A new study claims inaudible sound waves from aging plumbing could be responsible for at least some ghost sightings — and the science behind it is harder to dismiss than you might expect.
Researchers at MacEwan University in Canada recruited 36 volunteers and exposed them to infrasound, which is sound occurring at frequencies below 20 Hz, well outside the range of normal human hearing. Without telling participants what was happening, the team played infrasound during both calming and unsettling music sessions and then collected saliva samples afterward.
The results were notable. Participants subjected to infrasound rated music as sadder, reported higher irritability and unease, and showed elevated cortisol levels in their saliva — a reliable marker of the body’s stress response kicking in. None of them could tell the infrasound was being played. Their bodies were reacting to something their conscious minds couldn’t detect.
Rodney Schmaltz, the psychologist leading the research, suggested that the low rumbling produced by old boilers, pipes, and building infrastructure could generate exactly this kind of infrasound. The implication is that a structurally old building might be physically priming people to feel unnerved before they ever see or hear anything strange. For someone already open to supernatural explanations, that baseline discomfort could be the spark that turns an uncomfortable room into a ghost sighting.
What the Research Actually Says — and Doesn’t
To the study’s credit, the researchers themselves are careful not to overclaim. Schmaltz has been quoted as saying the feeling that a building is haunted arises from multiple factors, and infrasound could be one of them. That’s an appropriately measured conclusion. This isn’t a team of scientists announcing they’ve debunked the paranormal. They’re proposing a plausible contributing mechanism, and they acknowledge it needs further testing in actual locations reported as haunted.
That matters, because the gap between “infrasound can make you feel uneasy” and “infrasound explains ghost sightings” is significant. The study also explicitly notes that this mechanism doesn’t account for visual apparitions at all. A cortisol spike and a bad mood are one thing. A figure standing at the foot of your bed is another.
There’s also a practical question the researchers flag themselves: we don’t actually know yet whether famously haunted locations produce unusual infrasound levels, or whether that infrasound originates from their plumbing specifically. Those are the next steps, and they haven’t been taken yet.
The Cases That Don’t Fit
The infrasound explanation works reasonably well for a specific kind of haunting experience: a vague, sourceless feeling of dread in an unfamiliar old building. That’s a real phenomenon and probably does have mundane explanations in many cases. The same is true of certain EMF-related research, which has shown that exposure to strong electromagnetic fields can produce sensations of presence, unease, and even visual distortions in some individuals.
But paranormal research is full of cases that don’t match this template at all.
Consider locations where the same apparition has been reported by dozens of unrelated witnesses over decades — people who had no prior knowledge of the location’s history and described the same figure, clothing, and behavior independently. The Tower of London’s Anne Boleyn. The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall. The recurring figures reported at Gettysburg. Infrasound can make you feel anxious. It cannot cause multiple strangers across multiple generations to describe the same woman in the same white dress standing in the same doorway.
Poltergeist activity presents an even harder problem. The classic poltergeist case involves physical movement of objects, sounds with apparent origin points, and activity that follows specific individuals rather than locations. If infrasound from pipes were the culprit, the activity would be tied to the building’s infrastructure. It wouldn’t pack up and travel with a teenager to a relative’s house, which is a pattern that appears in some of the most documented poltergeist cases on record.
A Useful Piece of a Larger Puzzle
None of this means the infrasound research is wrong or unimportant. It’s genuinely useful science, and it almost certainly does explain a portion of haunting reports, probably a larger portion than most paranormal enthusiasts would like to admit. Old buildings with creaking infrastructure, low light, and cultural associations with death are primed to produce exactly the kind of low-level dread this research describes.
But “some ghost experiences have a neurological or environmental component” and “all ghost experiences are explained by pipes” are very different claims. The study doesn’t make the second one, even if some of the headlines surrounding it have gestured in that direction.
What the research really does is sharpen the question. If infrasound and EMF account for the vague, atmospheric hauntings, then the cases that remain — the ones with specific, repeatable apparitions and physical activity that follows people rather than places — become harder to wave away. The noise has been filtered out. What’s left is worth paying attention to.
Have you experienced something in an old building that felt like more than just atmosphere? Send your report to Reports@ParaRational.com.
