Science
Spooky Science Quiz
The real science behind ghosts, déjà vu, zombie ants, and things that go bump in the night.
The real science behind ghosts, déjà vu, zombie ants, and things that go bump in the night.
In 1998, researcher Vic Tandy discovered that infrasound at 18.98 Hz — below the threshold of human hearing — can cause feelings of dread, cold chills, and even peripheral visual hallucinations that people interpret as ghosts, because the frequency matches the resonant frequency of the human eyeball. This quiz explores the real science behind 50 spooky phenomena.
You'll discover why 'haunted' buildings often have faulty wiring or gas leaks, the fungus that turns ants into zombies (and inspired The Last of Us), the scientific explanations for déjà vu and sleep paralysis, why almost-human faces trigger deep unease, and the real phenomena behind ghost lights, rogue waves, and spontaneous combustion myths.
Several scientific explanations account for ghostly experiences: infrasound below 20 Hz can cause unease and peripheral visual disturbances, carbon monoxide leaks cause hallucinations, electromagnetic fields from faulty wiring produce feelings of a 'presence,' and sleep paralysis creates vivid hallucinations of dark figures.
The leading theories include dual processing (one brain region processes a scene slightly before another, creating a false sense of familiarity), partial memory matching (the current situation resembles a stored memory fragment), and brief temporal lobe micro-seizures. It's more common in young people and when fatigued.
Yes — the Ophiocordyceps fungus infects carpenter ants, hijacks their nervous system, and compels them to climb to a specific height before clamping onto vegetation. The fungus then kills the ant and sprouts a fruiting body from its head to spread spores. Fossil evidence shows this has been happening for 48 million years.
Last updated: March 2026