Poltergeist heist: Who are you really going to call?

You know the story. Loud banging noises but nothing has moved. Clocks falling from the wall. Dishes tumbling off the bench. The landline, which no-one is using, suddenly shouting incomprehensibly. And those weird instances of hands going pinch and poke in the night. We’ve got a ghost. A poltergeist. That pesky type of ghost causing trouble: robbing us of our sanity and sleep.

It started off being a joke. We’d just moved in. It seemed fun to have “our ghost” who we could blame for any accidental breakage. Our ghost was definitely the friendly variety, just wanting to occasionally let us know it was there. But then things changed. Things became really weird. And the worst part is, while I might joke and pretend, I don’t actually believe in ghosts.

When it comes to vague ideas about “spirituality”, I’m all there. I have no black or white views. I tend to think, broadly speaking, lots of things happen that we don’t understand. And sometimes we get cold shivers and discover we’re in a location where people have died, or we think about someone the very moment that something happens to them. And I can certainly joke, and half believe, that we have a spiritual presence in our house. But when push comes to shove, as it were, I really struggle to accept that paranormal activity actually happens. I tentatively told a friend about our “ghost” and she said encouragingly “have you seen all those photos of people with ghosts on the internet?”. Yes, I said. But I think it’s all bollocks.

Despite the series of unexplained events, I’m steadfastly now avoiding the idea of a ghost. Possibly because to believe in the paranormal would be to start disbelieving in some very basic science. It seems illogical and irrational. Not to mention scary. Some of the things that have happened include being woken in the middle of the night. I’ve been woken by what feels like someone pinching my nose so I can’t breathe. I’ve also been woken by what feels like hands placed gently on my eyes. I’ve even felt the shape of the palm and the fingers. I have boldly refused to let it bother me and even told my friend: “well it doesn’t matter what the ghost does to me, because they’ll probably do worse to my partner.”  A few days after I said that I woke in the morning to a sleepy, relaxed, dishevelled and slightly sheepish partner who said “I just had the best dream”. Yep, I thought… how typical…

Another weird thing was sensing the cat walk across the pillow behind my head, to then discover the cat wasn’t in the room. You’re probably thinking I’m a strange deranged lunatic at this point; I often think that too… But, here’s the catch. The telephone talking, the loud banging, the giant heavy pillow moving from one side of the bed to the other in the middle of the night, and the loud knock on our bedroom door at 2am didn’t happen to me. They were experienced by others in the house. Are you hearing scary music? I feel there should be scary music...

A “ghost” is essentially the spirit or soul of a dead person. It’s an old word (been used for about 500 years), is of Germanic origin and the belief in souls itself is ancient. The term paranormal covers activities for which there is no scientific explanation. The key here though is that while currently beyond the scope or realm of scientific understanding, they may well be understood in the future. On the other hand, supernatural suggests that we will never be able to explain or understand them (think “miracles” and “the divine”).

It’s hard to know what to think. There’s a branch of psychology called “transpersonal studies” which is essentially spiritual psychology. Although they tend to research the levels of belief that people have (using the paranormal belief scale) rather than the occurrences themselves. There are also as many books supporting the existence of ghosts as there are books reasoning they don’t exist.

But sometimes you get sick of coming up with rational and scientifically based reasons for random unexpected events. What if you decided to come up with one reason to explain everything – the ghost who wants attention? What do you do then? In short, who are you going call? Well, as it turns out, there are people you can contact. If you go to the NZ ghost story Facebook page you can be put in touch with paranormal forensic investigation teams. You can even sign up for a ghost hunt. Although, and I found this as weird as the events themselves, the easiest thing to do in the first instance is Ask the Internet because there is a step-by-step guide (with pictures) on how to get a ghost out of your house on WikiHow.

Compared to most sites which actually do have the accompanying “scary” music (a brilliant reminder of Jack Palance saying “believe it or not”) WikiHow, at first glance, appears reasonably matter of fact. Step one sensibly involves eliminating non-supernatural factors. For example, the possibility that your “ghost” is caused by infrasound (sound too low for humans to hear). They also helpfully highlight that if you live near a dump then you should watch for methane gas “giving a smell of brimstone and bursts of fire”. If you are still reading the entry… the suggestion is to then get a psychiatric assessment completed. However, if you manage to eliminate other explanations, prove you’re not mad and have other witnesses to the weirdness, then they suggest you politely (but confidently) ask your ghost to leave. If that fails, you could try an exorcism (with the note that it only works if you’re Christian). They also suggest that you clean your house. Well that’s it, I’m stuck with that ghost for life.

