of human hearing. That leads to an obvious follow-up question: if it’s beyond the range of what our ears can detect, how are we hearing them well enough to be spooked into thinking that they were the sounds of spectral apparitions?

Your ears don’t pick them up, but the rest of your body is definitely picking up the vibe they give off, like........

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