10 Paranormal Phenomena Explained by Science

Copyright 2016 by Gary L. Pullman

Like FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder of The X-Files, many of us want to believe. The idea that the universe cannot be entirely explained by scientific and rational means leaves our existence open to the marvelous and the mysterious. For many, the unknown adds excitement to life, although, for some, it can also inspire insecurity and fear, which, of course, despite their unpleasantness, can be, paradoxically, exciting in their own ways.

From ancient times, people have believed in paranormal forces, powers, and activities. Often, they attribute these phenomena to the soul, demons, ghosts, mystical energy fields, miracles, celestial bodies, magic, or communication with cosmic beings or intelligence.

The phenomena themselves do exist. It's their causes that are questionable. Believers believe, but scientists are skeptical. Where fans and followers offer paranormal causes for these phenomena, scientists insist their origins are much more mundane.

Here are 10 paranormal phenomena explained by science.

10 Astral Projection

Some people believe they can exit their bodies while sleeping to travel through time and space. During such journeys, some say they communicate with cosmic beings or have visions.

OBEs = Microsleep

In fact, as many as 20 percent of survey respondents claim to have had such an out-of-body experience (OBE). Scientists are not convinced such experiences are anything more than subjective phenomena. They suspect astral projection, as OBEs are also known, result from microsleep—falling to sleep for anywhere from a moment to 30 seconds without realizing it—and dreaming they have traveled outside their bodies.

9 Aura

Various colors of visible, luminous energy fields outlining people, animals, plants, and inanimate objects, their so-called auras, are seen by some people. Or so they say. Their claims, it appears, actually may be true.

Auras = Synestheia

Spanish scientists have discovered auras, in some cases, at least, may result from synesthesia, a “neuropsychological phenomenon” in which a confusion of the sensory perceptions, as they are processed in different regions of the brain, produces sights that are heard, sounds that are tasted, or tastes that are seen. The confusion may result from a “cross-wiring in the brain” that produces “more synaptic connections” than are normal. “These extra connections cause” individuals with synesthesia “to automatically establish associations between brain areas that are not normally interconnected,” explained Professor Gómez Milán of the University of Granada's Department of Experimental Psychology. As a result, they may see auras. One of the subjects of the study has “face-color synesthesia,” seeing colors instead of faces.

An abstract of the study states that, for a research participant, “R,” “the sight of a familiar person triggers a mental image of “a human silhouette filled with colour.” Other people who see auras experience photism, a form of synesthesia in which a tactile sensation or a sound is perceived as a colored aura. The study also indicates that “aura-sensitive people typically agree on the colour of the aura observed.” 

8 Demonic Possession

Demonic possession supposedly occurs when evil spirits take control, or “possess” a human being, causing him or her to behave in bizarre, even seemingly impossible, ways. Traditionally, demonic possessions have been addressed by clergymen, especially Roman Catholic priests, using the Bible and various rituals in an attempt to expel, or cast out, the demon or demons.

Satanist Richard Ramirez, the "Night Stalker" serial killer

(Demonic possession = mental illness)

In the Middle Ages, these were considered signs of demonic possession: glossolalia (speaking in languages unknown to the possessed), the assumption of abnormal physical movements or positions, the prediction of future events or mind reading, the “fear of holy objects,” the inability to say the name “Christ,” and excessive expectoration or regurgitation. 

Like demonic possession itself, many of these symptoms of “demonic possession” are explicable as effects of various psychological conditions, including hysteria, mania, psychosis, schizophrenia, and dissociative personality disorder.

Hysteria is marked by the experience of intense, uncontrollable emotions, especially fear. Mania is characterized by “an extremely strong mood,” high energy, and “unusual thought patterns” that can cause antisocial behavior. Psychosis can cause people to experience delusions, hallucinations, and paranoia. Psychotics may have often false but “fixed beliefs.” These behaviors may occur individually or in various combinations. Schizophrenics' ideas of reality tend to differ sharply from those of normal people. People with dissociation personality disorder divide their consciousness between two or more “dissociative identity states.”

Twenty-nine percent of people with dissociative identity disorder equate their condition with demonic possession. However, psychologists regard such a belief as demonomania or demonopathy, a monomania. Those who accuse others of being possessed by demons are apt to suffer from collective hysteria, a condition influenced by simulation, or the “conscious . . . feigning of illness,” including conditions sometimes regarded as signs of demonic possession.

7 Electronic Voice Phenomena

The term “electronic voice phenomena” (EVP) refers to supposedly disembodied voices caught on tape or other recording media. Allegedly, these “voices” are those of ghosts. 

EVP = natural sounds

Thomas Edison told an interviewer he was interested in inventing “an apparatus” capable of communicating with the dead. Despite the fact that Edison never invented such a device, his statement sparked interest in EVP. Since then, voices and other sounds on tape have suggested to some that ghosts do, indeed, communicate with the living. Skeptics aren't so sure. The sounds are there on tape, all right, but that could be due to a number of things besides those that go bump in the night. Some possibilities include “interference from a nearby CB operator, cross modulation, . . . ionospheric ducting,” (“electronic layers of the ionosphere that create small 'ducts',” allowing fragmented “radio broadcasts or walkie talkie communications” to carry “great distances”), voices from “cell phones, AM and FM radios, TVs, baby monitors, walkie talkies, shortwave transmitters,” or even “people creating  meaning out of random noise.” Psychologist Jim Alcock suggests EVPs could be the result, in some cases, of people discovering “patterns” where there are none.” The “power of suggestion” may also play a part in identifying EVP as the disembodied voices of the dead.

