Why Don't Ghosts Appear in the Daytime?
In old Korean folk tales, ghosts always appear in the hour of the Ox, between 1 and 3 a.m., when everyone is asleep. The ghosts of school horror stories also live in an empty bathroom at night or a deserted music room. No one has ever heard a story about a ghost standing in the lunch line at noon. Do ghosts follow some kind of rule? Or is there some condition on the side of the one who sees the ghost, that is, the person?
The human brain doesn't show us exactly what comes in through the eyes. It fills in the missing parts with predictions and builds a finished picture. In a bright place there is plenty of information, so there is little to guess. In the dark, it's a different story. Vague shapes multiply, like a coat on a hanger, folds in a curtain, or a stain on the wallpaper, and the brain fills in the blanks with the most familiar shape. And the shape most familiar to people is the human face and body.
In 1998, British engineer Vic Tandy felt a chill in his lab night after night and saw a gray figure at the edge of his vision. When he traced the cause, it turned out to be a newly installed fan. The fan was producing infrasound too low for the human ear to hear, and that vibration was affecting his eyes and body. When he turned off the fan, the ghost disappeared too. Tiny stimuli that would be drowned out by daytime noise come to the surface in the quiet of the night.
British psychologist Richard Wiseman took hundreds of visitors to Hampton Court Palace and the underground vaults of Edinburgh, places rumored to be haunted, and ran an experiment. Whether or not people knew the ghost stories beforehand, they reported more strange sensations in places that were dark, cool, and had low ceilings.
Today there are billions of smartphone cameras on Earth. If ghosts were really everywhere, by now we should be flooded with crystal-clear ghost photos.
In a crowded place, when you see something strange, you can immediately ask the person next to you. But when you're alone, there is no such check.
The most vivid ghost experience is sleep paralysis. It is a state in which consciousness wakes up first, while the brain's safety lock that holds the body still during dreams hasn't been released yet. Because the dream-making brain hasn't stopped yet, scenes from the dream are laid over the reality in front of your eyes.
Research shows that close to one in ten people experience it at least once in their lives, and it becomes more frequent when they lack sleep or are under heavy stress. In Korea, it was interpreted as a ghost pressing down on the sleeper, and other cultures blamed it on whatever being was most feared in their own culture.
In the end, the conditions under which ghosts appear are fixed. When it's dark, quiet, you're alone, and you're half asleep. A subway car in the daytime has none of these conditions.
Read the original (Korean) →
1. Darkness Creates Images in the Human Mind
The human brain doesn't show us exactly what comes in through the eyes. It fills in the missing parts with predictions and builds a finished picture. In a bright place there is plenty of information, so there is little to guess. In the dark, it's a different story. Vague shapes multiply, like a coat on a hanger, folds in a curtain, or a stain on the wallpaper, and the brain fills in the blanks with the most familiar shape. And the shape most familiar to people is the human face and body.
In 1998, British engineer Vic Tandy felt a chill in his lab night after night and saw a gray figure at the edge of his vision. When he traced the cause, it turned out to be a newly installed fan. The fan was producing infrasound too low for the human ear to hear, and that vibration was affecting his eyes and body. When he turned off the fan, the ghost disappeared too. Tiny stimuli that would be drowned out by daytime noise come to the surface in the quiet of the night.
2. The Ghost That Never Shows Up on Billions of Cameras
British psychologist Richard Wiseman took hundreds of visitors to Hampton Court Palace and the underground vaults of Edinburgh, places rumored to be haunted, and ran an experiment. Whether or not people knew the ghost stories beforehand, they reported more strange sensations in places that were dark, cool, and had low ceilings.
Today there are billions of smartphone cameras on Earth. If ghosts were really everywhere, by now we should be flooded with crystal-clear ghost photos.
In a crowded place, when you see something strange, you can immediately ask the person next to you. But when you're alone, there is no such check.
3. Aliens Live on Screens, Ghosts Live in Sleep
The most vivid ghost experience is sleep paralysis. It is a state in which consciousness wakes up first, while the brain's safety lock that holds the body still during dreams hasn't been released yet. Because the dream-making brain hasn't stopped yet, scenes from the dream are laid over the reality in front of your eyes.
Research shows that close to one in ten people experience it at least once in their lives, and it becomes more frequent when they lack sleep or are under heavy stress. In Korea, it was interpreted as a ghost pressing down on the sleeper, and other cultures blamed it on whatever being was most feared in their own culture.
In the end, the conditions under which ghosts appear are fixed. When it's dark, quiet, you're alone, and you're half asleep. A subway car in the daytime has none of these conditions.
