There's A Ghost At My Place Of Employment (page 15)

SixofNine

Any guesses as to the cause of all this strange activity?

Yeah, but it wouldn't really be a guess

Violia

That last post by finally was pretty creepy- something breathing beside him and coughing to get his attention.

BTW I read the pdf " the ghost in the machine" I had no idea sound could do that but used to have a soft ware program that claimed to use sound to heal. I tried it a time or two. You pick out an illness and the program tells you what levels adjust to. Mostly I found the sounds annoying and wondered how it could help heal.

SweetBabyCheezits

Man, I knew I should've tried this before I posted that link on Sab's thread.

The aforementioned events did, in fact, happen but not to any friend of mine. Instead this came from the contents of a psych report entitled The Ghost in the Machine.

Okay, well, Lav and DanaBug each get stars , for suspecting that this unexplained event was actually explainable. For those who haven't read it, I recommend reading it in the context of the PDF but I'll post a segment of the results here:

(Continuing where I left off, VT's foil was still in a vice and the free end was vibrating frantically when he returned...)

"Combining this with his experience from the previous night he once again felt an
immediate twinge of fright. However, vibrating pieces of metal were more familiar to
him than apparitions so he decided to experiment. If the foil blade was being vibrated
it was receiving energy which must have been varying in intensity at a rate equal to
the resonant frequency of the blade. Energy of the type just described is usually
referred to as sound. There was a lot of background noise but there could also be low
frequency sound or infrasound which V.T. could not hear. As it happens sound
behaves fairly predictably in long thin tubes such as organ pipes and ex-garages
joined end to end so V.T. started his experiment. He placed the foil blade in a drill
vice and slid it along the floor. Interestingly the vibration got bigger until the blade
was level with the desk (half way down the room) after the desk it reduced in
amplitude, stopping altogether at the far end of the lab.

V.T. and his colleagues were sharing their lab with a low frequency standing wave!
The energy in the wave peaked in the centre of the room indicating that there was half
a complete cycle. It is important to understand that what we call sound is caused by
variation in the pressure of the air around us. It is represented graphically as a wave. If
someone were to shout at you the sound wave will travel from them to you
transmitted by the air between you both, i.e. it is a travelling wave. However the wave
sharing our lab was of just the right frequency to be completely reflected back by the
walls at each end, so it was not going anywhere, hence it was a standing wave. In
effect the wave was folded back on itself reinforcing the peak energy in the centre of
the room."

SweetBabyCheezits

For those interested in details as to how a low frequency standing wave can affect the senses, I recommend reading the last couple of pages from The Ghost in the Machine psych paper.

To me, the moral of the story is this: Sometimes unexplained events happen. We may perceive something - noises, visual anamolies, feelings - and a perception it may be. But how our brain interprets that perception is shaped by our psyche which means those interpretations can be very wrong.

The lab employees who quickly attributed these strange experiences to a haunting were, unfortunately, closed-minded in that they drew their conclusions before gathering real evidence or really considering any other plausible explanations. V.T. was also affected by his emotion but suppressed his irrationality long enough to uncover the real cause.

I noticed a few things that helped him:

Education - V.T. was able to assess the events in light of his engineering knowledge. Had he no familiarity with science (ie, how sound waves travel), he undoubtedly would not have considered the low freq standing wave idea.
Open-mindedness - it would've been easy to attach himself the first superstitious idea that presented itself and then refuse to investigate further. We have a ghost, I experienced it, case closed! But V.T. did not stop at the first "gut feeling" that came over him. He pushed ahead in search of empirical data... and found it. That said, even if he lacked an understanding of sound waves, true open-mindedness would have him label the events as unexplained instead of settling on supernatural.
Luck - this puzzle might never have been solved if V.T. hadn't come in early, placed his foil in the vice and walked away. Sometimes strange events do occur... and we may never discover the real answers behind them. The question is, do we leave those events categorized as unexplained?

laverite

Excellent! Thanks for sharing this SBC!!!!

SweetBabyCheezits

You're welcome, Lav. How are ya, btw?

To some of you it may sound like I'm throwing stones at those who foolishly took the events for a haunting but, in reality, if I heard the stories and perceived an apparition as VT did, I'm no so sure I'd be able to suppress irrational thought. I'd hope so but, again, human emotion tends to skew perception and last time I checked I was still human.

To me, though, that makes it even more critical that we fight irrationality by developing critical thinking skills.

finallysomepride

11 days ago the resurrection happened & I missed it for some reason, great to know the plp are still interested in my old topics.

Just to up date what has been going on:

It's been a few months since any noticable activity has occured at work, but since my last post 11 months ago there has been some activity shortly after that last post.

One particular day:

At the end of the day, I processed the POS & til, took the days takings & float to the office, I put both the days takings & float down on my diary sitting on my desk, I went to the outer office to find a plastic bag, to put the days takings in before putting the money in the safe. Going back into my office I find that the money, all of it has dissapeared, I searched the office, the store, retraced my steps all round the shop, even in the toilet but could not find the money.
I spent a full 1/2 hour looking, I totally searched the office 5 times, but no money, I was starting to really panic, so I decided to sit down & calm down a little while.

After a few minutes I decided to go back into the office & look again, walking into the room I saw straight away that the money was back on my diary on my desk.
I grabbed the money through it in the safe then went home.

The money was not on my diary the 5-6 times I searched the room as I made a point of checking each time.

I was the only living person in the building, as the doors were locked & it's not the sort of shop that anyone could easily hide in.

If there was another person in the store they would have to get passed me to get to the money in the office, no one did.

Kevin

Room 215

... Sounds like the work of O' Munaciello... just any Neapolitan:

"The story of ‘o Munaciello, is one of the most famous legends in Napoli, and one of the most interesting. In Neapolitan dialect, ‘o Munaciello means The Little Monk. This little monk can be nice and hide money somewhere within a person’s house or play harmless jokes. The monk can also be cruel; breaking plates, whispering non-sensical phrases in people’s ears while they sleep, or hiding household objects."

JustHuman14

Ghosts, are just lost souls, that couldn't make it to pass the other side. There is nothing to be afraid of them...

finallysomepride

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There's A Ghost At My Place Of Employment

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