old thread with basically the same theme: Favorite ghost stories

In case you feel like reading something from the skeptical side, read Joe Nickell's 'Entities', Prometheus Books, 1995. Nickell is known for his follow-up studies of well known haunted sites and for his wealth of different and often very creative explanations.

In case you want to read good ghost stories without any scientific intrusion, there is this website.

Usually a single explanation will not fit all the recollected facts and I shall not attempt to find an explanation for any of the cases described, not even for any single aspect. I'll give you only a short and not exhaustive list of a couple of explanations that have been found each to be able to explain a subgroup of the phenomena. Whether someone believes that after all these explanations have been tested there remains a residuum of unexplained or not is more personal taste than anything else. Here's the list:

- pranks (usually by youngsters). For instance in the Observer of December 31, 2000, one could read of the late confession of a prankster in one of the most famous cases in Britain, namely the Borley rectory which once has been named (in a booktitle) 'the most haunted house in England' (there was a movie as well, of course). The prankster has described in detail how he did, e.g., ghosts without heads. Great idea.

- hypnopompic or lucid dreams (can seems very real)

- a standing infra-sound wave in a house (e.g. from a big, slowly rotating fan) can lead to many of the physiological side effects (hair standing up, fear, etc) that have been described. This is from a recent issue of a parapsychological journal, the J. of the society for Psychical research.

- EMF effects from near senders on electric or quasielectric equipment (the man who could listen to the radio in his tooth; I once had the local AFN in my radiator)

- nightly encounters with animals under bad viewing conditions (in one case, a barn owl sitting at face level has led to a very frightening percept)

- wind and temperature gradient action on house structures

and many, many more

And never forget that if you do not find a mundane explication it does not follow with necessity that there is none. There may be one you don't know or have not thought of.

Wolfgang