6 Ley Lines

Ley lines (aka dragon lines) are ancient straight pathways through the countryside, usually between hills, which often align historical or important features such as crossroads, monuments, churches, burial sites, holy places, and villages. Birds and animals supposedly follow ley lines back and forth from “feeding grounds” and while migrating north or south. The lines, some say, are energized by the spirits of those who used them centuries ago, and sites along the lines are often haunted because of their “mystical nature.”

Malvern Hills, England: the ridge is said to be a ley line

(Ley lines = altered magnetic fields)

Scientists believe ley lines may transmit “an altered form of the earth'smagnetic field.” Their magnetism would explain the ghosts, UFOs, and other paranormal phenomena that are frequently perceived at sites among the lines, scientists say, because electromagnetism is thought to “affect the body and mind,” causing “tingling” feelings, “dizziness and unbalance,” or even “nausea and headaches,” perceptions often reported by those who claim to witness ghosts or other paranormal phenomena.

5 Fire Walking

Fire walking = poor conductivity

Members of various kinship groups and villages have demonstrated their ability to walk barefoot on beds of burning coals or stones without suffering injury. Such people often attribute their ability to perform this amazing feat to a miracle.

David Willey, a physics instructor at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, who's studied this apparently paranormal phenomenon, attributes fire walkers' ability to the fact that both burning coals and wood are poor conductors of heat, and “conduction is the main way heat is transmitted to a person's feet during a fire walk.” The brief interval between footsteps prevents the feet from being burned, he explains. Willey says it's possible to touch a cake inside a 500-degree oven repeatedly for brief moments without burning one's hand because a hand is “much denser than the air” inside the oven. The air is “a good conductor of heat”; the hand, comparatively, is not. Touching the metal oven rack, instead of the cake, however, would “immediate burn” the hand, because metal is a much better conductor of heat than the air and the hand.

4 Marfa Lights

Floating orbs of light as big as basketballs materialize over the Texas desert close to the town of Marfa. “White, blue, yellow, red, or other colors,” the glowing spheres “merge, twinkle, split in two, flicker” and “dart” across the terrain. They appear without warning, according to no schedule, and vanish just as capriciously, showing themselves only twelve or so times each year. Native Americans believed them to be incandescent meteors.

 

Marfa lights = several possibilities, all natural

Scientists have a variety of explanations for the lights. Some suggest they may be nothing more than the headlights of automobiles traveling on U. S. Route 67. Others say they're mirages caused by a “refraction of light” due to “layers of air at different temperatures.” Still others believe the lights are caused by phosphine and methane, gases that, in swamps, cause similar glowing lights, noting that “there are significant reserves of oil, natural gas, and other petroleum hydrocarbons in the area.” James Bunnell, a retired aerospace engineer who witnessed a display of the lights, believes they result from a piezolelectric charge (“electricity generated under pressure by solid matter”). Although none of these hypotheses has been validated as true, they demonstrate that there are not one, but several, possible scientific explanations of the lights and that they and similar ones need not be assumed to be of a paranormal nature.

3 Numerology

Numerology is a belief system that attributes magical properties to numbers and their relationships and claims that mathematical operations can disclose secrets otherwise unattainable. 

Numerology = coincidence

In addition, numerologists believe the system can be used “to predict and define the personality of a person based on symbolism.” To ensure they reach the conclusions they desire when performing these feats, numerologists “often calculate their numerology and rearrange their lives to fit their predictions.” Another way numerologists seek to validate their system as authentic is to show how famous people's names (the letters of which are assigned numerical values) correspond to the conclusions numerological readings reach regarding these individuals' “real personalities and actions.” Adolf Hitler's numerology, 666, for example, was held by numerologists to show not only that he was the Antichrist, or “beast” mentioned in the book of Revelation, but also that numerology itself is accurate and reliable as a means of assessing individuals' “real personalities and actions.” Nothing is proved by such demonstrations, since they hold true only in a few, select cases. In short, numerology depends more on simple coincidence, scientists say, than on any true correspondences between numbers and their relationships to one another.

2 Shell Scrying

Those who believe in the psychic practice of shell scrying claim that, by listening to a seashell, one can become privy to the thoughts and words of the cosmos. First, the person, in tune with the universe, will hear syllables, then entire words, and, finally, “whole segments of conversations.” 

Shell scrying = ambient sounds 

Of course, scientists have a different explanation as to what the person hears and why. It's not the person's own blood coursing through his or her veins, as some believe. It's the “ambient sounds” of the environment itself. “The shell acts as a resonator,” reflecting sound. The shell's convoluted interior and its glazed surface causes it to “resonate at many frequencies.” At the same time, by holding the shell near the ear, the shell muffles one sound frequency while amplifying others, causing the listener to focus on the sound the ambient sounds the shell is reflecting. Because we tend to seek patterns, most often, our brains interpret the reflected sounds as those of the sea.

1 Water Dowsing

Dowsers use a Y-shaped stick or another instrument, such as “a rod” or a “pendulum,” to locate subterranean water, “minerals,” and other “hidden or lost substances.” The process is simple. Holding the tail end of the Y facing upward, at a 45-degree angle, the dowser paces the test site. The tail of the Y dips when the dowser walks over the water, minerals, or other “hidden substance,” indicating its presence below ground.

Dowsing = Chance find

Dowsing seems to work because, below the surface of the Earth, water is plentiful almost everywhere. Finding water isn't all that challenging. What is difficult, however, is locating potable water that is available in sufficient volume, a task that requires “hydrologic, geologic, and geophysical knowledge,” not just magic, or, as scientists maintain, coincidence.