Ghosts

Could ghosts exist? If not, why do so many people believe in them?

One third of Americans believe in ghosts, and one fifth have had a personal encounter. We go to a haunted house with some paranormal investigators and things get spooky. But, scientists aren’t scared - they have a range of explanations for why so many people encounter ghosts. We speak to Dr. Katie Mack, Baland Jalal, Dr. Shane Rogers, and Prof. Chris French and find out what ghosts are all about.

Credits:
This episode has been produced by Ben Kuebrich, Diane Wu, Heather Rogers and Shruti Ravindran me.  Senior Producer Kaitlyn Sawrey. Our editor is Annie-Rose Strasser. Production assistance: Audrey Quinn. Fact Checking by Michelle Harris. Sound engineering, music production and original scoring by Bobby Lord.   Thanks to Dr. Ciaran O’Keeffe, Dr Neil Dagnall, Dr. Giulio Rognini, Raymond Swyers,  Dr. Joseph Baker, Prof. Kwai Man Luk,  Prof. Kin Seng Chiang, Prof. Tapan Sarkar, Prof. Maxim Gitlits, The Zukerman family, Joseph Lavelle Wilson as well as Jorge Just, Devon Taylor ...and thanks to Haley Shaw for the spooooky violins in the Science Vs theme.

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Selected References:

• Baland Jalal’s Sleep Paralysis Hallucination Hypothesis
• Review of Folklore Surrounding Sleep Paralysis
• World Health Organization’s Guidelines for Indoor Air Quality: Dampness and Mould
• Chris French’s Haunted Room Experiment

There are a lot of fads, blogs and strong opinions, but then there’s SCIENCE. Science Vs is the show from Gimlet Media that finds out what’s fact, what’s not, and what’s somewhere in between. We do the hard work of sifting through all the science so you don't have to. This season we tackle alcohol, fasting diets, DNA tests, race and the fertility cliff.