Rita at Res Ipsa Loquitur, one of my favorite bloggers, and who most definitely is NOT a kook, writes about her experience of living in a haunted house.

We lived in a haunted house once….my daughter saw a lady all dressed in white standing in our bedroom doorway. I saw a weird strand of smoke move down the hallway & begin to grow bigger. (I didn’t stick around to see what happened next) She often poked around in the kitchen….which would usually cause my dog at the time, a big very protective boxer, to alert & start growling. Finally, one night I was sitting in the living room watching tv and the doors on the kitchen cabinets kept opening & closing…I was the only one home. I yelled “Hey, do you mind? That’s really annoying.” The noises stopped and I never heard those particular sounds again. Weird, huh? [There is more – go read.]

Rita linked to an article about the exposure to “soundless music” (i.e. very low frequency sound, inaudible to humans) as possibly being connected to people’s experiencing strange sensations, which are similar to those reported by people claiming to see ghosts.

I suppose it is entirely possible that low frequency sounds could have accounted for what Rita reported, but then again, maybe not. Starting with the assumption that she is accurately reporting her experiences (and I am 100% certain of that), what are we to make of such things?

I think it is intellectually dishonest and arrogant to flatly deny the possibility of paranormal phenomena. While I have never experienced such things (and I suspect that most people have not), the inability to perceive a particular thing surely does not provide the basis for asserting with certainty that the thing cannot exist.

Each one of us (and quite possibly everyone on the planet) is surrounded at all times by all sorts of electronic signals from radios, televisions, telephones, wireless transmitters, – you name it. And, without an appropriate receiving device (a radio, a TV, a phone), we cannot perceive this ocean of electricity that we bathe in, yet it undisputedly exists.

I suppose that the only completely defensible position one can take with respect to “things that go bump in the night” and which seem to defy logical explanation is to concede that there may be things out there that we simply cannot presently explain. Perhaps these perceptions are traceable to a recently discovered natural phenomenon (e.g. “soundless music”). Then again, it could very well be that paranormal things do exist as some form of energy, but most of us simply lack the “receiver” that would permit us to perceive and measure them.

Note: In Rita’s comments, Bogie of Bogie’s Blog also reported having experienced some equally bizarre phenomena.

I have two things to say about what Rita and Bogie experienced: 1. I’ll be damned if I know what might account for what they saw, heard and felt, and 2. Both stories made the hair on the back of my neck stand at attention!