Fortunately there are sensible opinions provided by different groups (the Committee for Sceptic Enquiry, for example) about how to interpret the uneasy sense that something you don’t understand is happening. One of the Committee’s key messages is that a belief in ghosts stems from misinterpreting what has been seen. Lights being reflected in mirrors rather than ghostly apparitions, and pianos playing by themselves because of temperature changes. They also draw reasonably compelling parallels between notoriously unreliable evidence from eyewitnesses to crimes, and people who believe they have seen, felt or otherwise experienced a strange paranormal event.

I do think though, that the slightly disconcerting thing when odd things happen is that they are odd precisely because there is no observed scientific explanation. It is possibly even ironic that because of the lack of witnessed evidence we can only have faith that there is a sound and scientific explanation. But there it is. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I wish science would stop waking me up in the middle of the night.

Stop the beeping beep: Do our appliances have to nag?

Sounds are subjective. What is literally music to my ears can be someone else’s headache. Especially when there is a generation gap... (Five Seconds of Rubbish is an expression used pointedly by someone in our house.) When, where and why we hear sounds also has an impact. Birds chirping can seem magical if you’re awake, on holiday and the sun is shining but diabolical if it’s 4am and your cat just brought one inside. There are also sounds which are ultimately just unpleasant noise – think circular saws, lawn mowers, or the sound of a jack hammer hitting concrete.

While many sounds, pleasant or otherwise, are naturally occurring we also live with an increasing amount of created noise: electronic beeps, pips and parps. In fact, most days it can seem that the sounds that surround us are artificial: the smoke alarm, dishwasher, microwave, washing machine and in our case a recently purchased heater.

There’s an awful lot of research behind the pitch, loudness and general well, sound, of that scientifically designed din. For example, the dog whistle, which lets loose a sound that we (fortunately) can’t hear, has been around for almost 140 years And there’s research into the history of how different pitches and different sounds have been used for different purposes. Just think of the smoke alarm. That sound is extremely loud but is also pitched so that it is hard to ignore. Similarly, the beeps the smoke alarm emits when the battery is getting low are relatively quiet, but still spectacularly annoying. It’s a noise that you can’t ignore, and in that case, for good reason. However, do all our appliances need to spur us into action? Are appliances trying to tell us something? Do they really need to imply that we should get our lazy selves up off the couch and do the next chore? No-one ever asked for honesty from their appliance...

Noisy appliances has been a hot topic for a few years now. And I’m not altogether sure if the call to tone down our sassy and bold appliances has been listened to, or if our penchant in our house for retro appliances means we live in some 1950s largely beep free Utopia. Most of our appliances beep to some extent, but the old fashioned knobs and dials make far more familiar ticking and tocking noises, so the beeping is largely kept to a minimum. Beeping is also usually reserved for a useful function, like the microwave or dishwasher quietly letting you know they’ve finished. However, the two really big exceptions to that rule are our washing machine and the new heater.

The pitch of the beep on the washing machine is really loud and has a seriously demanding quality. You can hear it from any room in the house and in fact you can still hear it while outside hanging out the washing. Two things annoy me about the beep – the pitch of the noise and the fact that it doesn’t stop when you open the door and take the clothes out. And that noise, right up close, is not pleasant. But, not to dismiss that annoyance, the heater is something else altogether. The purchase of our heater breaks with our retro tradition – it’s sleek and futuristic and beeps like a beeping spaceship, or someone’s idea of one. Not only does it beep loudly and earnestly when you switch it on (like you’re using a control panel in some major spacecraft and about to enter warp speed) it then makes some very strange whiney alarm noises. Not the best in the middle of the night. They appeared to be saying “I’ve woken you up to tell you I’m up to heat, so now you can relax and go back to sleep”. How thoughtful. The people who manufacture the heater also make house alarms, so maybe they are slightly addicted to the beeping.

So why do our appliances beep? One reasonable explanation is that the beeping is to let us know that something is happening. The beeps are aural cues to let us know we have indeed switched something on, individual buttons are working and that the relevant cycle has finished. I also read a fascinating theory about beeping that suggested the beeps were designed to mimic sounds represented in science fiction. I find this intriguing and I’m sure it partially explains the noises our modern and sleek heater makes. Unfortunately most of the article was written in German, so I’m largely none the wiser…

I’m the first to confess that this is undoubtedly a first world problem. However, with so many of us on quests to simplify, purify and de-stress our lives, we could possibly imagine ways to make our homes calmer, quieter and more comforting spaces. Noise pollution, and increasing intolerance to noise, is also a vexing increasing issue.

The main question that I’m going to throw out there to manufacturers, is do our appliances have to make any noise? And my suggestion, if they do, is that maybe we could choose the sound? Similar to how we can choose ringtones and other notifications, maybe we could choose from a selection of options or even download the precise calming notification we wanted: pipe music or the calming flute to say the washing machine had finished. Even better if we could record our own voices telling someone else it was their turn to unload the machine. I would always choose that notification, always.